When the Unthinkable Happens: What Grief Teaches Us About Ourselves, Our Relationships, and the Healing We Never Saw Coming

High Value Woman
Oct 20
4 min read

There’s a moment in every woman’s life when the mask of holding it all together starts to crack. Sometimes, it’s a death. Sometimes, it’s the end of a relationship. Sometimes, it’s the slow burn of disappointment that finally explodes in your chest when no one’s watching. But underneath the heartbreak, the rage, the exhaustion - what you’re really feeling is grief.

In this week’s episode of You Have the Power, I sat down with grief coach and author Eryn Elder to talk about the kind of grief most people never prepare you for. The grief that doesn’t just change your life. It changes you.

Eryn knows this kind of grief intimately. She lost her firstborn daughter to sudden unexplained infant death. One moment, she was a new mom. The next, she was a woman trying to breathe through the unimaginable.

But what struck me most about Eryn’s story wasn’t just the loss - it was the way she chose to live afterward. Not by denying the pain. Not by rushing to “fix” herself. But by walking with her grief, one breath at a time, and allowing it to shape who she became. She now helps others do the same - through one-on-one coaching, her BloomPath™ framework, and her new book, Blooming Through Loss.

The Lie About Grief (That We’re All Still Believing)

We live in a world that wants grief to be tidy. Neatly packaged in five stages. Bound by a timeline. Tied up with a bow that says, “I’m fine now.” But as Eryn and I talked, one thing became painfully clear: grief doesn’t work that way. And pretending it should only adds shame to the suffering. She shared how even more than a decade after her loss, her relationship with her daughter still exists - just in a different form. The grief still shows up, but so does growth. And that’s the piece so many people miss:

Grief isn’t just about what you’ve lost. It’s also about who you’re becoming.

Grief Lives in Layers - And It Doesn’t Ask Permission to Surface

One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was when Eryn talked about how her grief cracked open every past trauma she thought she had tucked away. The narcissistic abuse. The betrayals. The times she silenced herself to survive.

Grief didn’t just ask her to feel her daughter's loss - it forced her to feel everything she had buried before.

That hit me hard.

Because that’s what happened to me, too.

When my marriage ended, it wasn’t just about the relationship. It was about the version of me who had spent years abandoning herself to keep the peace. It was about the little girl inside me who had never felt safe. It was about all the times I pretended I was “fine” when I was actually drowning.

And as Eryn reminded me, that kind of grief - the kind that unearths everything - can feel unbearable. But it’s also where the deepest healing begins.

The Cost of Carrying It All

This episode kicks off a new series on the podcast called The Cost of Carrying It All - because let’s be real: Most high-performing women are experts at carrying grief in silence.

We don’t call it grief. We call it burnout. We call it “just tired.” We call it being strong.

But underneath the armor, there’s loss:

The grief of a mother who never showed up the way you needed.
The grief of a relationship that almost made you believe you were unlovable.
The grief of a dream you gave up to be who the world told you to be.

Grief doesn’t just live in cemeteries. It lives in our bodies. In the tension in your shoulders. In the headaches. In the way your chest tightens when you walk past his street or hear that song.

It’s the cost of carrying too much for too long.

And the truth is—none of us are meant to carry it alone.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

Here’s what I loved about Eryn’s approach: She doesn’t try to make grief go away. She doesn’t offer five easy steps. She doesn’t pretend it’s linear. Instead, she offers compassion. Permission to be where you are. And a structure (her BloomPath™) that helps people feel supported without being rushed.

She talked about how grief impacts your entire being - not just emotionally, but physically, spiritually, sexually. And she stressed the importance of building a nervous system that can hold grief without shutting down.

As a somatic trauma-informed coach, this resonated deeply with me. We don’t heal by thinking our way out of grief. We heal by learning to be with it - gently, slowly, and in community.

The Healing Moment You Didn’t Know You Needed

One of my favorite parts of the episode was when Eryn shared a story about a neighbor who stopped by and said, “I think we just need to scream together.” At first, Eryn hesitated. But then she screamed. And it released something she didn’t even know she was holding. That’s what healing can look like. Messy. Primal. Unexpected. And deeply sacred.