Growing With Grief

Growing With Grief

I’ve been asked to share more about my grief. I’m told people want to hear it.

But a part of me still wonders… don’t people get tired of the same story?

Then I remind myself—life is a story.

Not just what happens to us, but how we see it. How we tell it. How we choose to remember it. If you’ve ever sat with a group of people recalling the same moment, you’ve seen this in real time—everyone tells a different version.

That’s proof of something powerful:

we have the ability to reshape how we hold our experiences.

Grief was no exception for me.

Mine didn’t disappear, and it didn’t become easy—but it did evolve. Not by accident, but because I had spent years, without fully realizing it, learning how to work through my own mind. I had practiced finding solutions, questioning my thoughts, and sitting with discomfort.

When I lost my son, I leaned into those tools in the hardest way possible.

I asked myself a question that felt almost impossible:

How can I learn to love this?

Even writing that can sound wrong. How do you love something that hurts this deeply?

But I wasn’t trying to love the pain. I was trying to stop resisting reality.

Because we don’t get rid of grief.

It stays. It’s heavy. It’s sad. And sometimes it takes your breath away.

I felt all of that.

I watched myself break under the weight of heartbreak.

I heard the thoughts that wanted escape from the pain.

I felt fear—of never being who I once was again.

Some days, even breathing felt like work.

And when the tears came, I let them—and I observed myself through them.

But alongside all of that… something else was happening.

I was expanding.

Slowly, quietly, I felt something inside me begin to open. Like a part of me was blooming in the middle of all that pain. That shift didn’t come from avoiding grief—it came from accepting it.

My acceptance is rooted in something deeper: my spiritual connection. A belief that we are more than this physical life—that we are souls moving through experiences that shape us.

Through that lens, I began to see my son’s journey differently.

As short as his life was, it was meaningful. In less than 19 years, he lived, he struggled, he grew—and his life created growth in me. His imprint didn’t disappear. It lives on in everyone who knew him, each of us carrying a different piece of who he was.

And in that, I found a kind of peace.

Not because I was “over it”—but because I stopped fighting what is.

With grace, I learned to bow to life. To accept what I cannot change.

And in that acceptance, I found something I didn’t expect:

choice.

I could let grief make me smaller… or I could allow it to expand me.

I chose to become more.

More present.

More loving.

More aware.

More intentional.

I saw my growth as an extension of my son’s life. I didn’t want to become less because of him—I wanted to become more because of him.

So I kept searching for ways to grow. And I still do.

Today, my grief is still with me—but so is peace.

So is love.

So is gratitude.

So is a deep respect for life and everything it continues to teach me.

Grief didn’t take that away from me.

It showed me how to find it.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

You don’t have to erase your pain to transform your life.

You can learn to love your experiences too.

Xo, Camille ✨