There’s an unspoken space within grief that I’ve grown to know well — the part where the world just moves on.

If you’ve ever lost someone you love, you may know this space too.

While we’re still hurting, still processing, still trying to heal… life around us just keeps going. The movement of the world doesn’t pause for our pain, and somehow, that makes grief feel like the opposite of joy.

But grief isn’t separate from joy — it sits quietly beside it.

It weaves itself into our daily lives, not always loudly, but heavily.

It’s been two and a half years since my daughter Sania passed. And while I find peace knowing she’s no longer in pain, the ache of her absence never leaves me.

Life goes on becomes a bitter, almost cynical phrase — because yes, life continues, but not in the same way.

We keep going: caring for the loved ones still with us, showing up for work, tending to ourselves.

Some days we’re overwhelmed by pain. Other days, we feel the weight of guilt for finding joy.

But what grief has taught me — what Sania continues to teach me — is how to live more slowly.

More intentionally.

Grief stripped away what doesn’t matter.

It forced me to let go of rushing, performing, pretending.

It softened me in places I didn’t know were hard.

It made room for presence.

Because when someone you love is no longer here, you stop taking presence for granted.

You realize that being here — fully here — is sacred.

Even if you’re crying while cooking. Even if joy and sorrow arrive in the same hour. Even if healing is still happening beneath the surface.

On paper, Mother’s Day is a celebration.

But for some of us, it’s a quiet ache — a reminder of who’s missing, of what will never be again.

I honor Sania by honoring that ache.

I hold space for her by holding space for myself — to feel it all, to move slowly, to mother my living children from the place she made me more whole.

So if you’re carrying grief this Mother’s Day, I want you to know:

You’re not alone in the stillness.

You’re not wrong for feeling joy.

And you’re not broken for feeling pain.

Both can exist. Both can be holy.

Grief, too, is a form of love — one that has nowhere to go but inward.

You don’t have to rush it.

You don’t have to move on.

You can move with it.

That’s what I’m learning to do.

And in the quiet of that learning, I still mother Sania.

I still carry her in how I live, how I love, and how I slow down to honor what matters