The Mid-Year Shift

The Mid-Year Shift

Dear friend, Every year, sometime around July 1st, something inside me changes. Not dramatically. Not all at once. It’s quieter than that. It feels like the first deep breath after you’ve been holding it for weeks. If you’ve lived with deep grief, you might know exactly what I mean. Enjoying this letter? If these words meet you where you are, I’d love to invite you to join me. Every week I share honest letters about grief, hope, and rebuilding a life after loss. For me, June has always carried more weight than the other months. It holds my son Garret’s birthday. It holds the anniversary of the day he left this earth. Many years it has also held Father’s Day, a day that carries its own complicated mix of love and loss. Those dates don’t simply appear on my calendar. They settle into my body. And every year, without even realizing it, I begin carrying them long before they arrive. Life doesn’t stop, of course. The emails still come. The laundry still needs folding. Orders still need to be packed. People still need pieces of me. From the outside, everything looks normal. But inside... It feels like I’m swimming inside a fishbowl. I can see life happening all around me, but everything feels muffled. Heavier. Slower. As if I’m trying to walk through water while everyone else is moving on dry land. It’s one of those things that’s almost impossible to explain unless you’ve lived it yourself. Then July arrives. And something loosens. Not my love. Never my love. Not even my grief. But the grip it has on my nervous system. I breathe differently. I sleep a little easier. Ideas begin to return. I find myself reaching for my journal again. My creativity quietly knocks on the door. And I remember something grief has spent twenty years teaching me. Grief has seasons. People often say grief comes in waves. I think that’s true. But I’ve come to believe it also arrives in seasons. There are seasons when we build. Seasons when we dream. Seasons when we laugh more than we cry. And there are seasons when our only job is to carry love. Quietly. Faithfully. Without apologizing for how heavy it feels. For years, I fought those seasons. I thought healing meant pushing through. Creating anyway. Checking every box. Staying productive no matter what my heart was carrying. Now I know better. This year, I had three greeting cards sitting on my computer. Finished. Designed. Ready to be released. They waited. Not because I was lazy. Not because I wasn’t inspired. Because I wasn’t ready. For the first time, I didn’t shame myself for that. I let them wait. And somewhere along the way I realized something that surprised me. Maybe grief wasn’t getting in my way. Maybe grief was simply asking me to honor the season I was in. That thought has stayed with me. Because how often do we assume we’re falling behind... When maybe we’re simply being invited to rest? How often do we compare someone else’s springtime to our winter? How often do we expect ourselves to bloom while we’re still tending roots no one else can see? The older I get, the less interested I am in forcing growth. I want the kind that comes honestly. The kind that has survived storms. The kind that doesn’t need to prove itself. Maybe your “July” doesn’t actually happen in July. Maybe yours comes after the holidays. Or after a birthday. Or on an ordinary Tuesday when you suddenly realize you laughed without feeling guilty. Maybe it’s the first time you make plans for next month. Or buy flowers. Or hear their favorite song and smile before you cry. Whatever your season looks like... Trust it. You don’t have to rush into someone else’s summer. You don’t have to bloom because the calendar says you should. Healing has never followed a schedule. It follows the heart. As for me... I’m grateful July has arrived. I’m grateful to feel the fog beginning to lift. I’m grateful that my hands are creating again. Not because grief is gone. But because, somehow, it has made room for hope to sit beside it. And maybe that’s what this mid-year shift really is. Not becoming someone different. Just becoming yourself again. One quiet breath at a time. Until next season... With love and hope, Angie Don’t miss the next letter. This is the beginning of a new series called The Seasons of Grief, where we’ll explore how love, loss, and hope change through every season of life. If you’d like the next letter delivered straight to your inbox, I’d love to have you join us. P.S. I’d love to know... Does your grief have seasons? Is there a month that feels heavier than the others? Or one that feels like the first breath after holding it for far too long? I’d love to meet you in the comments. Get full access to Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson at angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe [https://angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Problem With Grief Is That It Changes Your Address

Grief doesn’t just break your heart. It quietly changes your address. Not the one your mail gets delivered to. The one your soul lives at. One day you wake up and realize you’re no longer living in the life you once knew. Your house may be the same. Your job hasn’t changed. Your friends are still in your phone. Your favorite coffee shop still knows your order. From the outside, everything looks familiar. But inside? You’ve moved. You now live in a place where dates carry more weight than days. Where birthdays aren’t just birthdays. Where ordinary Tuesdays can suddenly become unbearable because twenty years ago on an ordinary Tuesday, your entire world changed. You live where a song can reroute your entire afternoon. Where the smell of sunscreen reminds you of summers that never got to happen. Where a tiny pair of shoes in a store can steal your breath before you’ve even realized why. You live in a neighborhood where joy and sorrow aren’t enemies. They’re neighbors. They wave to each other from across the street every single day. One moment you’re laughing so hard your stomach hurts. The next, you’re sitting in your car wiping away tears because you heard that song. People who haven’t lived here often don’t understand. Not because they don’t care. But because they don’t know this address exists. They assume you’ve moved on because they’ve moved forward. They wonder why anniversaries still matter. Why birthdays still sting. Why certain months seem heavier than others. They don’t realize that in the world of grief, time isn’t measured the same way anymore. It’s measured in “before.” And “after.” Sometimes they’ll tell you they miss the old you. The truth is... So do you. You miss the version of yourself who believed life made sense. Who assumed tomorrow was promised. Who never imagined memorizing the date your world fell apart. Grief doesn’t just ask you to miss someone. It asks you to become someone new. A person who carries both unbearable loss and unbelievable love. A person who can celebrate and mourn in the very same breath. A person who learns that healing doesn’t mean leaving someone behind. It means learning how to carry them differently. The hardest part of this new address isn’t living here. It’s wondering if anyone else knows how to find you. If you've found yourself living at this address too, I'd love to walk alongside you. Some days it feels like you’re standing on the front porch of a house no one visits. People wave from a distance. They send the occasional text. They mean well. But they don’t quite know how to walk up the path and sit beside you. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have known this place existed either. Not before Garret. Not before Jack. Not before grief handed me a new set of keys and quietly whispered, “This is where you’ll live now.” It’s not where I wanted to be. But over the years, I’ve discovered something beautiful. There are neighbors here. Not the kind who borrow sugar or mow your lawn. The kind who recognize the look in your eyes before you’ve said a single word. The grieving mother who quietly reaches for your hand. The widow who nods because she understands. The friend who’s walked through loss and doesn’t rush your healing. The stranger who says, “Me too.” We find each other. We don’t need directions. We already know the way. And maybe that’s what hope looks like after loss. Not moving back to the life we once had. Not pretending this address doesn’t exist. But slowly making a home here. Planting flowers in the places we thought nothing could ever grow again. Leaving the porch light on for the next grieving heart who wanders down this road, wondering if they’re the only one living here. They’re not. Neither are you. Grief changed my address. Love is what keeps making it feel like home. Get full access to Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson at angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe [https://angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Twenty Years, My Sweet Boy

My sweet Garret, Twenty years. I stared at those words this morning, waiting for them to make sense. They still don’t. Twenty years ago, I kissed your soft cheeks, held your tiny hands, and whispered goodbye to a little boy who had only been here for one year. Today, I’ve spent more of my life missing you than I had the privilege of raising you. That’s a sentence I never imagined I would write. When you first went to Heaven, people told me time would help. I know they meant well. But they didn’t understand that time doesn’t lessen a mother’s love. It simply gives that love more places to live. You live in my heart now. You live in every butterfly that still catches my eye. You live in every grieving parent I have the honor of sitting beside. You live in every card I create, every book I write, every conversation I have with someone who believes they can’t survive another day. You have no idea how many people know your name. Or maybe you do. Maybe Heaven lets you peek. I hope so. I hope you know that your one beautiful year has changed thousands of lives. You were my first lesson in unconditional love. You became my greatest lesson in resilience. Not because losing you made me stronger. I still don’t like when people say that. Losing you broke me. But God met me there. Piece by piece, He taught me that broken things can still become beautiful. Not because the cracks disappear. Because His light has a way of finding them. Sometimes I wonder what you’d be doing now. Would you be taller than me? Would you have inherited your daddy’s laugh? Would you still let me hug you, or would you pull away with that embarrassed smile teenage boys have? Would you roll your eyes when I took too many pictures? Those questions used to make me cry. Sometimes they still do. But today... Today they make me smile, too. Because wondering about you means you’ve never stopped being part of my life. People often ask if I still grieve after twenty years. The answer is yes. Not because I’m trapped in the past. Because I love you in the present. There is a difference. I’ve laughed these last twenty years. I’ve fallen in love again. I’ve watched your sister grow into an incredible young woman. I’ve built a business because of you. I’ve become an author. A grief educator. A woman I don’t think I could have imagined twenty years ago. None of those things happened instead of loving you. They happened because loving you changed me forever. If there’s one thing you’ve taught me, it’s this: Love doesn’t end because life changes. It simply changes how it shows up. And every June, it finds me all over again. Do you know something I’ve never told you? For years, I hated June. I hated watching everyone celebrate sunshine while I counted another year without you. But somewhere along the way, June became something else. It’s still the month I lost you. It’s also the month Butterflies + Halos was born. The month I published my first book. The month I celebrate dreams I once thought had died with you. I think that’s one of God’s sweetest miracles. He didn’t erase my sorrow. He planted hope beside it. Both still bloom every June. And somehow... they don’t compete. That’s what twenty years has taught me. Grief and joy are not enemies. They are companions. They walk beside each other. Just like you’ve walked beside me all these years. I miss you, sweetheart. I always will. But I no longer measure my life by what I lost. I measure it by the love you’ve continued to give me. Thank you for making me your mom. It has been the greatest honor of my life. Forever one. Forever loved. Love, Mom To the parents reading this... If today is your own angelversary, whether it’s one year or twenty, I hope you know this: You don’t have to stop loving them to keep living. You don’t have to choose between remembering them and embracing the life still in front of you. Carry them. Talk about them. Laugh because of them. Cry because of them. Build because of them. Love because of them. Our children don’t ask us to stop living. If anything, I believe they quietly cheer us on. Twenty years later, I still carry my little boy. And somehow... he’s still carrying me, too. With love, Angie Get full access to Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson at angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe [https://angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Problem With Grief Is That Nobody Else Can See Your Calendar

Dear Friend, One of the most frustrating things about grief is that nobody else can see your calendar. Not your actual calendar. Your grief calendar. The one you carry around in your head. The one filled with birthdays, death dates, diagnoses, anniversaries, hospital visits, phone calls, and moments that changed your life forever. Everyone else is busy planning vacations. You’re wondering if you can survive next Thursday. If you've ever felt like you're carrying a calendar nobody else can see, you're in good company here. Subscribe for honest conversations about grief, resilience, and finding your way forward. Everyone else sees June. You see that June. Everyone else sees Father’s Day. You see a son who should be here. Everyone else sees a random Tuesday. You remember exactly what happened on that Tuesday twenty years ago. The strange thing is, nobody means any harm. Most people aren’t forgetting. They simply aren’t carrying the same calendar. If I can be honest, sometimes we secretly want them to. We want someone else to walk into the room and say: “I know what day it is.” Not because we need a parade. Not because we need the world to stop spinning. Just because it feels exhausting being the keeper of the memories. The historian. The one responsible for remembering. The one carrying dates that nobody else writes down anymore. I think that’s one of the loneliest parts of long-term grief. Not the missing. The remembering. Because twenty years later, people assume you’ve adjusted. And in many ways, you have. You laugh. You travel. You build a life. You create new memories. You even experience joy again. But underneath all of that, there’s still a calendar running quietly in the background. Always. Every grieving person I know has one. The date nobody else remembers. The milestone nobody else sees coming. The week that suddenly feels heavier for reasons they can’t explain. Here’s what I’ve learned: Most people aren’t forgetting our loved ones. They’re simply living in a story that kept moving. While we became the guardians of a chapter they never had to memorize. That realization has softened me. Not completely. I’m still human. I still occasionally want to shake people by the shoulders and yell, “HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT DAY THIS IS?” But I’ve learned something important. Their forgetting is usually not a measure of their love. It’s a measure of their distance from the loss. Those are not the same thing. So when those invisible dates show up, I’ve stopped waiting for other people to acknowledge them. I acknowledge them. I light the candle. I tell the story. I say the name. I buy the cupcake. I visit the grave. I take the walk. I do whatever helps me honor the life that mattered. Because grief has taught me something surprising: The responsibility of remembering isn’t a burden. It’s a privilege. A heartbreaking privilege, yes. But a privilege nonetheless. And while nobody else can see my calendar... I can. And that’s enough. Most days, anyway. The other days, I reserve the right to roll my eyes dramatically and eat dessert first. Grace and grit, friends. Both are required. If this letter resonated with you, I'd love for you to join me here at Grace & Grit Letters. Every week, I share honest reflections on grief, resilience, faith, second chances, and the messy beauty of rebuilding a life after loss. Get full access to Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson at angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe [https://angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Loneliness of Being the One Who Remembers

As Garret’s 21st birthday approaches, I’ve found myself wrestling with something I don’t know how to explain to the people around me. Not because they don’t care. Most of them do. Not because they aren’t supportive. They are. But because there are some experiences in life that can only be understood by the people who lived them beside you. Twenty-one. Twenty years gone. Those numbers have been sitting heavily on my heart lately. For most people, June is simply another month on the calendar. Summer plans are being made. Father’s Day is approaching. People are scheduling barbecues, vacations, and weekends at the lake. Life continues to move forward exactly as it should. And yet, every year when June arrives, I find myself standing in two worlds at once. There is the life I have now—the one I have worked hard to build after unimaginable loss. The life filled with new memories, new traditions, new relationships, and people who love me deeply. Then there is the life that existed before. The life where Garret was here. The life where Jack was here. The life where our future looked entirely different than the one that unfolded. The older I get, the more I realize that one of the hardest parts of grief isn’t just missing the person who died. It’s missing the people who remember them the way you do. Lately, I’ve been missing Jack in a way that feels different than usual. Not because I wish my current life were different. Not because I haven’t found happiness again. But because Jack was the only other person who knew exactly what these milestones meant. He was Garret’s dad. He was the only person who knew what it felt like to hold our son, dream about his future, and imagine the man he would become. When Garret died, we carried that grief together. We wondered together. We remembered together. We asked all the impossible questions together. Would he have played sports? Would he have gone to college? Would he have been tall like his dad? What would his laugh sound like today? Now those questions belong mostly to me. Graci was so young when Garret died. She knows his story. She loves her brother. She understands his importance in our family. But she doesn’t carry the memories. She couldn’t. She was simply too little. And so, as the years pass, I sometimes find myself feeling like the keeper of something precious that fewer and fewer people can truly see. I carry memories that exist nowhere else. I carry stories that only a handful of people remember. I carry a version of our family that disappeared long ago. There is a loneliness in that. A quiet loneliness that has nothing to do with being surrounded by people. I am surrounded by wonderful people. The loneliness comes from knowing that nobody else feels June the way I do. Nobody else’s heart begins counting the days to Garret’s birthday. Nobody else automatically notices that this would have been his 20th year. Nobody else feels the significance of twenty years gone and twenty-one years imagined. And how could they? Their lives kept moving. Mine did too. At least on the outside. But grief has a strange relationship with time. For those who have never experienced profound loss, time often feels linear. One year becomes five. Five becomes ten. Ten becomes twenty. For those of us whose worlds stopped in an instant, time feels different. Part of you moves forward. Part of you stays behind. Part of you learns how to laugh again. Part of you remains forever connected to the moment everything changed. Twenty years later, I can tell you that grief softens. It changes shape. It becomes more familiar. But it never completely leaves. Especially during milestone years. Especially when your child should be turning twenty-one. Especially when the person who would have understood your heartbreak isn’t here either. What I find myself struggling with this year is figuring out how to honor Garret while also honoring the life I’ve built. I don’t think people talk enough about this part. The balancing act of loving the people who are gone while fully loving the people who are here. The tension between remembering and living. The challenge of wanting space for reflection when everyone else simply sees another date on the calendar. Father’s Day falls on Garret’s birthday this year. People want to celebrate. People want to gather. People want to make plans. And I find myself wondering how to explain that I may not want to participate. Or that I might participate differently. That I might attend part of an event but not stay for the celebration afterward. That I might need quiet instead of company. Reflection instead of distraction. Not because I’m sad. Not because I’m ungrateful. But because some days deserve space. Some dates deserve to be felt. Some memories deserve more than squeezing them into the margins of an already busy day. The truth is, I am still figuring this out. I am still learning how to integrate the mother I was, the wife I was, and the woman I am today. I am still learning how to honor Garret’s life without feeling guilty for living mine. I am still learning that I don’t need permission to step away, reflect, remember, or grieve. Maybe that’s what this season is teaching me. That I don’t have to choose between my past and my present. I can love them both. I can celebrate the life I’ve built while still honoring the life I lost. I can show up when it feels right and step back when it doesn’t. And perhaps most importantly, I can stop trying to explain the significance of these dates to people who have never lived them. Because the people who understand won’t need an explanation. And the people who don’t aren’t failing me. They’re simply fortunate enough to have never watched their world stop turning. Twenty years later, mine is moving again. But some days, especially in June, I still feel the place where it broke. And maybe that isn’t something to fix. Maybe it’s simply another way of loving someone who should still be here. Get full access to Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson at angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe [https://angiehanson.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]