If you are anything like me, when you get even a short breath, a moment without tears, a minute of relief, you will start to grasp at anything to not feel the pain of grief.

Because the pain of grief is unlike any other hurt, or ache, or sadness. You can’t relieve the pain of grief. You can sometimes ignore it, for a minute. You may be able to numb it, if you choose unhealthy ways to cope. And you can certainly share it. But sharing never truly lifts the burden, only temporarily eases its weight.

Grief is not only pain, it often leaves a hole, deep in the soul. And that hole is so empty in grief. So empty that the heart seems to bleed the loss, emotions take control of the mind and missing those we’re grieving is all that we know.

Grieving is hard. It’s hard and it’s endless. But there is hope in grief.

Grief is proof of unending, unconditional love.

And that love can never die. Unending, unconditional love, the kind that causes this kind of grief upon loss, never, ever leaves us.

That love carries on. It carries on in our memories. And one day you will awaken to the most pure, beautiful memory, and that hole, that ache in your soul, will slowly start to close.

As a mama who lost her only baby, I know grief. But I know love. I know it to be that hole-filling, grief-healing, burden-lifting, endlessly-connecting soul magnet that it proves to be each and every moment I think of my sweet angel in Heaven.

Grief is hard. Love is worth it.