Thank You For 50,000 + What Writing My Pain Has Taught Me

A decision I made in the past that helped me learn and grow was starting this blog, “grief poetry” 3rd February 2017 I wrote my very first post. It wasn’t even an introduction of what the blog was going to be. I knew I wanted to write about my personal pain and processes, I just didn’t know how powerful it would be.

Thank you to everyone who has read, liked, shared and commented on the posts. I have learnt your stories as well and together we are walking the healing journey.

50,000 Views, Thank You for Holding Space With Me 🤍

I never imagined that words written from the quiet corners of my grief would one day reach 50,000 hearts around the world.

When I first started writing poetry about my grief, I wasn’t searching for healing. I was not trying to be brave or profound. I was simply trying to survive, to put shape to a pain I didn’t know how to carry. I didn’t know the right words, but I knew I had to write something. Anything. Because silence had started to feel too loud.

Grief is a landscape with no map, and poetry became the only way I could begin to draw one.

Through poetry, I learned that grief does not move in straight lines. Some days are gentle, some are unbearable. There are moments when I feel okay, and then without warning, I’m pulled back into sorrow by a scent, a song, or a memory. And that’s okay.

Writing taught me to stop expecting myself to “get over” anything. Poems don’t need conclusions. They just need truth. And grief is full of raw, unfinished truth.

One of the most powerful lessons I have learned is that grief wants to be heard. Not solved. Not dismissed. Just heard.

When I write a poem, I give my grief the room to breathe, to speak, to cry. I let it exist without judgment. Poetry has taught me how to hold space for my own feelings without rushing them out the door. In doing so, I have learned to hold space for others, too.

In the beginning, I constantly questioned myself: Was I grieving the right way? Was I being too emotional? Too quiet? Too angry? Too numb?

Poetry reminded me that there’s no correct formula for grief. Some poems were silent, just a few words across a page. Others spilled out in a torrent of emotion. Both were valid. Both were honest. And both were healing.

Before my loss, I don’t think I fully understood the invisible weight people carry. Now, I move through the world differently. I notice the quiet sadness in someone’s eyes, the hesitation in their smile, the pause before they answer “I’m okay.”

Writing grief poetry has cracked me open, not just to my own pain, but to the shared pain of others. It’s made me more compassionate, more careful with my words, more present in my listening.

Every poem I write about my loss is a love letter. I used to think love ended when a person was gone. Now I understand: it just transforms.

Grief is love that has nowhere to go. And poetry gives it somewhere to land. My poems are where memory lives, where connection lingers, where love continues to speak, softly, endlessly.

I didn’t think I would find beauty again after my loss. And yet, through poetry, I began to see it: in the way light comes through the blinds, in the quiet strength of getting out of bed, in the vulnerability of putting pain to paper.

Grief didn’t take beauty from my life, it taught me to see it more clearly, more reverently, even when it’s threaded with sadness.

Grief changed me. That’s something I resisted for a long time. I wanted to go back to “before.” But I’ve learned that the person I was then could never fully hold the person I am now.

Writing has helped me rediscover myself in pieces. It has allowed me to rewrite the story, not to erase the loss, but to honor it as part of who I am becoming. Softer, stronger, more aware. Still broken in places, but not lesser for it.

Grief will always live with me. It is not a chapter that ends, but a thread that weaves itself through the rest of my life. And through poetry, I have learned to live alongside it, not in fear or shame, but with a kind of reverence.

I write because I loved deeply. I write because I lost. I write because both things are true at once. And I write because in sharing this journey, maybe someone else feels less alone.

This milestone is not really just about the numbers. It’s about connection and the strength of stories shared between us. It’s about every person who has come to this space looking for a piece of themselves, for understanding, for breath during the heaviness of loss. Whether you read one poem or every line I have ever written, thank you.

Thank you for your presence.
Thank you for allowing me to share my pain, my healing, my love.
Thank you for reminding me that even in grief, we are not alone.

Grief is not something we move on from. It’s something we carry. And if my words have helped carry even a fraction of that weight with you, I am humbled.

Here’s to honoring the ones we miss, to healing in layers, and to all the stories still waiting to be told.

With love and deep gratitude,
Grief Poetry