Behind the Chair: The Many Forms of Grief
Grief isn’t always what we think it is. It’s not just tied to death. It’s not always loud, or visible, or understood by others. Sometimes it’s quiet. Lingering. Ongoing. Sometimes it lives alongside everyday life so seamlessly that you don’t even realize how much you’re carrying.
For me, grief has never been just one moment— it’s been a thread woven through my entire life.
I grew up knowing two versions of love at once: one steady and present, and one complicated, inconsistent, shaped by struggles I couldn’t understand as a child. When a parent is physically alive but emotionally or mentally unavailable, there’s a unique kind of loss that forms. It’s not something you can point to or explain easily— but it’s there.
Over time, I had to grieve that relationship. Not because that person no longer exists, but because the version of them I needed couldn’t exist in my life anymore. That choice—creating distance, choosing peace for myself and my family—wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. Grieving someone who is alive is a different kind of heartbreak. It doesn’t have a clear ending.
And if I am being honest, that early experience shaped the relationships I chose later. I found myself loving someone who also needed saving. Someone whose pain, trauma, and addiction mirrored what I had known before. There were moments of love, moments that felt real and hopeful— but also moments were chaotic, heavy, and at times unsafe.
Leaving that relationship felt like losing something and choosing myself at the same time. It was layered. Confusing. Necessary. I wasn’t just grieving the person— I was grieving the potential, the “what could have been,” and the version of life I thought we might build.
Then came another kind of grief— one that changed me in a way I can’t fully put into words. Losing our baby Warner.
We were preparing to welcome him. He had a name, a place in our family, a future we had already started to imagine. My body went through the motions of motherhood— my milk came in, my hormones shifted, my body carried the physical weight of birth without the presence of a baby in my arms.
It felt like becoming a mother and losing a child all at once.
That kind of grief lives in your body. It doesn’t just sit in your thoughts— it shows up in waves, in memories, in moments you don’t expect. It’s love with nowhere to go.
And yet, somewhere in all of this, I found something unexpected. Healing with family, therapy and behind the chair.
Every day, I stand behind women who trust me not just with their hair, but with their stories. And what I’ve realized is this: grief is everywhere. It doesn’t look the same for any two people, but it exists in so many forms.
Loss of a parent. Loss of a relationship. Loss of a version of yourself. Loss of a dream, a baby, a future you had already begun to love.
Behind the chair, conversations unfold that remind me I’m not alone— and neither are they. There’s something powerful about holding space for someone while also quietly holding your own story. It’s in those shared moments— between foils, rinses and blowouts— that healing happens in the most unexpected ways.
Grief doesn’t mean something is broken. It means something mattered. And maybe that’s the thread that connects all of us.
We are all carrying something. We are all letting go of something. We are all learning, in our own time, how to move forward while honoring what we have lost.
If there’s one thing I have learned it’s this: Grief doesn’t leave— it evolves. It softens. It reshapes you.
And sometimes, it leads you exactly where you’re meant to be— standing behind the chair, connecting, listening, and realizing that even in loss, there is still so much life.
If you’re carrying something heavy right now, you’re not alone in it. Even when it feels invisible, it’s valid. And even when it feels endless, it won’t always feel the same as it does today.
Heather xo
