04/20/2026
Compound grief is real.
My dog. My dad. Six months apart. And I carried grief long before that.
At some point the grief stops being something you carry and starts being something that carries you — under.
Life is constant release.
We just weren’t taught that.
We learned to collect things, identities, pain but never how to set any of it down with intention.
I had to learn new ways to honor what I was carrying. So I said yes to a grief retreat with equine therapy. I felt held in a safe container big enough for the depths of it. I didn’t have to shrink my grief.
New skills. New tools. A body that remembered what peace felt like. It was the medicine my heart needed.