The Invisible Cracks

After grief, you walk around with invisible cracks.

In the early days, it takes everything you have just to keep yourself together. To not let the mess slip out in public. You learn how to breathe around the lump in your throat, how to smile when your chest feels hollow. But the effort is immense.

Holding it all in can leave your body aching—tight shoulders, clenched jaws, pounding headaches. And if you push too hard through the day, the collapse that comes at night is epic. You end up in a puddle of grief, all the sorrow that was held back finally surging through.

The hardest part is that no one can see the change. Your internal landscape has been shattered, reshaped. But from the outside, you look mostly the same. Maybe a little tired. Maybe red-rimmed eyes. But those signs barely skim the surface of what has shifted inside you. Sometimes, it feels like you’re living a lie—walking around pretending to be ‘fine’ while feeling hollow or broken inside. Other times, you feel like a ghost of yourself, floating through the world unseen. You feel invisible.

And yet, it doesn’t stay this way forever.

Over time, there are moments where you catch a glimpse of something else. Some days, your scars feel like they’ve been filled with gold. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, your cracks don’t disappear—but they shine. You can see where you’ve been hurt, and still, you feel whole.

Other days, it’s more like sticky tape. The kind that barely holds the pieces together. But you keep going. And slowly, gently, there are more days of gold than of glue. More strength than fragility. More breath than ache.

Grief changes you. But it doesn’t mean you’re broken beyond repair.

If you're walking with invisible cracks right now, know this: you don’t have to walk alone.

This is the space I hold—for those learning to live with loss, for those feeling unseen in their grief. A place to be tender, messy, human.

If this speaks to you, I invite you to walk alongside me.