Grief Sucks, It’s Also Incredibly Connecting. I’m Tired.

I’ve heard “grief is love” so many times lately. I get it. I also kind of hate hearing it. It’s one of those phrases that’s both completely true and totally unhelpful when you’re actually in it. It’s comforting in theory… and exhausting in practice.

I’ve heard a lot recently, given the grief I’ve been processing, that grief is love.
I know it’s true.
And I’m tired.

Grief is one of those things that feels impossible to explain until you’re in it. It’s emotional, all the time. It can knock you off your feet on an otherwise normal Tuesday. You might be fine one minute, then see a photo or smell something familiar and suddenly feel like you’ve been hit by a wave. It’s unpredictable, heavy, and relentless.

And yet, it’s also incredibly connecting.

When you’re grieving, you start to realize how many people are quietly carrying their own versions of loss. It shows up in the way people look at you with knowing eyes, or share a story they’ve never told before. There’s something deeply human about grief—it cracks you open in a way that connects you to other people who have loved deeply, too.

But that doesn’t make it easier.
Hearing “grief is love” can feel comforting and annoying at the same time. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but it also doesn’t take away the exhaustion. The duality is real: you can hold gratitude for the love that created the grief and still feel completely wiped out by it.

Grief doesn’t follow a clean arc. It loops, backtracks, fades, and then flares up again. You can have moments of real peace, and then suddenly feel gutted all over. Sometimes it feels like your capacity to feel love and sadness have merged into one endless emotion.

It’s connecting. It’s human. It’s full of love.
And it also just sucks.

That’s the truth I keep landing on. Both are real. Both coexist.
And right now? I’m just tired.

As a therapist, I sit with people in grief often. I’ve said the things about love, loss, and connection, that I now hear echoed back to me. And it’s humbling to feel how true and how hard they both are at once. It’s easy to talk about grief in theory; it’s another thing entirely to live inside it.

So I’m trying to hold space for both.
For the love that still exists.

And for the part of me that’s just… tired.