When You’re Blindsided by Loss

No one prepares you for the moment everything changes. One phone call. One discovery.

One breath you can’t seem to take. Loss doesn’t arrive gently—it crashes in, blindsides you, and leaves you gasping in the wreckage.

Especially when it’s the love of your lifetime. You kiss them goodbye in the morning, not knowing it will be the last. By nightfall, there’s no breath. No pulse. Just silence. That kind of ending rips the ground from beneath you, and nothing is ever the same.

That’s what happened to me. My husband, gone. My home, gone. The life I thought was steady and certain, gone. In an instant, I wasn’t just grieving—I was unmoored. People told me to “be strong,” as if strength meant pretending my world hadn’t been shattered. But the truth is, when you’re blindsided by loss, there’s no neat way forward. There’s only survival, one breath, one step at a time.

And survival, for me, looked like silence. I shoved most of the pain down. I buried it deep where no one could touch it. I thought that made me strong. I thought hiding it meant I was moving forward. But grief doesn’t stay buried. It waits. And it waited for me—for years.

Thirteen years later, when I began to write my book, the box I had tucked away burst open.

The words dragged up the fragments I thought I’d hidden for good:

• The guilt of wondering if I could have changed the outcome somehow.

• The anger at being left to carry everything alone.

• The loneliness of realizing the person who knew me best was simply… gone.

  
  

It was brutal. But it was also healing. Writing forced me to face the pieces of grief I’d never dealt with. It gave me the chance to honor my story, and in doing so, to finally begin living again.

If you’ve been blindsided by loss, know this: you don’t have to rush to “be okay.” You don’t have to bury your pain to prove you’re strong. The journey is messy, uneven, and full of cracks. But through those cracks, light does find its way in.

The strength isn’t in pretending it never happened. The strength is in telling the truth—through words, tears, or whispers—and allowing yourself to heal, piece by piece.