A Personal Note: My Grief Story and the Work I Do Now

"What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us."

-Helen Keller

Even before grief left it's fingerprints on my heart, I carried a quiet closeness to death. It was never fear but a sense of curiosity that drew me to life's most tender thresholds. It has always felt natural for me to be present in life's most tender and intimate times, to sit bedside sorrow without turning away. In every role I have held, whether nurse, death doula, or simply a human being, I have met people with kindness, patience, and without judgment. I have shown up fully, offering the benefit of the doubt, holding space when the world feels too heavy. That has always been who I am, and it's the foundation of the work I do now.

Grief, however, has a way of rearranging the furniture in your soul. For me, it happened in an instant. Two years ago I lost someone deeply special, and it changed my life in ways I could never have imagined. I have worked around death throughout my entire career, but this death was personal. I had never known grief like this until it came all of a sudden. It was an unexpected death, one that nobody knew was coming. It really solidified that we truly don't know when our last moment with someone will be.

When I became a nurse, I was often told I wouldn't make a difference in the world. It was a big "dream" and hearing those discouraging words was tough, but I understood the perspective. In reality, I may not be able to change the world on a grand scale, but I can absolutely change someone's world. That realization has been a guiding light through all the roles I have held. What truly matters is how we show up for others, and that makes all the difference.

We also never know when our last interaction with someone might be. this became painfully clear when I experienced a profound loss. That loss taught me that time is not guaranteed, and we must make the most of every moment. Inspired by this, I decided to leave my job to start my business. I took my grief and created something bigger than myself. For the greater good of the people.

This is my story and I want to share it with you. I share it in hopes that it gives you insight into the person I am and how The Mourning Moonlight came to be.

The Heart of the Note

Grief didn't arrive quietly for me. It struck like a flash of blinding light. A single moment that split my life into before and after. One breath, the world was intact. The next, it was unrecognizable.

I remember the shock more than anything. The memory ripples in my memory that never fades. When I heard the news, I was just getting off of work. At this time I was still working as a hospice case manager, so I often would leave my phone in the car. I never use my phone when I am with my clients. I always give them my undivided attention. I got in my car and checked my phone. I had many missed calls from my family members and right then I knew something was wrong. I spoke to my aunt who delivered the news. I was in complete disbelief. In utter shock. I had just spoken to this person the week prior. They had left me a voicemail singing, "Viva Mexico." They were perfectly fine then. My heart dropped as grief filled every inch of my body and soul. As stated, I had never known grief up close and personal until this day.

I remember in that moment how the air felt ripped from my lungs, how my body seemed to know before my mind could catch up. Despite it being another day that ends in Y, everything was different in a blink of an eye.

Grief is heavy. It lives in the body as much as the heart. It runs through your veins, settles deep in your bones, and it makes each breath feel like a battle. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts clouded. There is no room to think, only to feel. To endure the weight pressing from every side. The pain in unbearable and it completely consumes you at a rapid speed.

Despite being around death for many years, I never knew what it was like to be on the other side. Here I was tending to life's most brutal times, and yet, I had never experienced this myself. I had always tried to put myself in the shoes of others, and now my feet were firmly planted in them.

Grief has a way of creeping up on you like a big wave. The tears stop, but something then reminds you of the special one you lost. Then, it hits you all over again like a wave coming full force. Your chest tightens. You can't breathe. None of it seems real. It's like there's a hole in the center of the earth and it's sucking you straight in. You can't stop it. It just keeps pulling you tighter and tighter. Into the hole you go. It's a space that is dark and lonely. There's this eerie silence to the world around despite it being lively outside. Everything has a soft blanket of stillness as if life has been paused. None of it seems real.

Then comes the what ifs and the should've, could've, would've. You replay the last conversation over and over again in your head like a broken record. You regret not calling more. Maybe if you called earlier, they would still be here. If you called earlier you could have seen this coming. You tell yourself that if you would have known, you could have saved them.

You continue to fight with yourself over and over again. The denial is real. Death is a difficult concept to understand and to wrap your head around. It may not be for everyone, but it surely was for me.

The days that followed blurred into each other. I learned how strange time becomes when you are grieving. How it stretches unbearably in the emptiness, then it folds in on itself in sudden moments of longing. People say "time heals," but I found that time only made space for grief to settle into the corners of my life, becoming part of the architecture of who I was becoming.

There were moments when I felt as if I had fallen into a river, carried by a current I couldn't control. And yet, in the midst of that current, there were quiet spots. Still pockets of tenderness. A friend's hand on mine. A stranger's unexpected kindness. The way the sun still rose, even when I wanted the world to stop.

It was in those small mercies that I began to understand: grief was not only a wound. It was a teacher. It was showing me what mattered, stripping away the unnecessary, and pointing me toward something I didn't yet have words for.

How I Got Into the Work & What Motivates Me

When my own sudden loss came, I learned something I could never have learned from books or training alone. How grief can consume your entire being. How it has the ability to override the mind. In those first hours and days, I could barely string together thoughts, let alone make decisions that would shape my future.

I wanted to honor the one I lost. This person was someone who lived life authentically. Never afraid to be themselves. They gave themselves permission to dance whenever and wherever, without a care in the world. That's what I aspired to be. My entire life, I had lived under the conditions and expectations of others, and not fully from my own heart. Their death taught me, that time is really nothing but an illusion. We do put death to the side as it if it were an unfinished project we can deal with later. But sometimes, later comes before we ever thought it would.

Personal grief and death taught me to live life on my own terms. The fear we have about taking risk is unnecessary. I found myself asking, "would I be proud of how I Iived my life I were to die tomorrow?" The answer was genuinely, no. I hadn't taken all the risk. I hadn't given myself permission to fully submerse myself in life. To dream bigger than myself. I lived a life according to others inputs that placed fear in my mind.

At this point, all I knew is I had quit my job to start something new. What that was, I still had absolutely no trajectory of where I was headed. But what I did know, was the same fog I had come to know, was the same fog I had seen countless of times in hospice, the ER, in families reeling from sudden loss, in voices that tremble when asked to choose care, make plans, or sign papers. They hadn't had the chance to even take in what was happening, let alone make decisions that carry such weight.

I wanted to find a way to lift that burden. To help people have the space to simply be with their families, their emotions, and to soak in the moments that matter. I wanted to help remove the fear of death, to replace it with understanding. Because with understanding comes peace, and with peace comes the freedom to live without constant worry.

That is why my work stretches beyond the moments of dying. It is for the healthy and the living, too. Those who want to prepare while the air is still clear, who want to leave a gift of calm in a future storm.

Grief taught me that preparation is not about expecting the worst. It is about protecting the ones we love from the sharpest edges of uncertainty. It is about making room when the time comes, for what matters most: love, presence, and the quiet sacredness of simply being together in those final moments.

The Gift to the Reader

Grief will always leave it's mark, one that will never go away. It will always be an old wound that can be easily reopened. It softens some places, hardens others, and forever changes the way we see the world. But it also sharpens our awareness of what matters. The sound of a voice we love, the comfort of a steady hand, the beauty of a shared silence.

My own loss showed me that we cannot control when grief comes, but we can choose how we meet it. With compassion, with preparation, and with the quiet courage to talk through it together.

Whether you are here because you are facing loss now, or because you wish to prepare for a someday you cannot yet see, I hope you remember this: your story matters, Your love matters, And even in the moments that feel too heavy to carry, there can still be light.

May we care for each other in life's most tender seasons. Not only at the end, but in all the living in between.