My Heart Beats Grief, and Life.

I know grief intimately.

I’ve been grieving my entire life and didn’t even know it until today.

Nothing prepares you for grief. Not really. It arrives with no warning, no instructions. And suddenly, you’re in a story you didn’t ask for, speaking a language you don’t yet understand.

My first real experience with that kind of grief, the kind that drops you to the floor, came in 2009, when my former husband and I lost a baby.

That pain was unspeakable. I didn’t know how to function. I didn’t know how to be. I wasn’t just mourning a life. I was mourning who I was before everything changed.

But that was only the beginning.

Since then, I’ve grieved in layers. Grieved things no one could see.Grieved while working. While parenting. While smiling in public.

I’ve grieved the loss of my family’s 100-year-old store, the one that shaped me. I’ve grieved my father while he was still here, and then again when he was gone. I’ve grieved a relationship I believed in, even after the truth came out.

I’ve grieved friendships I thought would last—the quiet ones that faded, the painful ones that fractured. I’ve grieved the mother I never had. The childhood I didn’t get. The version of love I thought I had to earn.

I’ve carried grief like a second skin. I’ve laughed through it. Hosted events through it. Led meetings and raised children and pushed forward, all with that quiet ache still humming under the surface. And still, it catches in my throat sometimes.

Grief isn’t tidy. It’s not a checklist. It’s not five stages. It’s five hundred waves. Some crash. Some whisper. Some numb you. Some flood you when you least expect it.

At first, it feels like you’re standing in the worst storm of your life. Like the sky cracked open and forgot how to close. You can’t see straight. You can’t think. You’re drenched in it, completely soaked.

But over time, the storm shifts. The intensity comes and goes in waves. Some hit like tidal waves. Others just gently lap at your heart.

In the beginning, grief lives in every cell. In your jaw. Your shoulders. Your breath. Then it moves just beneath the surface. It’s still there, but it’s quieter. More patient.

Eventually, your heart absorbs it. And you no longer feel the ache every day. It becomes something you carry. Not something that carries you.

So no, I’m not over it. I’m still grieving. And I’m still living.

Both can be true. And neither one needs to be explained.

My heart beats grief. But it also beats life. It beats joy. It beats love. It beats all the emotions that come with being human. Messy. Beautiful. Painful. Real.

If you're still in it, still carrying the weight, still waking up with that ache.

I want you to know:

It won't always feel like this.

You will get there. You will breathe easier. You will laugh without guilt.

You will find your way forward. Not away from grief, but with it beside you.

But for now?

Breathe. You are safe here.

You are safe with yourself.

Just breathe.

By Katherine Tatsuda

Katherine Tatsuda writes from the fire—grief, loss, betrayal, survival—and from the quiet power of what comes after. Her work is rooted in radical vulnerability and the conversations most leaders and speakers avoid. She is the voice behind Reinvention Modeled, where clarity becomes strategy and healing becomes authenticity.