Grief is strange because it doesn’t always look like sadness.

Sometimes it looks like reaching for your phone because, for half a second, you forgot the person you wanted to call isn’t there anymore. Sometimes it’s hearing a song in the grocery store and suddenly feeling like you’ve been transported back years.

Sometimes it’s watching your children grow and wishing someone you loved could be standing beside you to see it too.

I used to think grief was something you moved through. That eventually, you would reach the other side and it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I don’t think that’s true.

I think we learn how to carry it.

Over time, the weight changes. You become stronger around it. The memories that once made you cry can eventually make you smile, although sometimes they still do both.

Losing my dad changed the way I look at life, family, motherhood, and even the stories I choose to write. There are pieces of him woven into so much of what I do now.

In the foundation created in his memory. In the words I put onto paper.

In the way I try to notice the ordinary moments with my children.

In the way I remind myself that someday, the things that feel completely normal today will become memories I would give anything to experience one more time.

Maybe that is one of the things grief leaves behind—a deeper understanding of how temporary everything is.

And because of that, a deeper appreciation for what is still here.

So I take the pictures.

I say "I love you."

I write the stories down.

I hold onto the tiny hands a little longer.

And I keep telling the stories of the people I love, because sometimes remembering is another form of loving someone.

Maybe that is what this little corner of the internet will become too.

A place for remembering.

A place for becoming.

A place for all the words we carry long after the moment itself is gone.