So Much Changes In A Year
I almost did not blog today, but I am doing it anyways. Today is a personal reflection.
Today, last year, I was in a completely different place—physically, emotionally, spiritually. I wasn’t even at home. One year ago, alongside some of my family, we laid my brother to eternal rest. In that time, I wrote The Best Seat blog in his honor and in honor of all those we’ve lost.
If you did not read it, here is The Best Seat blog- click here
So much changes in a year. We think we have time. We tell ourselves someday, tomorrow, eventually, on Monday, next week, January 1st. We convince ourselves that time is ours to control, when the truth is, we have no idea how much of it we are given.
As a therapist—a relationship therapist at that—I am far from perfect. Do I have regrets? Absolutely. Because death always puts life in perspective. In a single year, so much can shift: we can fall in love and lose it, land a dream job only to watch it turn to misery, make and lose money, watch key friendships and relationships change before our eyes with little to no explanation, and the list goes on.
If we truly knew how much time we had with one another, how would we show up? What would we do differently?
A year before my brother’s passing, what would I have done differently? Maybe I would’ve reached out to my therapy dad, my mentor, to grab one last piece of wisdom before his departure. But this is part of grief—bargaining. We bargain with God, with ourselves, with the “what if questions.” The questions that keep us up at night. We call this rumination.
This weekend was no accident. I finished reading In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty by Francis Weller and attended a virtual book talk. Long ago, I said that all therapy is grief. A therapy-seeker is not in front of a therapist unless they have lost something, someone, or both. Yesterday, in that space, we were asked: Have we developed a companionship with grief and sorrow?
That question sits with me. “Grief requires pathways of endurance, because it is a foretaste of what’s ahead.” Life gives us what Francis Weller calls “rough initiations”—moments that change us forever. There is no going back. What is left is to find the medicine, the coping, the rituals that help us carry on. This is the work.
The instinct of grief is to isolate, to pull away. Yet grief is actually an invitation: to lean in, to seek community, to imagine hope. To whisper to ourselves that one day, I won’t feel this vulnerable and exposed. To reach back and draw from ancestral wisdom.
As a Black woman of Jamaican descent, I think of our traditions: nine nights, celebration of life, the repass, the balm of Holy Scripture, the comfort of a proverb passed down—“hush nevermind.” In my family and culture, grief is held communally, and healing is not rushed but witnessed in music, instruments, storytelling, singing and gathering. Wray and Nephew, mannish water, and the slaughter of chosen animals for the repass meal, typically involving a goat and pig.
A year later, what can I say? I am grateful to not be in the same place, even amidst great loss. The tension between grief and gratitude is real, and they live intertwined in me. That duality—grief and gratitude—is not something to resolve, but something to hold.
Because so much changes in a year.
💡 Undoing Toxic Reflection: Grief is more than loss—it’s also about learning to live in the space between pain and gratitude. When we avoid or minimize grief, it lingers; when we honor it, we create pathways to healing.
If you’re navigating grief or transitions of your own, remember: you don’t have to walk it alone. Therapy can be a space to lean in, seek community, and find your own way of coping with the situations we encounter.
If you are grieving, don’t lose hope. Grief is an invitation to lean in, to seek support, and to find your own medicine for healing.
If you feel you have no one and are in need of help, please use emergency resources listed below.
Let’s connect. Email me: moniqueevanstherapy@gmail.com
Accepting individual, couples, and family clients (self-pay and select insurance via headway.co- Monique Evans, LCSW)
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