Hello, and welcome back to Happya Ever After.

If you’re listening to this episode, I want to start by acknowledging where you might be.

Not in the immediate chaos.
 Not in the shock or the early days where everything feels raw and overwhelming.

But in the after.

This episode is for the moment when the world seems to have moved on… and you haven’t.

When the phone calls slow.
 When fewer people check in.
 When life around you appears to be returning to normal while your internal world still feels unsteady, unfamiliar, or quietly heavy.

You may be surviving.
 Functioning.
 Doing what needs to be done.

And still feeling lost, lonely, or unsure why this phase feels so much harder than you expected.

If that’s you, I want you to know this first: you’re not imagining it, and you’re not doing grief wrong.

This phase of grief is rarely talked about, and because of that, it can feel incredibly isolating.

In the early days after a loss, there’s often a clear understanding that you’re in crisis. There’s permission to fall apart. There’s space held for your pain. People show up because it’s obvious that something terrible has happened.

But as time passes, that permission quietly disappears.

Life resumes for everyone else. Expectations rise. And without anyone saying it out loud, there can be a sense that you should be finding your feet again by now.

And yet, your loss hasn’t changed.

For many people, this is the point where grief becomes lonelier not because it’s less intense, but because it’s less visible.

You might notice that people don’t mention your loved one as much anymore. Not because they don’t care, but because they don’t want to upset you, or they assume you’d rather not talk about it.

And that can bring up something incredibly painful: the fear that if others aren’t speaking their name, then somehow they’re being forgotten.

Not just socially but existentially.

As if the person who mattered most to you is slowly slipping out of the world, while you’re still carrying them with you every single day.

If you’ve felt that, you’re not alone.

And I want to say this clearly: your loved one is not forgotten. And your relationship with them didn’t end when they died.

The world moving on does not mean your grief has expired.

What often gets missed in conversations about grief is what’s actually happening beneath the surface in your body, in your nervous system.

Loss isn’t just emotional. It’s physiological.

When something traumatic happens and losing someone you love is trauma your nervous system shifts into survival mode. Initially, that can look like shock, panic, adrenaline, hyper-focus. You get through because you have to.

But once the immediate danger has passed, the system often moves into a different state.

Everything slows down.

You might find decision-making harder than it used to be. Motivation can drop. Concentration can feel almost impossible. Emotions might feel blunted one day and overwhelming the next.

This isn’t you going backwards.
 It isn’t you failing to cope.

It’s your system trying to protect you and recover.

The difficulty is that this internal slowdown often clashes with the external expectation to “get back to normal”.

And that mismatch between what your body needs and what the world expects can create a lot of self-judgement.

You might find yourself thinking things like:

• I should be doing better by now.
• Other people seem to have moved forward.
• Why does this still feel so hard?

If those thoughts show up, I want to gently interrupt them.

You have survived something that fundamentally changed your life. Of course you’re tired. Of course you’re changed. Of course this doesn’t feel straightforward.

There is nothing wrong with you for feeling the way you do.

I also want to say something important here, because this matters deeply to me.

When I talk about life after loss, I’m not talking about one “right” way to grieve. I’m not offering a blueprint, a timeline, or a set of rules you should be following.

I’ve been here myself and what I know, both personally and professionally, is that grief is deeply individual.

Your nervous system is not my nervous system.
 Your circumstances are not someone else’s circumstances.
 Your resilience, history, responsibilities, and support systems are uniquely yours.

So if something resonates with you here, take it.
 And if something doesn’t, you’re allowed to leave it.

There is no right or wrong way to be in this phase.

Another thing that can surface quietly at this stage is fear about the future. Not always in obvious thoughts sometimes it’s more of a background sense of flatness or disconnection.

A question that sounds like:
 If this is how life feels now… will it always feel like this?

If that question is there, it doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It often means part of you is beginning to look ahead even if another part of you isn’t ready to go there yet.

And I want to be very clear about this: you do not need to have answers right now.

You don’t need a plan.
 You don’t need a vision.
 You don’t need to know what comes next.

This episode is not about pushing you forward. It’s about meeting you exactly where you are and offering compassion rather than pressure.

Because growth doesn’t start with forcing change.

It starts with safety.

Safety in your body.
 Safety in being understood.
 Safety in knowing you’re allowed to move at your own pace.

If as you’re listening you notice tension in your body, or your breath feels shallow, or that familiar sense of overwhelm creeps in, you don’t need to do anything with it.

Simply notice where you are.

Perhaps feel your feet on the floor.
 Or the support of the chair beneath you.
 Or the fact that, right now, you are safe enough to listen.

There’s no rush here.

Life after loss is not about returning to who you were before. That version of you lived in a different world.

This phase is about slowly, gently discovering who you are now without erasing who you’ve been or the love you still carry.

Moving forward does not mean leaving your loved one behind. Love doesn’t disappear when life grows around it. It comes with you, woven into who you are becoming.

For now, your only task is to meet yourself with as much compassion as you can. And on days when compassion feels out of reach, gentleness or even neutrality is enough.

If you’d like some gentle support as you begin to explore what life after loss might look like, in your own time, I’ve created a guide called Life After Loss, which you can find via the show notes or at happyacoach.com/happya-ever-after/life-after-loss.

You can also visit the Happya Ever After hub at happyacoach.com/happya-ever-after, where resources will continue to be added throughout this series.

You don’t need to have answers.
 You don’t need to know the way forward.
 You don’t need to be brave today.

You’re here.
 And that’s enough.

Thank you for trusting me with this part of your journey.
 I’ll be with you again in the next episode.