Ambitious & Anchored

My father passed away a couple of months ago. We had about a week with him in the hospital, and then he was gone.

A few days before the funeral, I broke. I was dreading the ceremony, replaying his last moments, imagining his last breaths… I was cooking dinner for the kids, and the second they were settled at the table eating, the grief I’d been holding off all day came knocking. I had to let it out.

So I turned the music up and started swaying. Eyes closed, hips heavy. Sadness, grief, heartache, and that aching pit in my stomach, all rose up into my eyes and out through my tears. Finally, relief.

Here’s the thing: grief doesn’t have to be tied to a loss as life-altering as a parent dying. Big transitions: moving, a new job, the first few years of marriage, the slow ache of old wounds we’ve never addressed, can all surface a surprising amount of grief, especially when we realize the life we thought we’d be living isn’t the one we’re actually in.

Grief is a brain injury

Dr. Lisa M. Shulman, a neurologist at the University of Maryland, calls grief a literal brain injury. She identifies three cognitive domains it disrupts: memory, decision-making, and processing speed. In practice, that shows up as brain fog, exhaustion, low motivation, and stress — basically, a whole host of unattractive qualities that don’t help you in kicking ass and taking names at work. Or anywhere else, really.

This is the part I struggled with the most. Yes, I was mourning my father: there was deep sadness, real visceral pain. But on top of that, I could not believe how “meh” I felt all day. The desire to slay was gone. The desire to slay was gone. I was lethargic, unmotivated, dreading my own work–I’d see a coaching day on the calendar and want to crawl back into bed, because I couldn’t muster the energy to show up the way my clients deserved.

My brain ran a half-second slow. Mid-session, the fog would steal a follow-up question right before I could ask it. And the motivation drop, that was the worst. Even the smallest tasks in my business felt heavier than they should have.

The mom layer on top of all this

As moms, we’re expected to do it all: by society, by our own mothers, by the other moms we watch from the sidelines or on Tik Tok, and we pile on guilt the second we feel we’re falling short. Work, the baby, the household, cooking, cleaning, ourselves. And then life happens. Sh*t happens. We reach the age where the people in our lives start dying. Morbid, but reality.

So how do you take care of your kids, your husband, your job, and your own grief?

The bad news: you have to slow down. Be gentle. Carve out time and space to heal. Trust me, I know how infuriating that advice is. When my therapist and my coach both told me to ease off, I was furious. It didn’t seem fair. I’d already spent three-plus years as a stay-at-home mom, putting my career aside, and not entirely by choice.

But that’s the assignment. Find literal minutes, or seconds, to feel what you’re feeling. Because what we don’t let out doesn’t disappear. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s research shows that trauma and unprocessed emotion live in the body’s tissues and nervous system, not just in memory. Stuffed-down grief becomes blockages, which become physical pain, illness, and worse.

So: how do you honor the grief without collapsing the whole structure of your life?

The body keeps score

We access emotion through the body. I’m biased here — I’ve spent almost my entire life dancing, and over five years formally studying how movement metabolizes emotion. A few things that work for me:

• Let your body feel heavy, especially in your hips.
• Close your eyes, turn your brain off, and let your body lead.
• Do it alone, where you feel safe enough to actually let go.

Carve out a daily grief window

Block 10–20 minutes a day, around the same time, to deliberately feel it. Journal. Hold something that belonged to the person. Look at a photo. Let yourself remember, feel, and then release.

Easier said than done when every minute of your day is claimed by someone tiny. So I found pockets. I cried in the car on the way to the dentist. I cried on 6 a.m. walks. I danced my heart out in the backyard while the triplets napped. I took a five-minute “break” after bath time, handed the kids to my husband, and cried in the bathroom.

Manage the guilt thoughts

Do you feel guilty when life slows you down? I felt an enormous amount of it. I’d finally hit momentum in my work and suddenly had to stop. I had a client I was coaching and truth be told, I felt dread each time before our coaching sessions, at least for a few weeks. I honestly just wanted to crawl into a hole instead of show up. 

It’s “mental” what our minds do to us in those stretches — and a good reminder that we don’t have to believe every thought we think.

Still, life doesn’t pause for grief. So how do you give yourself the space to feel and heal while still showing up?

This was the hardest part for me. I felt tired and plain ol’ God-awful every single day. My motivation was at an all-time low. My usual optimistic self was nowhere in sight. So I built a small kit of moment-to-moment lifts:

1. A 20-minute workout. Just enough to sweat, breathe hard, and get the endorphins moving. That natural high carried me.
2. A three-minute cold shower, usually in the afternoon — right before the three-hour stretch of tantrums, giggles, baths, teeth-brushing, dressing, and lotioning that is end-of-day with toddlers.
3. Aromatherapy. Not new, but a few oils genuinely lifted my mood almost instantly. My favorite scents: blue lotus, black spruce, and palo santo.

All of this is hard. The juggling, the grieving, the showing up when you’d rather collapse. The only solace I’ve found is that life moves in seasons. The one you’re in now: overwhelm, stress, grief, suffering — will pass. Find a therapist if you need one. Find small ways to ground yourself every day.

And remember this: you are already doing it. Right now, mid-cry, mid-meal-prep, mid-meeting call, mid-everything, you are carrying weight no one fully sees, and you are still here. Women have been doing this kind of carrying since the beginning. That isn’t strength because someone said so, it’s strength because it’s already in you. And that’s enough.