April 1st is a weird day. It’s meant to be light, cheeky, playful. A day for tricks and harmless lies. But sometimes it hits strange. The world still expects us to perform like we’re fine. Laugh like we mean it. Engage like everything’s good.

And sometimes, it’s not.

Sometimes, we’re carrying something that doesn’t fit into a clever punchline. We wake up, and grief is in the room with us. But it’s not always dramatic. Sometimes, it’s quiet. Like a heaviness behind the eyes. Or a sudden wave in the middle of the day. Or a silence that doesn’t feel restful.

A lot of people I talk to don’t realize they’re grieving. They say they’re just feeling “off.” Or “tired.”

They say things like:

“I don’t know why I’m still so sad.”
“It’s been months, shouldn’t I be okay by now?”
“It wasn’t a big deal, I shouldn’t be this emotional.”

But underneath all that language, it’s not just sadness, it’s grief.

I often define grief as sadness with weight. 

Love that doesn’t know where to go.

I call it the ache of something being different now. Permanently.

Grief is when your body still waits for the routine that no longer happens. When your calendar still remembers an anniversary your heart can’t forget. Or when you hear their voice in your head and almost reply out loud.

It’s when you see a version of yourself in an old photo and realize, that person is gone now.

And as I’ve been saying, grief doesn’t just show up for death. Oh no. It shows up for disappointments that don’t have words. For aging. For health. For relationships that faded slowly. For the years that didn’t unfold how you thought they would. For the future you thought you’d be living by now.

I’m saying all this today because April Fool’s Day, for all its playfulness, has always felt like one of those unspoken grief triggers. There’s something strange about being expected to joke around when inside, you’re grieving something no one can see.

So if that’s you right now, if you’re not up for pretending it’s all light and funny, you don’t owe the world a smile. You don’t have to be okay because the calendar says it’s time to be.

What if you’re not “too sensitive”?
What if you’re not “taking too long”?
What if it’s just… grief? And what if that’s sacred?

That ache you might be feeling is not weakness or victimhood. It’s the love, the memory, the soul-level recognition that something in your life has shifted. And it mattered.

And more than anything, grief is proof that you loved something. Deeply. Fully. And in a way that still felt through your days.

So maybe today you don’t have to pretend everything’s fine. Maybe it’s about being honest with yourself. Start there. 

P.S. If you are someone who loves April Fool’s Day, who can still laugh and prank and find lightness in it, that’s beautiful too. Part of grief is also remembering how to be alive. So if joy is visiting you today, open the door. It belongs, too.