“How Are You Holding Up?”

The complicated truth behind the question people ask after you lose a parent.

Someone recently asked how I have been holding up since my dad’s passing. I wanted to share my thoughts here—for anyone else in similar situation searching for some sliver of hope.

The truth is…I’m not sure I have taken the real time to process the wholeness of this loss. It’s a new, raw journey—this one carries a significant weight of permanence to it.

Even after long roads of illnesses and slow goodbyes, we sometimes trick ourselves into thinking that when the suffering ends, maybe the grief will ease too. There’s something about the quiet after the chaos of caregiving, after the funeral, after the condolences…that quiet is deafening. That’s when grief settles into the bones, no longer urgent, just present.

That permanence—the realization that there’s no going back, no picking up the phone, no familiar voice. Even with time to “prepare,” nothing truly prepares you. The loss of one is shattering…but the loss of both? It changes the shape of your world. Anticipating loss isn’t the same as living it. And living it twice doesn’t make it easier—it just makes the silence louder.

But still, there’s hope. They do still show up. In moments. Random, unexpected, deeply personal moments. A smell, a song, a memory that floats in. They stay in those little corners of life now. And somehow, those small moments feel even more meaningful than the big ones.

If you’re in this space too—figuring out how to live in the after—just know… there’s no timeline for feeling better. No framework. No finish line. Grief evolves—at its own shape, in its own time, for each of us. Some days it’s heavy. Other days it’s quiet. Sometimes it softens. Other times, it stings all over again.

You may never feel “better” in the way people expect. But that doesn’t mean you’re not healing. Let grief be what it is—messy, beautiful, confusing, real. You can’t fix it, you can only carry it.