Grief is a strange thing. You can go years, months, or days feeling like you’re okay, and then out of nowhere it knocks you to your knees and steals the breath from your lungs. Suddenly the memories and emotions come rushing back, flooding through your entire body. Grief comes in waves. When the wound is still fresh, the waves are relentless. The pain feels unbearable, and you’re not sure you can survive it. You don’t know how you’re supposed to move forward when the life you thought you had is suddenly gone. When you’re young, you don’t always know how to cope. Sometimes the only thing you know how to do is bury the pain and lose yourself in being the fun, carefree girl everyone expects you to be. But life does go on. Somehow, you keep moving forward. You learn to live with the choices, the memories, and the trauma. Some days you take a few steps forward, only to feel like you’ve taken ten steps back the next. It’s a vicious cycle—but it’s also part of learning how to carry the gri...