Walking Beside Grief
When my mother died, the world tilted. Nothing looked the same. Not the sky. Not the light. Not the sound of morning. My body didn’t know what to do with the ache, so I did the only thing it remembered how to do. I walked.
Every morning, I laced my shoes and stepped outside. I didn’t have a destination. I didn’t need one. The point was movement. Left, right, breathe. Step, step, sigh. The rhythm kept me from unraveling.
Grief felt too heavy to hold in my chest. But outside, it had room to stretch. The air could take some of it. The trees could hold some of it. The ground could absorb the tenderness.
I began to think of the path as a chapel. No walls. No pews. Only wind and light. My prayers were footsteps. My hymns were the crunch of gravel and the steady rhythm of my breath. The birds became the choir.
Some days, I cried the whole way. Some days, I said her name out loud. Some days, I walked in silence, and that was enough.
Over time, the edges softened. The sharp grief became something else. Memory. Love that no longer stung. I began to notice beauty again. The way sunlight touched frost. The smell of pine. The warmth of my own skin returning after the cold.
Walking didn’t fix anything. It didn’t bring her back. But it helped me live with what was true. It helped me stay open.
Now, when I walk, I feel her. Not as a ghost, but as a continuation. In the steadiness of my stride. In the curiosity she taught me. In the quiet holiness of each day.
The walk is still my chapel.
Still my way to say thank you.
Still the place I go to remember that love does not end.
In time, I stopped trying to outrun grief. I started walking beside it. At first, it was an unwelcome companion, cold and heavy, always a step too close. But slowly, I saw it differently. Grief was not the enemy. It was the proof of love. The echo of devotion.
On the trail, I learned its patterns. How it rose with certain songs or smells. How it softened when met with sunlight. I stopped resisting and began to listen. Grief had something to teach. It asked me to slow down. To pay attention. To see the world as it is.
We became quiet friends, grief and I. We walked through fog and wind, through frost and mud. It showed me how tenderness can live inside sorrow. How the heart, even cracked, still beats steady.
Now, when it arrives, I greet it. I say, yes, I remember. You remind me that I have loved deeply and that I still do.
Grief no longer feels like a weight. It feels like an old friend, keeping me company as I walk toward morning, again and again.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. Libby's second book, Cold Joy, is now available—order your copy now. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk, @thiscoldjoy, and @parkhere.