Every night, my four-year-old granddaughter tells me, “My mommy’s dead.”

And every morning, without fail, she asks, “Is my mommy alive today?”

That’s how she’s making sense of the world now. Her bedtime comes with finality—an ache she names out loud. And morning brings just enough hope, or confusion, to ask the question again.

This exchange undoes me.

Because she’s not just repeating words. She’s living in that tension we all know too well: the ache of something lost and the flicker of wondering if maybe—just maybe—it could still come back.

While her grief is deep and unique—losing a mother at four years old—it has also opened my eyes to the quieter griefs we all carry. The ones that don’t make headlines or draw casseroles but still shape how we wake up and how we go to bed.

We grieve in small ways almost daily:

  • The relationship that’s not what it used to be.
  • The version of ourselves we thought we’d be by now.
  • The plan that didn’t unfold.
  • The job we gave everything to that didn’t love us back.
  • The ordinary life that suddenly feels unrecognizable.

And just like her, we go to bed naming what’s gone. And we wake up hoping—sometimes irrationally, sometimes faithfully—that it might return.

There’s something sacred about acknowledging this kind of grief. Not minimizing it. Not rushing through it. But noticing it. Sitting beside it. Letting it teach us what we need to know.

What I’m learning from my granddaughter is this: grief doesn’t follow logic. It follows love. And love doesn’t always need resolution—it needs room. Room to speak what’s true. Room to ask impossible questions. Room to feel both heartbreak and hope in the same breath.

So if you find yourself grieving something you can’t quite name, or waking up with that haunting hope that maybe today will be different—know this: You’re not alone. The loss may not be visible, but it matters. It shapes you. And acknowledging it might be the most human thing you do all day.

Tonight, I’ll tuck her in again. She’ll say what she says. I’ll answer what I can. And we’ll wake up tomorrow, still loving, still grieving, still beginning again.

What are you quietly hoping will come back to life in this season?

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