Overcoming Obstacles: From Grief to Growth

When Life Doesn’t Ask, It Demands

I am participating in #BLOGCHATTERA2Z YEAR 2025 & Blogging from A to Z Challenge! There are moments in life when choices fall away, and what remains is necessity. I didn’t plan for a second act. I didn’t plan to start over at 40, but life without asking- insisted I do. When the world shifted beneath me, and the person I leaned on was no longer there, I had to become both anchor and sail for myself and my children. Grief was heavy, but responsibility was heavier. And somehow, even with a broken heart, I carried both. Here is how my journey rose from Overcoming Obstacles: From Grief to Growth.

The Unseen Weights We Carry

Starting work in midlife isn’t easy. Doing it while grieving, navigating finances, and raising children alone? That takes something more than courage. It takes quiet, daily resilience—the kind that doesn’t make headlines but changes lives.

While society draped me in their expectations of widowhood—quiet, sorrowful, invisible—I did something radical: I lived. I stepped outside. I showed up. I worked. Not because I wanted applause, but because survival isn’t a performance—it’s a necessity.

But the world isn’t always kind to women who don’t stay in their place.

The Shadows We Don’t Speak About

There’s a silence around what women endure when they walk into workplaces alone, vulnerable, and determined. I faced not just professional challenges, but personal intrusions—looks that lingered too long, assumptions whispered behind backs, and the ever-present undertone that my strength must mean availability.

I’ve written about some of this in my post She: is Courage. Not to dwell, but to honour the truth. To name what so many women quietly carry. Because healing begins when shame is no longer ours to hold.

Setbacks That Shaped Me

There were days I came home exhausted—not just from work, but from proving myself. Days when I wondered if I’d ever be seen as more than my circumstances. But every setback taught me something valuable.

That dignity is louder than judgment.
That loneliness doesn’t mean defeat.
That survival is a kind of rebellion.
That coming back—again and again—is a victory in itself.

Another Storm I Didn’t See Coming

Just when life began to feel familiar again—when I had started building a quieter rhythm in this version of me—another storm arrived. A loss so deep, it didn’t just touch my heart—it carved through it.

Losing my child was not something I could prepare for. It left an ache that words cannot hold. It was as if a piece of me had gone missing, and no amount of time, no ritual, no routine could fill that space.

For years, I couldn’t speak of it. But now, slowly, I’m learning to live around the silence. I’m learning to carry this grief alongside the love that never left. And in that delicate balance, I’m beginning—just beginning—to breathe again.

The Woman I Became

I didn’t just rebuild a life. I rebuilt myself. Stronger. Softer. Wiser. I stopped waiting for someone to save me. I became the woman my younger self would have needed. Yes, I was broken. But I didn’t stay that way.

From Setback to Comeback

Comebacks aren’t grand or glamorous. They’re quiet. They’re the decision to show up for yourself when no one else does. They’re choosing to keep writing, working, living—even when you’re grieving, doubting, or scared.

I turned pain into power. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But persistently.

And now, when I look back, I don’t just see what I lost. I see what I found—my voice, my strength, my story.