No One Came to Sit With Me

The loneliest thing about grief isn't the loss itself. It's what happens after.

It's the quiet. The phone that stops ringing. The people who don't know what to say, so they say nothing. The friends who show up for the funeral and disappear by Thursday.

I know this loneliness intimately.

When I lost my dad in 2003, I was living far from home. I hadn't been in the same town as my parents for years — but I had always had his voice. His phone calls. The comfort of the one person who knew me completely. And when that was gone, I went into shock. For three days, my body wouldn't let go. I cried and cried and yearned for his return.

And I realized something devastating: no one was coming to sit with me.

There was no social media back then. No groups to find online, no threads to scroll through at 2am when the grief felt unbearable. I had no best friend nearby — just friends I'd met along the way. Good people, kind people. But no one who could hold the weight of what I was carrying.

The journey became my own.

I thought that was a failure. Now I know it was a formation.

When there's no one to hand your pain to, you have to find somewhere to put it. I put mine into hiking trails and long drives and conversations with God in the dark. I had someone to talk to even when it felt like no one else was there.

And slowly — slowly — I started to breathe again. My mind stopped being controlled by pain and started being controlled by something else: the quiet, hard-won knowledge that I was going to get through this. A heavier weight at the gym. A longer walk. A morning where I woke up and thought about something other than loss.

That's what healing actually looks like. It's not dramatic. It's not a single moment. It's a series of small survivals, strung together into a life.

But here's what I wish someone had said to me:

You don't have to walk this alone.

Not because someone will magically appear to carry your grief — they might not. But because you deserve to be seen in it. You deserve someone to say: I know this road. I've walked it. And I can walk alongside you.

That's why I'm here.

I created Elizabeth Nelson CO because no one was there to sit with me — and I never want that to be your story. Loss doesn't have to mean lonely. Identity doesn't have to disappear into grief.

There is a life worth living on the other side of this.

If no one has said it to you yet: I see you. And I'm here.

Elizabeth Nelson is a Grief & Identity Coach helping women find themselves again after loss. Start with the free 7 Days of Hope email series at elizabethnelsonco.com.