Grief & Joy, Side by Side

There’s this strange thing that happens when your heart holds both everything and nothing all at once.

My baby girl has filled my world with so much light. I look at her tiny hands, the way her eyes follow my voice, the way her laugh bubbles out of nowhere—and my heart bursts. I love her in a way that feels cosmic. Like she was made from stardust and meant to land right here in my arms.

And then there’s Tanner.

The love of my life. My best friend. My safe place. The ache of missing him doesn’t fade. It just rearranges itself. Some days it’s sharp and loud, like a siren. Other days it’s quiet and slow, like fog. But it’s always there. I miss him with every part of me. I miss who he was, and I miss who he would’ve been in this season—the way he would’ve rocked her to sleep or made her laugh just by being his silly self.

And so my heart feels full and broken at the same time.

I don’t think we talk enough about this kind of grief—the kind that walks hand in hand with joy. I used to think healing would look like the pain shrinking as time passed. But I’m learning that grief doesn’t always shrink. Instead, love grows around it.

Loving Tanner and loving my daughter don’t cancel each other out. They stretch my heart in opposite directions. One love feeds my joy. The other holds my pain. They co-exist and are both rooted in the same thing: how deeply I love.

The same goes with happiness-finding happiness again doesn’t erase the happiness I had with Tanner. New joy doesn’t cancel out old joy.

Grief and joy don’t exist on opposite ends of a spectrum. They sit right next to each other, sometimes overlapping.

And maybe that’s what it means to be fully human—to let your heart be broken open and still let light pour in.