In this candid, first‑person monologue, Shawna Lynne reflects on the intense, consuming nature of grief and how it competes with joy for emotional energy. She describes grief as a rapid, painful force that forces her to replay past events, question choices, and search for healthier ways forward. Shawna emphasizes the need to balance the energy required for grieving with activities that generate joy—ranging from simple stretches to baths or reading—so that one can move out of sorrow. She then turns inward, examining her own patterns: whether daily conversations fill her soul, if she feels grateful, and whether she is overwhelmed by an over‑packed schedule. Shawna recounts her relationship history—four committed partnerships, each marked by missing foundations, lack of boundaries, and a chameleon‑like tendency to adapt to partners, which she identifies as a detriment rather than a strength. She outlines three trauma‑informed ways people show up after loss: overwhelming positivity ("fake it till you make it"), low‑vibration stagnation, and a neutral stuckness, warning against toxic positivity. Shawna stresses the importance of a safety plan and gratitude practices as concrete tools to navigate grief without staying stuck, describing how gratitude can lift one from depression back to creativity and joy. She frames this period as a reinvention, a new start where she can finally sit still, honor her needs, and consciously choose what to pursue in 2025, treating life as an open buffet of possibilities.
Chapters
Grief is a crazy fucker. It takes you down so fast and hurts so much. It gets in the way of everything, and it brings up your most vulnerable pieces. It's the place where you start to go through he said, she said, I did, you did, did we make the right choice, was there a mistake, could we have done better. You go through all of it if you want to reflect on it so that if you move forward, there's a healthier way going forward. It is important to know how much energy you need for grief and how much energy you need for joy. Now grief could be anything— crying, talking, whatever you need to let out the emotion of sorrow, of heartache. Joy could be anything that takes you out of that state. Joy can be as small as lying on the floor and stretching. It could be taking a bath, reading a book, Anything to put your head into a thinking space that isn't the past and sorrow. Your whole life can be wrapped up in what happened to you. The energy is better used to figure out what you're gonna do now that you know all of this. In my reflection, I start to see the patterns of who I can be. Check in with yourself and ask, am I spending my day and having conversations that are filling my soul? Am I grateful for the plans I make and the things I do? Is my energy exhausted, overwhelmed? I put too much on my plate, way too much. I'm not sure how I thought it was possible to do all the things I did. My life was crazy busy before I partnered, and his life was crazy busy before he partnered. And trying to be okay and be ourselves and be like, accept each other. There's no way you can have all of that at the same time without a sacrifice of something. There's a place in each person where you know what works for you. And we know in this vast world of relationships and dating and partnership, no one's ever gonna get all the checklists. It's just not possible. I have fallen in love now 4 times, maybe way more, but 4 times I've committed to build a relationship with different humans, and each time I went in with my best. My first one, it just didn't have the foundation. Really, I probably should have left right in the beginning. It would have saved us both a lot of pain. I'm sorry I stayed in, but I didn't believe in divorce, and I had 2 kids with disabilities. I didn't know what else to do. And then I had the one that was the transition. That was fun, it was good, but I did not set any boundaries for myself. I think that was the beginning of my descent. If I wanted to be in a partnership, I would be a chameleon and try and be part of their life. I like every life. I can fit in anywhere. That is my detriment, not my superpower, sometimes. Not in a man's relationship. And throughout the time, I talk openly and share stories about how hard it is to find the communication to build the foundation for all your second relationships. It's challenging, and sometimes we just start to vibrate differently. We don't want to let go of the love, it's so precious, but we stay in longer instead of Sitting in the sorrow. We stay in uncomfortable instead of being uncomfortable alone. We put on our perfectionist and our people pleaser, and we do everything to keep that feeling of love you found in the beginning. It was so beautiful and precious. And sadly, Or gratefully, depends how you're looking. When you come from a history of trauma and tragedy, there are 3 ways that you show up. One is overwhelming, energetic, talk positive, talk positivity, fake it till you make it, because that's how you build the joy up. If you're vibrating so low, you need to extreme it all the way up and fill your cup. You're in the neutral, you're just stuck. You definitely don't want to go into the pain and explore it. It hurts way too much, and the energy to choose joy, also way too much. Takes so much effort to go from neutral up when you haven't sunk all the way down. It's just a vibration that we just sit in. It's the easiest to be in. We can have so many distractions. If you've built a support system or a safety plan, then you know how grief goes and you know what to do with it. I spent the morning with a woman whose grief is way larger than mine and a hole that can never be filled. And I looked in the mirror and I said, this is just a new start, a reinvention. You try it again. You believe in love. This man was amazing, but just didn't work. And that grief, it's in the middle. It's there. There's no way around it. I can swallow it. I could eat it. I can hide it. I can be angry at it. I can embrace it. I can sit right into it. I can let it absorb me. I can throw it on top of me and sink right into it. Grief is a crazy motherfucker. And every time grief hits your body, it has a memory, and it's harder to move through those emotions because you know how you're gonna feel. You already have that understanding. So a safety plan is so essential if you do not want to stay in grief and you want to grow and reflect and be a better person. There is the place, the third other place. There's the toxic positivity, fake it till you make it. There's the neutral, grief is what we know, uncomfortable is okay, I'm just gonna be with it. Not dive deep into where it came from and where the responsibility for you is in owning it, dealing with it, loving it, sharing it, whatever you need, but doing it. It's the action of grief. It is going in and showing yourself what you have to be grateful for, because the gratitude, those levels of gratitude, is what takes you from Depression and grief, overwhelming depression, back up to a place where you can experience joy, laughs, come back to your creativity and capture the life that you lost, rebuild, transition, transform, transformational right now in this moment of time. I can't believe I am here in this space. It's nothing like I ever would have imagined when I started this journey, but there is a need for me. I want more. I'm not sure what that is. I have no idea. Here I am for the first time in my life. The buffet is open. I need to decide what I like, what I want, and which I'm going to order one after another. It is time to stop and sit still. I've never been able to do that. Now I can. I'm gonna honor it and be it. And see what comes out on the other side in 2025.
