You Don't Move On. You Move With It

I was sitting at the edge of my mother’s hospital bed, watching her chest rise and fall for what would be one of the last times. The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor was the only sound in the room. In that moment, I thought about all the things people had told me since her diagnosis: “You’ll be okay,” “Time heals all wounds,” “You’ll move on.”

But I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

When she passed, the world didn’t stop spinning — but mine did. For weeks afterward, I’d wake up expecting her morning texts, still imagining her humming in the kitchen, still saving up stories to tell her at the end of the day. And every time I remembered she was gone, it felt like I lost her all over again.

Grief is strange like that. It doesn’t visit once and leave. It lingers, reshaping your days in small and enormous ways. I tried doing everything the way I was “supposed” to. I stayed busy. I traveled. I picked up new hobbies, went back to work, laughed at parties. People thought I was “doing better.”

But no one saw the way my stomach turned every time I smelled her favorite coffee. Or the way I avoided the park where we used to walk every Sunday. Or how I sat in my car for ten minutes before going into the house because I didn’t want to face the silence.

It’s a lie that you “move on” from loss. What I learned, slowly and painfully, is that you move with it.

I remember talking to my aunt, who had lost her son years before. “The pain doesn’t go away,” she said gently. “It just becomes part of who you are. Like a scar. Some days you forget it’s there. Other days, you wake up feeling it before you even open your eyes.”

I started noticing this truth in small, quiet ways. The photo of my mother that used to make me cry became something I’d smile at before bed. I began wearing her old scarf on cold mornings — not out of grief, but out of comfort. I even caught myself laughing one day, thinking about her weird habit of singing along to toothpaste commercials.

I hadn’t moved on. I’d moved with her memory, with the ache, with the love. And it was enough.

One evening, I found an old voicemail from her, buried in my phone. Just her saying, “Hey sweetie, just checking in. Call me back when you get a chance. Love you.” I sat down and sobbed. Not because I hadn’t moved on, but because she was still with me. In that message. In my voice. In how I now comfort others the way she comforted me.

There is a kind of strength in carrying grief, in choosing to hold it rather than bury it. Not to wallow, but to honor. Because grief is love’s echo. It rings because something — someone — mattered deeply. And letting go of the pain too quickly sometimes feels like letting go of the person too.

Moving with it means making space in your life for both joy and sorrow, for presence and absence. It means laughing even when your heart aches, and letting yourself cry even when everyone else thinks you should be “past it.”

I now work with a support group for people navigating loss. And I tell them: “Don’t pressure yourself to be okay. Don’t measure your healing by how little you cry or how much you smile. Healing isn’t about forgetting. It’s about carrying — differently.”

We pass around a small stone in the group — smooth, rounded, with a dent in one side. “This is your grief,” I say. “At first, it’s sharp and jagged. It cuts every time you hold it. But over time, you turn it in your hands so much that it softens. You never throw it away. You learn how to hold it.”

That’s what moving with it looks like. You build a life around your grief, not in spite of it. You make space for birthdays and anniversaries, for new beginnings and old memories. You learn to laugh again, not because you’ve forgotten, but because you’ve survived.

I still miss my mother every day. Some days it’s a quiet ache; other days it’s a crashing wave. But I’ve stopped running from it. I walk with it. I let it remind me that I loved deeply and was deeply loved.

And that is nothing to move on from.