Self-Love and Grief

Welcome to the Tuesday Talk recap. We come together every Tuesday to offer hints to help you align your energy with practices to keep you mindful of being or becoming the best version of yourself.

We cover various topics from mediumship readings, grief, meditation, mindfulness, spiritual growth, and more. If this is your first time here, I want to welcome you to a safe space to discover balance, peace, healing, and growth. Welcome back to all who have been here before.

During the month of February, we have been covering the act of self-love, heart chakra focus, and self-love focused meditations. I would be remiss if I did not touch upon self-love during a time of grief. Whether your loss came suddenly, through illness, through addiction, through suicide, or in ways that there is no name — this space is for you.

If you listened live, the replay, or reading this blog, just take a breath with me. You don’t have to close your eyes — just soften for a second. Here is the truth. Grief changes how we treat ourselves. Sometimes we are kinder. Sometimes we become our own harshest critic. If you can, will you reflect with me? Think with a loving heart. Since this loss…have I been gentle with myself? Or have I been expecting myself to be “strong” at all times? Where have I judged my grief instead of honoring it?

1. Self-Love During Grief Is Not “Staying Positive”

Grief is not a failure of self-love. It is love with nowhere to go.

Self-love during grief is:

• Letting yourself cry without apologizing.

• Not rushing your healing to make others comfortable.

• Refusing to shame yourself for still hurting.

Self-love in grief isn’t bubble baths and affirmations. It’s allowing the ache. It’s sitting in the silence. It’s honoring the depth of what was lost.

2. Grief Exposes Where We Abandon Ourselves

Loss often brings:

• Guilt (“I should have…”)

• Anger (“Why did this happen?”)

• Comparison (“Everyone else seems fine.”)

Self-love during grief means:

• Speaking to yourself gently when the mind spirals.

• Releasing the “what ifs” when they become self-punishment.

• Understanding that survival mode is not weakness.

3. Self-Love Is Letting Grief Change You

Grief reshapes identity. You are not the same person after loss — and self-love means allowing that transformation without resisting it.

Instead of:

• I need to get back to who I was.

It becomes:

• Who am I becoming through this?

4. Self-Love Is Boundaries in Grief

• Saying no when your energy is low.

• Not explaining your timeline.

• Protecting your heart from conversations that feel minimizing.

Grief is tender. Self-love is guarding that tenderness.

5. Self-Love Is Staying Alive When It Hurts

Self-love during grief is:

• Choosing to keep breathing.

• Asking for help.

• Refusing to follow the pain into self-destruction.

The greatest act of self-love during grief may simply be this — I am still here.

Grief is proof that we loved deeply. And self-love in grief isn’t about moving on — it’s about moving with. It’s allowing the waves without drowning in them. It’s forgiving ourselves for surviving. And it’s remembering that even broken hearts are still beating.

Where Have I Left Myself?

Grief can pull us outward — into memories, into regret, into questions.
 But for just a moment, I want to gently bring you back to you.”

Reflect again, if you will. Where have I been hardest on myself since this loss? What have I expected of myself that I would never expect of someone else? In what ways have I abandoned my own heart?

If self-love during grief is simply staying with yourself…where might you begin today?

Self-love during grief might simply be this — 
speaking to yourself the way you would speak to someone else who is shattered.”

I you’re comfortable, type one word in the comments (or email me) that you need more of from yourself right now — gentleness, patience, grace, space…

Speaking to the Grieving “Me”

Picture yourself in one of your hardest moments since this loss. Notice your posture. Your breath. Your eyes.

Ask yourself gently, “What did I need in that moment that I did not receive? What words would I offer that version of myself now? Can I offer those words to myself today?

Place a hand on your heart and silently say: “I did the best I could with what I knew then.

“What Is Still Alive in Me?”

Let’s gently shift your mindset from sorrow to empowerment without bypassing grief.

Ask yourself, “What part of me has survived this? What strength have I discovered that I didn’t know I had? How has love continued — even after loss?

Grief changed you. But it did not erase you.

Self-love during grief isn’t loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s the quiet decision to stay. To breathe. To soften toward yourself instead of hardening. And today you did that. Even when we question the why…love remains. And self-love is remembering we are worthy of that same compassion.

Think about the version of you that was in the earliest days of this loss.
Would you criticize her… or would you hold her?

Today isn’t about moving on.
It’s about how we love ourselves while we’re still hurting. Because grief doesn’t just break our hearts…it can break the way we treat ourselves.

Grief doesn’t just take someone we love. Sometimes it takes our softness with ourselves too. And no one really talks about how hard it is to love yourself when your world has been rearranged. Some of you are carrying a loss that changed you forever. And you’ve been strong for everyone else… but not always kind to yourself.

Today, we’re acknowledging to ourselves if you have treated yourself with kindness.

Grief is love with nowhere to go.
And when love has nowhere to go, it can turn inward — as guilt, anger, or self-blame.

What if self-love during grief is simply choosing not to turn against yourself?

Let’s go deeper:

Grief is a song that stopped mid-lyric. Your heart still knows the melody… but the music isn’t playing anymore.

Self-love is letting yourself hum the melody anyway.

Some losses feel like a candle that was blown out before it burned down. You weren’t ready for the dark.

Self-love is learning to sit in the dim light without blaming yourself for the wind.

Sometimes grief is a last text message you’ll never delete. You open it. You read it again. As if the words might rearrange themselves.

Self-love is allowing yourself to close the phone without forcing yourself to forget.

Grief can feel like the cold side of the bed. You reach over out of habit…and there’s nothing there.

Self-love is not scolding yourself for still reaching.

An ellipsis is three quiet dots…
but sometimes those dots feel like a cliff you were pushed from without warning.

Self-love is learning how to land without blaming yourself for the fall. Grief is the bruise love leaves when it has nowhere else to go.

Grief is love that didn’t finish its sentence. When a sentence is unfinished, our minds try to complete it.
 That’s where the ‘what ifs’ come from.
 That’s where the guilt sneaks in.
 That’s where we start rewriting the ending over and over again.”

This is where self-love comes in.

Self-love during grief is recognizing that some sentences will never be completed — and choosing not to punish yourself for that.

An unfinished sentence lingers. It echoes. It hangs in the air. That’s what grief feels like. A conversation that stopped…but your heart is still speaking.

Self-love is letting your heart finish what it needs to say — even if no one answers back. What sentence feels unfinished for you? And what would it look like to release yourself from having to fix it?

Some love stories don’t get a period at the end. They get an ellipsis…those 3 dots at the end of a sentence. It signifies something unfinished. A pause. Words left unsaid.

I’m saying the story didn’t end cleanly. It didn’t resolve. It didn’t feel complete. A period is final. Those 3 dots (an ellipsis lingers.) And self-love is learning how to live in the space after the dots.

It’s like reading a beautiful book and finding the last chapters ripped out. You keep flipping the pages, hoping you missed something.

Self-love is accepting that you may never read the ending…and allowing the love in the earlier chapters to still matter.

It’s the ‘I love you’ that didn’t get one more echo. The apology that never happened. The questions that never got answered. The conversation that stopped mid-breath.
The future that ended in the middle of a word.

An ellipsis is three quiet dots…
It means something was meant to continue. And some of you are living in those three dots.

Grief can feel like standing in front of a door you used to walk through every day…
reaching for the handle out of habit…and realizing it will never open again.

And sometimes, without realizing it, we start blaming ourselves for the door being closed. We replay the last conversation. The last choice. The last moment.

But self-love during grief is this — It’s allowing the sentence to be unfinished…
and choosing not to turn the pain against yourself. You are not grieving wrong. You are grieving honestly.
And that is love — still speaking — even after the words ran out.

Because my head knows.
 My head knows they’re gone.
 My head knows I couldn’t control it.
 My head knows I did the best I could.

But my heart…
 My heart still reaches for the door handle.
 My heart still replays the last conversation.
 My heart still hurts.”

And self-love during grief is not forcing the heart to catch up to the head. It’s allowing both to exist. The knowing…and the ache. It’s choosing not to turn the unfinished sentence into self-punishment. You are not weak because your heart hasn’t caught up. You are human. And that ache?
It’s love…still speaking…even after the words ran out

You know…something I’ve learned sitting with grieving hearts is this — 

My head knows.

My head knows the facts.
My head knows what happened.
My head can even understand the why sometimes. But my heart still hurts.

And there’s something about grief that becomes more real when you put it into words. Have you ever noticed that? When it’s just in your mind, it floats. But when you write it down…when it’s ink on paper…it feels permanent.” Sometimes that’s why self-love during grief is so hard.
Because making it real means admitting it changed you.

And some of us are afraid that if we stop replaying the unfinished sentence…if we stop holding the pain tightly…it means we’re letting them go.

But self-love isn’t letting them go. It’s letting yourself live…without punishing yourself for surviving.

I’ve heard this from so many grieving hearts…and I’ve felt it too.

The powerful undercurrent here is this:

The head seeks closure. The heart seeks connection. Self-love allows both.

There’s something sacred about writing your grief down. Not because it fixes it. Not because it makes it smaller. But because it witnesses it. When pain stays only in your head, it can twist. It can grow sharp. It can turn against you.

But when you write it, you’re saying — ‘This happened. This mattered. I mattered.’ Writing is a form of witnessing. And witnessing is an act of love.

In grief, so much feels unseen. The private tears. The guilt you don’t say out loud. The questions that wake you up at 2 a.m. When you put those words on paper, you become the compassionate witness to your own heart. Healing doesn’t always mean feeling better. Sometimes healing means being fully seen. And when you write your grief down…
You are telling your nervous system, ‘I will not abandon you in this.’

Grief is love that didn’t finish its sentence. It’s the words that hung in the air…the goodbye that didn’t feel complete. It’s the future that stopped mid-page. An ellipsis is three quiet dots…
It means something was meant to continue. And sometimes, we spend years trying to finish the sentence in our heads. Rewriting it. Replaying it. Hoping the ending will change.

But what if self-love isn’t finishing their sentence, what if it’s continuing your own?

When you write your grief down, when you speak it, when you allow it to be witnessed, you are not reopening the wound. You are becoming the author of what comes after the dots. The words that were never said. The love that feels unfinished…doesn’t have to disappear. You can carry it forward. You can write the memoir. You can tell the story. You can let future generations know, this love existed.

Self-love during grief is not pretending the sentence wasn’t cut short. It’s honoring what was said, grieving what wasn’t, and choosing to keep writing anyway.

Some love stories end in ellipses…
but you are still a living paragraph. Love never ends. And your story is still being written. When a life ends mid-sentence, love becomes the memoir we keep writing. That carries on for generations. What was left unsaid does not disappear — it lives in the way we choose to keep loving.

My head knows the sentence ended, but my heart keeps writing in the margins. And maybe that’s what self-love is during grief. Not forcing the page to look the way it used to. Not pretending those 3 dots don’t exist.

These reflections, the space between what the head knows and what the heart feels, are something I’ve spent years sitting with, alongside grieving hearts. If writing feels like a way your heart continue in the margins, I created something for that. It’s called “My Head Knows….But My Heart still Hurts”. It’s available if you feel it would help support you. And whether you write in its pages or simply sit with your own thoughts today…be gentle with your heart.

Grief is love that didn’t get to finish its sentence. And self-love is allowing yourself to feel that love- without punishing yourself for it. You are not grieving wrong. You are grieving honestly and that is enough.

All these things and so many more are what grief feels like. Maybe, you can find the courage to remember what self-love feels like.

Blessings that you give yourself the self-love you need to live the life you love and love the life you live.

Offering a safe space to land to all who felt this way or will one day,

Stacey

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