There is a strange kind of grief that nobody really talks about.
It’s grieving a body that’s still very much alive.
I catch my reflection sometimes and think, “Who is that?” Not in an existential-crisis kind of way—although, admittedly, sometimes it is—but in a very real sense. Somewhere along the way, medications, seizures, blood clots in my lungs, weeks of inactivity, and a nervous system that seems to have a mind of its own introduced me to a body I don’t remember having.
Some days I joke that I’d like to exchange it for the one I had a few years ago.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t come with customer service.
The weight gain has been one of the hardest parts.
Not because I believe smaller bodies are more worthy—I don’t. I truly don’t. But because I miss feeling at home in my own skin. I miss trusting my body. I miss moving without calculating the risk. I miss putting on a pair of jeans without wondering if they’ll fit differently than they did last week.
More than anything, I miss familiarity.
What’s strange is that while my body feels more unfamiliar than ever, my mind is finally beginning to feel like home.
For years, my mind was the battlefield. Anxiety. Addiction. Constant chaos. I spent so much of my life praying for peace that I honestly forgot what peace might even feel like.
Now, little by little, it’s arriving.
My thoughts are quieter.
My heart feels steadier.
I’m finding stability I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience.
Ironically, my body seems to have picked this exact moment to become a complete stranger.
For years, my body was capable while my mind was unraveling.
Now it feels as though they’ve traded places.
It’s a strange kind of healing to feel mentally more like yourself than you have in years while physically feeling less like yourself than ever before.
Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t always simultaneous.
Sometimes one part of you blooms while another is still learning how to survive.
I’ve also discovered something that has been incredibly humbling.
I need people.
As someone who has always been fiercely independent, that’s been difficult to admit.
I’ve always wanted to be the woman who could carry everything herself. Solve every problem. Figure everything out without asking for help.
Now I’m learning to let people drive me places.
To check in on me.
To carry things I physically or emotionally can’t.
Every instinct in me wants to apologize for needing them.
But maybe strength was never about carrying everything alone.
Maybe strength is allowing yourself to be carried when you need it.
That’s a lesson I never wanted to learn.
And one I’m incredibly grateful to be learning.
The biggest transformation, though, hasn’t been physical.
It happened in the quiet.
For years, whenever life became too loud, I knew exactly how to escape it.
Alcohol.
Relationships.
Sex.
Busyness.
Anything that could drown out the noise long enough that I didn’t have to hear what was happening inside my own heart and mind.
Now there is nowhere left to run.
Just me.
The silence.
And every feeling I’ve spent years trying to outrun.
I’ve spent so much of my life trying to escape discomfort.
Now I’m learning that healing isn’t the absence of discomfort.
It’s the willingness to stay present in it.
To sit with loneliness instead of numbing it.
To let grief have its say instead of silencing it.
To experience joy without waiting for the other shoe to drop.
To trust that I don’t have to run from every difficult emotion simply because it’s painful.
Some days I don’t know what to do with all of it.
So I just sit.
I cry.
I pray.
I laugh at the absurdity of it all every once in a while because sometimes that’s all you can do.
And somewhere in that silence…
I’m meeting myself.
Not the version fueled by alcohol.
Not the version searching for validation.
Not the version constantly trying to outrun her own life.
Just…
Me.
I’ve remembered parts of myself I forgot existed.
Old interests that had been buried beneath survival.
New passions I never would’ve discovered if life hadn’t forced me to slow down.
I’m learning that my worth was never found in my productivity.
Or my independence.
Or the number on a scale.
Or how much pain I could hide.
It was always there.
I’m still learning how to love this body.
Some mornings it still feels borrowed.
Some days I still grieve for the woman I used to be.
But maybe acceptance isn’t waking up one day magically loving everything you see.
Maybe it’s looking at a body that has survived addiction, trauma, seizures, medication changes, blood clots, heartbreak, and more grace than I can count…
…and deciding to stop treating it like the enemy.
Because this body may not look the way I want it to.
It may not move the way it used to.
It may feel unfamiliar.
I may even be scared of what it will do at times.
But it has never stopped fighting to keep me alive.
Neither has God.
I’m still learning how to embrace the uncomfortable.
I’m still learning how to ask for help.
I’m still learning how to trust my body again.
Some days I’m grateful.
Some days I’m grieving.
Most days I’m somehow both.
But underneath all of it is this quiet truth:
I am alive.
And for the first time in a very long time, I’m not trying to escape my own life.
I’m staying.
I’m learning.
I’m healing.
And maybe this body doesn’t feel like mine because it’s introducing me to a version of myself I’ve never met before.
One who knows that strength isn’t found in self-sufficiency.
One who has learned that peace sometimes arrives before circumstances change.
One who is discovering that even in a body that feels foreign, there is still so much beauty to be found.
I don’t know exactly who I’m becoming.
But for the first time in a long time…
I’m excited to meet her.
The Fragrance of my Mother 