Words are powerful. With words, we find the courage to be who we are, share our experiences and stories, and create new possibilities and worlds. But what happens when grief and pain are so profound that your voice falters and words become too much, too real?
Grief, in its rawest form, can strip away our sense of self and ability to express what lies within. We become entangled in overwhelming emotions. The words we once wielded as means of expression, connection, and healing become too heavy.
I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life; I’m no stranger to grief. But when I lost my mom to Covid-19, the immensity of my sorrow was too overwhelming. My usual way of processing feelings through writing or speaking was gone. The void she left behind swallowed the words that had always been a source of comfort and healing. I couldn’t explain what I experienced or felt because I couldn’t speak without collapsing into myself. The words made it real, but I wasn’t ready for real. I couldn’t even listen, too afraid I’d hear what I wasn’t prepared to hear. I felt disconnected from myself and the world.
I tried, but every time, it would take me days to recover just a fraction of myself to be functional. An interview about survivors’ guilt was scrapped because I never sent them my side of the footage. I was crying and choking on my words through the entire interview, and when I watched it afterward, I didn’t want that to be part of my mom’s memory. A year later, I did another interview for an upcoming book about COVID-19, and the same thing happened. But they didn’t need footage, and they had also lost someone to COVID-19 and knew just how difficult it was for those willing to share their experiences. I don’t know how, but I feel fortunate that I survived those experiences because I was not ready for them. I was broken and breaking myself further, but I hope it was worth it. I quit talking about it afterward, just parroted what I had already said because anything else was just too much. I hope the words I was actually able to share will do some good.
What I realized, though, is that grief is a journey, and so is the reclamation of your voice. Silence doesn’t mean absence. Just because you can’t find the words doesn’t mean they’re lost forever. The words are still there, waiting—their transformational power is still there. And sometimes, we find ways to speak and heal without words.
For me, I turned to color and paint. I desperately tried to paint my life in the shades of happy that I once held so dear, quite literally pouring the broken and hopeful parts of me onto canvas. Each new creation allowed me to feel honestly in a way I only understood. The whole process gave me the space and means to move through my grief without judgment, without needing to share it, and without needing anyone else to understand.
It’s been three years, and this is the first time that I’ve felt able to put words to my feelings and thoughts without collapsing into a wreck of a human being. This moment is the first time I’m not afraid of what words will come, not afraid of the heaviness or honesty. It is the first time that I don’t just know but believe I’ll be okay.
I understand now how Grief reshapes how we think and communicate. I thought I had lost the ability to express myself through words. As time passed, I realized it was less about losing my voice and more about understanding how it has evolved. The stories we tell and how we tell them in the wake of loss might differ from those we told before, but that’s okay and essential to healing.
Reclaiming my voice in the wake of grief was about allowing myself the space to grieve without the pressure to explain or understand it all. It was rebuilding my relationship with words by allowing my voice to evolve, to speak in silence.
Grief doesn’t just take; it also gives. It reshapes, reframes, and redefines who we are, and in that, it offers us a new kind of understanding. We learn that silence, in my case, color, can speak volumes and that whispers and splashes of pain and healing have their own power.
What you lose of yourself in grief is not lost forever. It’s waiting for you in the spaces between your pain, the quiet moments of reflection, and the memories that keep your loved ones close. I’ve learned you just got to allow yourself time, and when you’re ready, the words will come.
Your voice is still there, the words are still there, and you are still there.