Grief Doesn't Shrink—You Grow Around It

What nobody tells you about healing after loss

When Brent died, I kept waiting for the grief to get smaller.

That's what everyone implied would happen, right? "Time heals." "It gets easier." "You'll move on."

So I waited. And waited. And the grief just... sat there. Same size. Same weight. Same Brent-shaped hole in my life.

I started thinking something was wrong with me.

The lie we're told about grief

Here's what I wish someone had told me in those early months:

Grief doesn't shrink.

I know that sounds like bad news. But stay with me.

The grief doesn't get smaller - but YOU get bigger. Your capacity to hold it expands. You grow around it.

I didn't understand this until I'd been teaching yoga for years and living with loss for even longer. But now I see it so clearly - in myself and in the women I work with.

Healing isn't about making the hard thing smaller. It's about becoming someone who can hold more.

What growing around grief actually looks like

For me, it looked like mornings on my mat when I didn't want to be there.

It looked like breathing when breathing felt impossible.

It looked like crying in savasana and then getting up and making dinner anyway.

It looked like one day realizing I was laughing - really laughing - with my grandkids. And instead of feeling guilty about it, I felt grateful.

The grief was still there. Brent was still gone. But I had made room for something else too.

Joy and grief. Gratitude and loss. Missing him and still living.

All of it. At the same time.

That's what yoga gave me. Not a fix. Not a cure. Not a way to "get over it."

Just more space inside myself.

Why this matters for you

If you're reading this and you're in that place - that heavy place where people keep asking if you're "doing better" and you don't know what to say - I want you to hear this:

You're not broken.

You're not stuck.

You're not failing at grief.

You're just still growing.

The grief doesn't have to shrink for you to heal. You don't have to "move on" or "let go" or any of those things that sound good on greeting cards but don't mean anything when you're living it.

You just have to keep showing up. Keep breathing. Keep making space.

That's the practice.

And if you want to do this work with someone who's been there - not someone who read about grief in a book, but someone who's lived it - I'm here.

About Karen Day

I'm a yoga teacher with 18 years of experience, a widow, a mom, a grammy, and someone who knows grief isn't something you get over. It's something you grow around. I teach functional yoga for real bodies and real life - especially for women navigating loss and life transitions. No spiritual bypassing. No toxic positivity. Just honest practice for honest humans.