Learning to Hold Grief and Gratitude at the Same Time

My husband and I were bushwalking at the beginning of a 3.5-month trip around Australia, not long into life without Josiah, when I felt this bubble of pure excitement rise up out of nowhere. I threw my arms in the air and shouted, "We're on an adventure!" — and the very next moment, I was crying because Josiah wasn't with us.

I'd read somewhere that grief is interruptive. I told Josh I agreed. It's an apt description. One moment you feel okay. The next, grief has invaded — sometimes like a sledgehammer.

That's the thing nobody tells you about grief that lasts. It doesn't stay in the sad moments. It doesn't wait politely for you to be ready. It shows up in the middle of joy, mid-sentence, mid-laugh, and you're left standing in both places at once.

At times, the pain lurks just under the surface. I feel okay on top — I've had a good day — but I catch a glimpse and it's right there again, waiting to swallow me up. It's like teetering over the edge of a pit full of glass shards, thinking if I can just hold back, I won't go crashing into the pain that will feel like it's tearing me apart.

I used to feel guilty on the days I hadn't thought about Josiah enough. In the early days, anything remotely resembling joy or happiness made me feel guilty too, as though smiling somehow betrayed him. That feeling has softened over time but never fully disappeared. Grief is not linear, and this is not some simple lesson to conquer.

We received Josiah's ashes not long after the funeral. It felt like goodbye all over again. I wrote that night that I felt desperate — desperate to wake up from this nightmare, desperate for one more hold, one more look, one more chance to talk to him. After all this time, that desperation hasn't gone away. I still think I'm going to wake up sometimes. I crash into reality over and over.

I was watching a movie with my husband a while later, and there was a scene that stayed with me long after it ended. A man has cancer, and it doesn't look good. At the same time, he's just discovered his wife is pregnant. He holds out one hand and says, "This is my grief." Then he holds out the other and says, "This is my gratitude." With both hands outstretched, palms up, he says, "I am learning how to hold both at the same time."

It deeply resonated with me. Because that is exactly what these past eighteen months have been: learning how to hold grief and gratitude at the same time.

What surprised me most is that I can be all of it at once. Genuinely full of joy and equally full of pain, in the very same moment. Not one after the other — together, tangled up, impossible to separate. A moment of real happiness doesn't push the grief out to make space for itself. It just makes room for both, sitting side by side, neither one cancelling the other out.

The grief stays with me. Sometimes it sits quietly beside me, like an ever-present companion, allowing me to enjoy the moment while still carrying the ache of missing my son. Other times, it bursts out of me without warning, and I go from laughing to crying my heart out in an instant.

In some ways, small practices of gratitude have saved me from the depths. When I've been at my lowest, I've come back to intentionally noticing and writing down the good things in my life. On a larger scale, I think travelling around Australia for over three months after Josiah passed helped with this too. I find I now carry a deeper sense of awe and wonder for this beautiful world we live in.

Yet the grief and pain do not disappear in beautiful places. They do not leave just because I am standing on a mountaintop watching a glorious sunrise, or snorkelling in the clearest turquoise waters you can imagine. They do not lessen simply because I laugh, smile, or experience a moment of joy.

I went a step further after reading a prompt in Resilient Grieving by Lucy Hone. I reflected on all that Josiah had given me: the ways he changed me, the good things I have done because of him, the strengths I have discovered through loving and losing him. None of it takes away the devastation of losing him. I would give everything back in a heartbeat for him to be here. But it did give me a deeper sense of gratitude for his life. Not gratitude for his death. Not gratitude because I believe there is some grand purpose in it. Just gratitude I got to be his Mum. That I got to know him.

I still choose gratitude, most days. I haven't managed to make it a consistent daily habit, but I write down what I'm grateful for, no matter how small. It's my small act of remembering what is still good in this life, even alongside heartbreak.

That's what I've learned: grief doesn't ask permission. It doesn't wait for a better moment. It interrupts — a bushwalk, a good day, a friend's laugh, an ordinary Tuesday — and you don't get to choose when. All you get to choose is what you do with the moment it does. For me, more and more, that has meant holding both hands open. This is my grief. This is my gratitude. I am still learning how to hold both at the same time — and I think I will be for the rest of my life.

Some of Josiah's story is shared in “Little Life, Big Loss — Where Love Continues Beyond the Heartbeat.” It's a collection of stories that honour babies gone too soon, and the families who continue to carry them forward in love. Find out more here.