When someone important and very close to you dies, there will likely come a point at which you will look around and find that you don’t quite recognize yourself. You have changed. Their death has made you a new person altogether. Grief will change you, and often in surprising or unexpected ways.

Often the change feels tremendous, an unsettling shift in your world. It doesn’t happen right away, when you are immersed in raw grief, but rather it sneaks up on you after a while, when you start to fortify yourself for moving forward in life without your important person. 

Who Are You Now?

Some time after my mom died, it felt as if on certain days I woke up in a different house. Or my house was the same, but all the clothing in my closet belonged to someone else–a different person I didn’t recognize. 

I thought I understood generally what grief should feel like, but I didn’t expect how much it would change my ability to function and live in my own current life. 

Goal Shifting.

I just didn’t feel like myself anymore. When I looked around at my life, I discovered my goals had shifted. I was a mom of two young kids, ages 7 and 9, when my mom died. Many of my days before she died revolved around keeping up with tasks, feeding everyone, and the logistics of work and school. I was getting through life, getting by with my head down, pushing through. 

But after she died, after a while, I found myself looking up and looking forward. I worried about the future. I wondered what I wanted to do in my life. I didn’t want to waste it. Not one moment. I didn’t want to come to the end of my life and realize I had a pile of regrets. 

Grief Ages You.

Depending on when your mom or dad died, at what point in your life, that death likely aged you in some way. 

I was a mom of two young kids, and when my own mother died, something snapped. The word that came to my mind even then was untethered. I was no longer tethered to the earth in the same way. 

My mother is gone. I am the mother now, I repeated to myself in my head. I became a motherless mother. The safety net below me had been removed.

I needed to be strong, but I didn’t feel strong. I needed to be prepared and ready, and I was anything but.

New Perspectives.

Once I was aware that I was changing, whether I wanted to or not, my perspective changed on so many things. I was able to speed up this process, because in a way it felt good. I tried to leap forward into these changes, eager to leave some of the stress of my old life behind.

It feels good not to care so much if a child shatters a dish in the kitchen. It is just a dish. As long as no one gets hurt, I calmly sweep up the pieces and throw them away. You are important, I tell my child, not the broken thing.

It feels good to be gentler and calmer with my children. To hug them more. To focus on happiness rather than keeping up with a thousand tasks.

The New You.

Our time on this earth is short. One day it will end, and we get to decide what we do with the days and years we are given. I decided I needed to change. I had been getting by for too long, forgetting to live. 

Your goals may shift, too, and what is important might become clearer to you. Run toward it. Reach out for it with both hands. We have the chance to live as our true, authentic selves. You get one life. What do you want to do with it? Start today. Start now. Even just a tiny step.

How did your parent’s death change you? When did you feel the shift? Add your thoughts in the comments below.