Undertow

Photo by Venkatesan P on Unsplash

Grief arrives sideways. 
It circles without traveling. 
Healing asks not to escape it,
but to feel—
to meet grief where it lives inside. 

It comes as a spiral, returning over and over,
a tide rising without warning.
At first, the waves knock me off my feet,
tumbling in the undertow,
focused only on breathing through the ache.

Something in me stops bracing, 
the waves begin to soften.
The spiral deepens into understanding.
Learning to stand in the water again,
and find my footing.

Grief is not only loss, but love—
unmetabolized, unspoken, unreturned.
Memory asking to be honored;
a story refusing to be forgotten.

Piece by piece, gathering what hurts
and holding it with new tenderness.
Something unnamed moving through 
the breaking.

Slowly, something shifts.
Still here. Changed by staying.
Not healed by forgetting,
but strengthened by feeling.

The tide no longer pulling me under—
it carries me forward.
not by erasing grief,
but by letting love lead me home.


Thank you so much for being here!
Bee