It’s a quiet Friday morning here. My favourite kind of morning. The world hasn’t quite woken up yet, and everything feels a little more honest in the soft light.

I’ve been thinking about grief and how it moves through us. About all the things we’re carrying that we haven’t named yet.

Can I tell you something I’ve noticed? We’ve gotten really good at calling everything else by its proper name. Anxiety. Burnout. Overwhelm. Trauma.

But grief? We still kinda whisper that one.

Maybe because we think grief belongs only to funerals and gravestones. To the big, unmistakable losses. But grief is actually sitting in that corner of your heart where the friendship slowly faded and you don’t know why. It’s in the career path you invested years in that no longer feels right. It visits when your body changed and now it doesn’t move or feel like it used to.

Grief is there in the relationship that ended, even though you both still love each other. In the parent who’s still here, but not really here anymore. In the home you loved that had to be left behind. In the dream you held close that doesn’t match your reality. And in those mornings when the person in the mirror looks like a stranger.

Yup. That feeling when something shifts, and suddenly the story you were living in doesn’t make sense anymore is grief.

I was driving around doing errands the other day when a memory of my son Connor floated up, completely unexpected. Just the way he’d tap his fingers against the steering wheel when a song he loved came on. Such a small thing. But for a moment, I held my breath.

That’s what grief does. It slips in between the ordinary moments and touches you when you least expect it.

And after all these years, what I’m still learning is that grief isn’t just sadness. It can be that burning anger feeling when life isn’t fair. It can be an exhale of relief when a long suffering finally ends. Sometimes it’s a disorientation fog when you can’t remember who you were before.

But always, always, it’s a messenger.

It’s telling you: “This mattered. This changed you. This love was real.”

I’m sharing all this because I’ve been listening to your messages from the last few weeks. So many of you wrote back (thank you for trusting me with your stories). And what struck me is how many of you are carrying grief you haven’t named yet.

The woman who wrote about feeling “off” since her last child left for college. The other client who can’t seem to find joy in work she used to love. The one who moved across the country and feels like she left part of herself behind.

These aren’t just bad days or funks or phases. This is grief doing what grief does. It reshapes your inner world.

And when we don’t name it, it names us instead. It becomes “I’m just tired” or “I’m falling behind” or “Something’s wrong with me.”

But the truth is simpler and more sacred.

What if you’re just a human being who loved something – a person, a place, a version of yourself, a future that felt certain – and now you’re learning to love differently?

In the grief companion I’ve been creating, there’s a session called “The Griefs No One Sees.” It’s about giving language to these quiet, invisible losses that shape us without permission. Because I believe that when we can say, “Oh, this is grief,” something shifts. Not because naming it makes it go away. But because naming it makes it belong. It has a place now. It makes sense.

And when something makes sense, we can finally stop fighting it. 

So today, I’m wondering: What grief are you carrying that hasn’t been named yet? Where in your body do you feel it? And what might change if you could look at it and say, “I see you”?

This is witnessing and honouring what’s true. Because grief isn’t the absence of love. It’s love with nowhere to go.

And maybe if we give it somewhere to go, it might show us something we couldn’t see before.

With love and the courage to name what’s real, 

Jonni

P.S. In my next letter, I’ll be sharing more about how my grief companion, “The Love We Carry Forward”, came to be. The recordings that broke me open. The moments where I had to stop because my own grief rose up to meet me. And why I believe this companion is different from anything else out there. Not because it promises to fix your grief, but because it promises to honour it.

P.P.S. If you’re feeling that quiet ache as you read this, try placing one hand where you feel it most in your body. Just rest it there. Breathe. And tell it, “I see you. I feel you. You matter.” The simplest gestures are often the most powerful medicine.