Grieving the Selves We Outlive

September 21, 2025

As I sit down to write today, the smell of homemade chicken soup fills my kitchen while rainbows from my window crystals dance across the walls. My heart wanders back to childhood harvests … the bustle of tractors in the fields, my mom’s cooking, the laughter and fatigue of long autumn days. My dad’s hands were always busy then, and even now the season carries both ache and gratitude in equal measure. I miss him especially at this time of year.

It feels like both grief and gratitude are knocking at once. So I’m letting my coffee keep me company as I make space to feel, to remember, and to listen while I’m grieiving the selves I've outlived.

Grief has been sitting close to me lately. Friends, family, and even my own heart are each facing different losses, yet the ache feels strangely familiar across us all. Out of that reflection, these poems came … my attempt to give language to the many ways grief shows up in a life, and the tender beginnings that sometimes follow.

Part 1: What I’m Learning to Carry

(A poem for the lives I’ve outlived)

i grieve without names now.

no labels, no roles, no lover to trace the silhouette of blame.

just hollow space and the hush after thunder …

where a version of me used to stand, arms full of hope.

i grieve

the morning light that once knew where to find me.

the woman who ran on instinct and fire,

who danced her grief out before it had words.

i grieve

a kitchen that smelled like cinnamon and sunday.

laughter echoing off walls that no longer remember me.

the dream i built inside a house

i can no longer call home.

i grieve

my own hands —

strong once, and unshaken —

now trembling in the soft grip of fatigue.

my knees, my mind, my skin,

all becoming something else while i try to keep up.

i grieve

the rhythm of deep sleep i’ve never truly known,

the hours lost to surviving,

the decades spent being good

when i just needed to be held.

i grieve

the voices that live now only in echoes …

my father singing to ccr

beating along on the dash of the truck

my grandma’s hands

pounding away on that piano,

the way their presence

once filled the room so easily.

this time of year

i feel them closer …

woven into harvest skies,

the smell of earth

and soup simmering.

i grieve

without a funeral.

without flowers.

without anyone noticing how heavy it is

to outlive your own selves.

but tonight, i lay down

and let the grief be beautiful.

a holy ache.

a sacred unraveling.

a softness that says,

“you are still here. and still becoming.”

and i’ll carry that.

like a prayer.

like a promise.

like a poem

only i know how to finish.

Part 2: The Woman I Missed was Me All Along

 (a quiet reckoning)

i didn’t know it was grief.

not at first.

it wasn’t loud or dramatic.

it didn’t sob in the night or tear things off the walls.

it moved more like fog …

soft and creeping

curling itself around the little things

until everything felt… heavier.

i grieve the life i almost lived.

the one i was building in good faith.

the one that seemed like it might finally fit.

i grieve the way i used to move …

light, fast, soft-footed.

i grieve the body i once knew,

before the fatigue, before the hot flashes,

before sleep became a stranger

and my skin began rewriting itself in mysterious new scripts:

chin hairs, tenderness, tightness, slackness.

a rounder belly.

an unfamiliar ache.

an ear that rings like it’s trying to drown out my thoughts.

i grieve the version of me who kept up.

the one who didn’t forget what day it was.

the one who didn’t lose her words mid-sentence

or cry in the car because she forgot her own to-do list at home again.

i grieve the woman i thought i’d be by now.

and i grieve all the ways i never let myself rest

because i was too busy trying to earn space, worth, love.

it’s a strange thing to mourn

a version of life that never fully happened.

but my body remembers it.

my soul still stands in the rooms i imagined.

and sometimes the ache of it knocks the wind right out of me.

i can’t breathe.

it feels like something is ending.

maybe it is.

but maybe, too…

something quieter is beginning.

Part Three: The Body Remembers

it’s not just the grief of lost dreams.

it’s the grief of a body that no longer behaves like it used to.

there are hairs in new places.

lines that used to smooth overnight

but now stay a while.

the belly you fed and stretched and shrank again

has grown soft

and round

and unfamiliar.

your joints feel older than your heart.

you forget names, dates, whole sentences midair.

you stare into a fridge you’ve already opened three times.

sleep is such a tease ….

one moment near,

the next a memory.

and through it all, you still show up.

you still put on the face mask.

still light the candle.

still soften your edges so you don’t take up too much room.

still pretend you’re okay

when your whole chest is a tide pool of uncried tears.

you are grieving in your bones.

but no one sees that.

there’s no casserole delivered

for the death of the version of you

who kept it all together.

but i see her.

i see you.

Part 4: The Beginning Again

so here i am …

not new,

not quite whole,

but no longer only what was lost.

i live now in the middle,

in the tremble between goodbye and becoming,

where the grief doesn’t vanish …

but loosens its grip.

there are mornings where i still forget

that the version of me who dreamed those old dreams

is not the one waking up.

but there is mercy in forgetting.

and even more mercy in remembering

that i survived.

i water the bones of my old life

with the tears i don’t apologize for anymore.

i let things go …

not as punishment,

but as offering.

not everything that is sacred

was meant to stay.

in this new beginning,

i do not arrive with answers.

only questions that hum like honeybees

in the wildflowered ache of my chest.

what now?

what soft thing wants to grow

where the grief has made space?

i do not rush the answer.

i gather light.

i braid patience into my mornings.

i wear my sadness like a shawl some days,

and let it fall off when joy returns unexpected.

maybe this is the only miracle:

not that i rebuild,

but that i allow myself to remain undone,

to bloom anyway …

mud-drenched and radiant

in the middle of it all.

and if no one sees it?

still, i rise.

and if no one claps?

still, i dance.

this, too, is a beginning.

not clean.

not easy.

but holy in the way broken things become altars

when loved enough.

maybe this is what grief really is … not an ending, but the tender middle. both holy and human, heavy and hopeful, unraveling and becoming at the same time. a soft ache that reminds me i am still here.

sincerely,

forgetting why I walked into this room again 😉

⸻

🌙 movement invitation: “grief in motion”

grief doesn’t always speak in words — sometimes it only knows how to move.

if you feel called, take a few quiet minutes to let your body say what your heart has been holding.

• find a space where you can be alone, dim or natural light.

• place one hand over your heart, one over your belly. close your eyes.

• notice the weight you carry today. where do you feel it in your body? place your hand there. let your shoulders rise and fall with a long sigh. breathe deeply into your hand. repeat a few more times.

• begin to sway gently, like a tree in the wind — small movements at first. let your knees bend, your spine ripple.

• if tears come, let them. if laughter comes, let that too. nothing is wrong. let whatever wants to move, move.

• imagine your grief as water. let it pour through your hands, your fingertips, your feet, washing into the earth.

• end by wrapping your arms around yourself — holding the version of you that is grieving, tenderly.

you don’t have to choreograph anything. you don’t have to make it pretty. you only have to let it move.

⸻

🎶 A playlist to sit with your grief, to feel it, to let it breathe.

And when you’ve held it for long enough, remember, sweet soul — your body knows how to move it through. Let it flow. Let it go

🌹and just for you dad <3:

⸻

© Anita Elliott (aka Souldancer), 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Anita Elliott with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.