Continuing doesn’t look like much from the outside.
It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t feel like strength. Most days, it just looks like showing up again, even when nothing inside feels steady.
In the beginning, shock carries you more than you realize. Not gently. Not kindly. But effectively. It keeps you moving when stopping would feel unbearable.
I didn’t know that at the time. I only knew that things were getting done, even though I wasn’t fully aware of doing them. I later thanked people for things I had done myself, because I didn’t remember doing them. Decisions were made. Tasks were completed. Life kept moving forward in small, necessary ways, even while my mind lagged behind.
Shock doesn’t remove pain. It fragments it. It allows you to function without fully comprehending what has happened. It narrows awareness just enough to keep you upright.
When that buffer fades, the cost becomes more visible.
That’s often when people panic. When I panicked. When it felt like I had stopped moving altogether. I remember thinking, I’m not getting past this. The sadness felt heavy and constant. Familiar. Close enough to depression that I worried I was slipping back into a place I had promised myself I would never return to.
What I didn’t know then was that grief needed time. That this wasn’t a failure to heal, but a transition into a different phase. The shock had worn off, and the weight of the loss was finally being fully felt.
That phase costs something.
It costs energy. Focus. Patience. It costs the ease you once had with ordinary things. What used to be automatic now requires intention. Rest doesn’t always restore the way it once did. Distraction becomes necessary, not because you’re avoiding grief, but because staying fully immersed in it all the time is unsustainable.
Continuing quietly takes work.
It doesn’t mean you’re strong in the way people imagine strength. It means you are adapting in ways no one can see. It means you are regulating yourself just enough to stay present. It means choosing, over and over again, to remain engaged with life, even when it feels thinner, heavier, or less forgiving than it used to.
The cost isn’t a sign that something is wrong.
It’s the price of living forward in a life that has been permanently altered.
And for a long time, that cost is simply part of what continuing requires.
