67. Grief Is Meant To Change You. Now Let It

The host of Aware and Aggravated opens her return episode with a confession: she has been in a grief period, boycotting social media, and not posting anything. The reason she is recording at all is that she ran into a fan at a grocery store who asked how to get over the fear of what other people think. She told him to speak from what feels uncomfortable to keep inside — to ask what he would regret not putting out if he found out he was going to die tomorrow. Then she realized she needed to take her own advice.

The central argument of the episode is that grief is meant to change you, and that the instinct to "get back to who you were" is a trap. The host has spent the past year grieving people, relationships, her grandmother's death, her career plans, and her sense of safety. She thought the goal was to return to her previous mental and emotional state. But she has come to see that this is impossible — and that trying to do so is what has been making her feel stuck.

The illusion of "getting back to me"