ARE YOU READY FOR THE REAL ANSWER?

The silent pause behind every “How are you?.” When you ask a grieving person “How are you?” — are you really prepared for the answer?

Most days, when someone asks me that question, I take a small breath and quickly assess how much truth the other person can handle. In a fraction of a second, I ask myself: What level of grief or honesty can this person carry today?

Because my real answer isn’t simple. It’s not always pretty. And it often makes people uncomfortable.

So I keep a few prepared versions of the truth in my pocket.

There’s the polite one: “We’re doing okay, one day at a time.”

There’s the softer one: “Some days are better than others.”

And then there’s the real one — the one I rarely say out loud — that admits how hard it still is to live with a hole that never really closes.

Grief changes the way you move through conversations. You learn who you can be real with. You learn who’s willing to sit in the silence, who listens without trying to fix you, who doesn’t look away when the tears come. Those people — they are gold.

And don’t even get me started when people ask, “Are you happy in Canada?”

How do you measure happiness when your heart lives in two worlds — one where your loved one existed, and one where you’re still learning to exist without them?

So yes, I smile. I show up. I say, “I’m okay.” But behind those words, there’s a quiet truth:

I’m surviving, rebuilding, carrying love and loss together — one breath, one day, one tender answer at a time.
I’m stressed, tired, desperate, scared, deeply sad, and sometimes truly devastated.
And on the hardest days, I just wish I could scream reset — and keep going.