YOU DON'T GET OVER IT. YOU CARRY IT.

They gave you a week. Maybe two.

Casseroles. Flowers. "So sorry for your loss." Then the world cleared its throat and went back to work — and somehow you were supposed to go with it.

Nobody told you the truth.

There is no finish line. There's no date on the calendar when the missing stops. You don't wake up one morning cured of loving someone. That's not how love works, and grief is just love that outlived its home.

Some days you're okay. You laugh at something dumb. You forget for a whole hour. Then a song comes on. A smell. A Tuesday that looks like the Tuesdays you used to have. And it's back — full weight, like it never left.

That doesn't mean you're broken. That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means what you had was real.

Grief isn't a sign you're stuck. It's proof that you loved something enough to miss it this much.

And the guilt — we should talk about the guilt. The first time you laughed again and felt like a traitor. The good day that felt like forgetting. The way moving forward feels like leaving them behind.

Hear this: moving forward is not moving on.

You're not leaving them. You're carrying them. Their voice shows up in your decisions. Their laugh lives inside your stories. Every time you keep going on a day you didn't think you could, they're in that too.

You don't get over the heaviest things. You get stronger underneath them. You learn to carry the weight the way anyone carries anything heavy — slowly, with rest stops, with hands that still shake sometimes.

So cry when it comes. Say their name out loud. Let the wave hit you and trust that you'll still be standing when it pulls back — because you have been, every single time so far.

And if the words won't come out loud, write them down on the journal wall. Someone out there is carrying the same weight tonight. Your words might be the ones that help them hold it.

You are not alone. Keep moving forward.