Healing Grief Matters
Grief in Summer: How to Get Through the Holidays, the BBQs, and the Moments That Catch You Off Guard
Nobody warns you about summer.
They prepare you, friends, family, and acquaintances, in their clumsy, well-meaning way, for the first Christmas. The first birthday. The anniversary. These are the dates marked in red on the grief calendar that everyone seems to know about.
But summer sneaks up on you differently.
It arrives loud and uninvited — all brightness and backyard laughter and the smell of someone else's barbecue drifting through your open window on a Saturday afternoon. And suddenly you are standing in your kitchen, completely undone. Not because you forgot. But because you remembered. Because he was the one who mastered his techniques, recreating the vision of what that BBQ tasted like, smelled like, and heavily anticipated. Because she always wore that particular apron when cooking the best potato salad you ever ate. Because the summer light falls exactly the way it did the last summer they were here. Because an air of excitement was brewing as “The Last Day of School” approached, plans were being made, and schedules were being aligned with family and friends for long sun—filled days ahead.
Summer grief is real. It is underdiagnosed, under-discussed, and profoundly lonely in a season that tells you — loudly, constantly — that you are supposed to be happy.
You are not broken for struggling. You are human — feeling displaced, feeling lost, grieving the days when all was right with the world.
And this — getting up and facing the world without them — is one of the hardest things a human being can do.
Why Summer Hits Differently: The science beneath the ache
Grief researchers have long understood that anniversaries and holidays activate what is called grief bursts — sudden, intense waves of loss triggered by sensory memory. Summer is uniquely powerful in this way because it is the most sensory season we have.
The smell of sunscreen. The sound of a lawnmower on a Sunday morning. The particular quality of late afternoon light in July. A song playing from a neighbor's porch.
These are not small things. They are portals — direct pathways back to every summer that came before this one, when they were still here.
Your nervous system does not distinguish between memory and the present moment when the sensory cue is strong enough.
This is why grief in summer can feel so physical — the tightening in the chest at a Fourth of July fireworks display, the sudden inability to breathe at a family reunion, the weight that descends without warning in the middle of what was supposed to be a perfectly ordinary Saturday afternoon.
This is not weakness. This is love, stored in the body, finding its way to the surface.
The BBQ, the Reunion, the Celebration You Cannot Skip: For the ones sitting at the table, holding it together.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from grieving in public.
Smiling when you are breaking. Laughing at the right moments. Answering "I'm doing okay" so many times, the words stop meaning anything at all. Watching everyone else move through the afternoon with an ease that feels almost foreign — as though they are living in a different country, one you used to belong to, one where the sun feels warm instead of accusatory.
If you are dreading the summer gathering — the family BBQ, the Fourth of July, the weddings, the graduation parties— you are not alone. So not alone.
Here is what I want you to know — from someone who has personally walked (and cried) through these exact days. Who has felt like an outsider in her own community. Who knows firsthand that the ache is real, that it is heavy, and that you do not have to pretend you are doing well.
Not for anyone. Not even for a Saturday afternoon.
You do not have to perform your healing.
You are allowed to show up as you are. Quieter than before. Less present than you used to be. You are allowed to step away from the table when you need to. To find a moment of stillness in a bathroom, a garden, a parked car — wherever the grief needs to breathe.
You are allowed to leave early. You are allowed to say this is hard for me right now. You are allowed to hold both — the love for the people in that room, and the love for the one who is no longer in it.
You can also choose not to go and do something that honors your loved one.
Both are true at the same time. You can even do both on the same day.
Go for a portion of the day to stay with life’s commitments for the people that need you (they might be grieving too, and you being there is as close to being with them as it can be), and then— kindly excuse yourself from the festivities and spend the rest of the day doing something that brings joy in remembering your loved one.
Sometimes these days call for curling up in a ball, spoon in one hand, a tub of ice cream in the other, crying, watching their favorite movie. I, of course, would know nothing about such a thing. 😁
The Moments That Catch You Off Guard: When grief finds you in the ordinary places
The grocery store in summer is its own kind of minefield. The watermelon display. The brand of popsicles they loved. The particular iced tea sitting on the shelf that you will never be able to purchase again without feeling it in your chest first. The type of dark roasted coffee that smelled so good while it was brewing. The camping supplies- smores. The hot dog and hamburger buns. Their favorite snacks.
These moments are not signs that you are grieving wrong or grieving too long. They are signs that you loved someone real. That they existed so completely in your ordinary life that their absence shows up in the ordinary places first.
The ancient wisdom traditions understood this — that grief is not a problem to be solved but a sacred process to be honored. That the soul moves through loss on its own timeline, answering to nothing but the depth of the love that preceded it.
What the grocery store moment is asking of you is not to hold it together. It is asking you to let it move through.
Thirty seconds of allowing is worth more than three hours of suppressing. The wave will pass. It always passes. And on the other side of it you will still be standing — a little more open, a little more honest with yourself about what you are carrying.
That is not weakness. That is the bravest thing I have ever witnessed a human being do.
What the Natural World Knows: Finding your way back to something steady
When the summer celebrations feel like too much — when the noise and the brightness and the expectations of joy become unbearable — go outside.
Not to escape the grief. To give it somewhere larger to exist.
The summer natural world — the long evening light, the warmth of the ground beneath bare feet, the way the trees hold their stillness even when everything around them is moving — carries a medicine that has no clinical name but that the body recognizes immediately.
You were not built to process loss within four walls.
Step outside. Find the quietest green thing near you. A tree. A garden. A patch of soft green grass. Let the warmth of the season — the same warmth that holds the memory of every summer they were alive — hold you now.
The earth does not ask you to be healed. It asks only that you come. And in the coming, something ancient in you remembers that you were never meant to carry this alone.
A Practical Summer Grief Guide: For the hard days
Before the gathering: Decide in advance how long you will stay. Having an exit plan is not avoidance — it is self-compassion. Tell one trusted person how you are feeling so you have an ally in the room.
During the gathering: Give yourself permission to step away for five minutes when you need to. Bring something that connects you to them — a piece of jewelry, a photo in your pocket, a quiet memory you carry like a talisman.
When the wave comes in public: Press your feet into the ground. Feel the physical surface beneath you. Breathe out longer than you breathe in. This signals safety to the nervous system and slows the cortisol response. You have thirty seconds. You can do thirty seconds.
For the long summer evenings: The late light is the hardest. Create a small ritual for the hour that used to belong to both of you — a candle, a song, a few sentences in your journal addressed directly to them. Let the evening have somewhere to go.
For the 2 am moments: You are not the only one awake. Not the only one loving someone in the dark. Not the only one wondering how to keep going until morning.
There are thousands of us. And we see you.
You Were Never Meant to Do This Alone
Summer does not stop for grief. The world does not pause. The invitations keep arriving. The light keeps being beautiful in that particular way that breaks your heart open every single evening.
And you keep going.
Not because it is easy. Not because you have figured out how. But because something in you — something ancient and stubborn and quietly miraculous — refuses to stop.
That is not survival. That is love, still moving forward. That is them, still shaping who you are becoming.
You are not the only one missing someone this summer. You were never meant to carry this alone.
And you are not. Because you are loved, and you matter. Don’t forget that.
Walking alongside you,
Stella Rose-
Dear Stella…
A safe space for the questions grief leaves behind.
Millions navigate grief in silence — not because love is absent, but because the deepest questions of loss have nowhere safe to be shared.
Dear Stella was created for exactly that.
For seventeen years, I carried my own uncertainties quietly. The questions too vulnerable for everyday conversation. Too sacred to risk being misunderstood.
Too real to carry alone any longer.
Until one day I found a newspaper column — one that answered the most intimate questions of loss, heartbreak, and identity. I read about people who felt they were failing to be who everyone expected them to be.
People carrying what I was carrying.
The person who answered those questions brought something I had almost stopped looking for — direction, light, and hope.
The quiet knowledge that we are not as alone as we feel.
I made a vow that day. When I reached a place where I could be that for someone else — I would.
Dear Stella is that place.
You are not alone in what you are feeling.
Many are waiting for someone else to go first.
Your courage gives language to what others have been holding in silence for years — because there is a particular relief in discovering that what you thought was yours alone belongs to more of us than we knew.
This is how we build a global grief support community.
One honest question at a time.
If something has been sitting with you —
Subject line: Dear Stella
For The Journey Ahead
One small act of care can reshape the landscape around you, a quiet reminder that healing begins one step at a time.
How to Get Through Summers in Their Absence
1. Give the Day a Shape
Unstructured summer days are the hardest. The open hours have a way of filling with absence. Before a difficult day arrives — a holiday, an anniversary, a Sunday that looks too much like the ones you shared — give it a gentle structure.
Not a schedule. A shape.
Morning for quiet. Afternoon for people if you need them, solitude if you don't. Evening for ritual — a candle, a walk, a meal that meant something to both of you.
A day with a shape is easier to move through than a day that stretches endlessly in every direction.
2. Create a Before-You-Go Plan
If you are attending a summer gathering — a BBQ, a family reunion, a Fourth of July celebration — decide three things before you walk through the door:
How long will you stay? Who is your safe person in that room? What will you do for yourself when you leave?
This is not avoidance. This is self-compassion wearing practical shoes.
3. Bring Them With You
You are allowed to bring them into the room — quietly, privately, in whatever way feels true to you.
A piece of their jewelry. A photo tucked into your pocket. Their favorite drink in your hand as a quiet toast only you know you are making.
Their absence will be present whether you acknowledge it or not. Choosing to honor it — gently, on your own terms — can transform the weight of missing them into something that feels more like love.
4. Make Space for What the Day Actually Needs
Some days the most healing thing you can do is show up for life — imperfectly, quietly, doing your best.
And some days the most healing thing you can do is close the curtains, take the phone off the hook, and give the grief the whole afternoon.
Both are right. Both count.
On the days that belong entirely to missing them — let them belong to that. Make their favorite meal even if you cannot finish it. Pull out the photographs you have been avoiding. Say their name out loud in an empty room just to hear it fill the air again.
Grief does not need to be productive. It does not need to look a certain way. It only needs to be honest.
And an honest afternoon — however quiet, however messy, however full of tears — is never a wasted one.
The Ache of Missing Them
The morning arrives.
You wake to the same tightness in your chest — a knowing that, before your feet have even touched the ground, it is going to be a day.
The sun is shining. You can hear the birds already giving praise to something new. But yours is another day. Another day without them.
The body aches from missing them. From thinking about them. From the kind of ruminating that happens in the quiet hours when the world is still asleep, and the missing has nowhere else to go.
The body aches from crying. From crying even harder. From the sheer exhaustion of having to keep going when every cell in you just wants to stop.
And today feels like it might be no different — wake up, do life, back to bed. If you even get out of bed today.
Does any of this sound familiar?
You Are Not Alone Today.
Today is not just "another day."
Before your feet even touch the floor — before the weight of it fully settles in — know this: there are thousands of people around the world waking up to this exact same morning right now. Loving someone who is gone. Wondering how to make it through a day that was never supposed to look like this.
You are not alone in that chest tightness. You are not alone in knowing before the day has even begun.
When the missing feels like it is yours alone to carry — let your thoughts travel outward.
To the mother in Scotland waking up without her son. To the husband in Brazil reaching for someone who is no longer there. To the families displaced by war — who have lost not just a person but an entire world. A home. A language. A life that existed before everything changed. Who are missing their loved ones across borders they cannot cross, in silences that have no end in sight.
To the parents around the world — who have had to bury their child. Whose hearts are carrying something that was never supposed to be carried. We join them in sorrow. We join them in connection. We join them in compassion, in a knowing that we do not look away.
Our hearts ache globally — in unison — so much so that this feeling, this particular human despair, can actually be felt across the distance between us.
That is not nothing. That is the invisible thread that connects every grieving person on earth to every other.
But What Does That Mean For Me?
My loved one is still not here. And today is still another summer day.
The lawnmowers start up next door. A small plane passes overhead. Motorcycles rev in the distance — the world going about its Saturday with an ease that feels almost offensive.
And somewhere there is a family gathering. A BBQ. A celebration that expects your presence and — if we are being completely honest — expects you to show up cheerful. Engaged. Fine.
Because no one wants to approach the quiet one in the corner. The one who looks like she is somewhere else. The one who might cry if you ask her how she is doing and actually mean it.
So you smile. You pass the potato salad. You say "I'm doing okay" until the words mean nothing at all.
Each Day Carries Its Own Memories.
Every season reflects a history.
And history is time spent together. History is remember when —
The laugh that came out of nowhere. The Sunday that stretched long and golden and unhurried. The way they said your name. The way summer felt when they were still in it with you.
That history does not end with their absence.
It lives in you — in the way you move through the world, in the love you still carry, in the person you are still becoming because of who they were to you.
And Yet — You Came.
You got out of bed on a day. You put your feet on the floor when every part of you wanted to stay still.
That is courage.
Not the loud, celebrated kind. The quiet kind. The invisible kind. The kind that looks like simply showing up when showing up is the hardest thing in the world.
Because around the world — right now, in this very moment — people are doing exactly what you are doing.
Getting up. Carrying their loved one with them.
Into their thoughts. Into their memories. Into the rooms they were not sure they could walk back into.
To family gatherings and summer beaches and grocery stores and backyard BBQs where the lawnmowers are loud, and the laughter is louder, and the absence sits quietly beside them like a faithful companion that never leaves.
They are still with us. In the chest that tightens before the day begins. In the summer light that falls a certain way at a certain hour. In the song that comes on without warning. In the sudden calm that steadies you when you were certain you were going to fall apart.
That is them. Still here. Still proud of you. Still watching you choose life on the days when life asks everything of you.
This Is How the World Connects.
This is how strangers become witnesses to one another.
This is how humanity — in all its grief and all its love — becomes compassionate enough to hold itself together.
One brave person at a time. Getting up. Carrying their love forward.
And for those who are brave enough to cross the room and sit beside you at the family gathering — who choose to really see you instead of look away — honor them. They are rare. They are real. They are doing their own quiet version of courage by choosing connection over comfort.
To You — The One With the Ache.
It takes courage to wake up every day with the ache of missing them. It takes courage to carry that love into a world that does not always know how to hold it. It takes courage to show up — imperfectly, quietly, still becoming — and offer the best of yourself on the hardest of days.
And they see it.
They see every morning you chose to get up. Every gathering you walked into when you wanted to stay home. Every smile that cost you something. Every moment you carried them with you into a life that was supposed to be shared and became, instead, a testament to how deeply you loved them.
They are not gone from you. They are in you — in the courage it takes to keep going, in the love that refuses to be put down, in the life you are still — quietly, bravely — living.
That is their greatest gift to you. And yours to them.
Walking alongside you, Stella Rose RN, BSN | Hospice Nurse · Grief Educator · Author Founder, Healing Grief Matters
If this found you at the right moment — forward it to someone who needs it today.
Remember- You are loved. You matter. And everything you are feeling and struggling with matters.
This place is for you.
Stella Rose-
The Hearthside Kitchen
Comfort Foods For Those Days When You Need It The Most
🍓 Strawberry Summer Reset Bowl
Some mornings, the kindest thing you can do is feed yourself something beautiful. Start here.
🍓 Ingredients
1½ cups fresh strawberries, sliced (the star of the bowl)
½ cup fresh blueberries
½ cup mango or kiwi
1 cup Greek yogurt or coconut yogurt
1–2 teaspoons honey or maple syrup
Juice of ½ lemon
½ cup granola or toasted oats
2 tablespoons chopped / roasted pistachios or almonds
1 perfectly ripe banana
1-2 mint leaves
🔹 Optional Variations
Add raspberries for variety
Swap yogurt for chia pudding for a softer texture
Add coconut flakes for a summer feel
Blend strawberries into the base for a smoother bowl
🍃 Preparation
Layer the sliced strawberries generously on top, letting their color and freshness lead.
Add the remaining berries, banana, sliced mango or kiwi.
Drizzle with honey and a squeeze of lemon for brightness.
Sprinkle granola and nuts for a savory crunch.
Finish with fresh herbs for a subtle, refreshing lift.
Serve immediately while everything feels cool, vibrant, and alive.
🌿 Why This Works
Strawberries provide hydration and antioxidants that support energy and overall well-being. Yogurt offers protein and probiotics, helping to stabilize blood sugar and support gut health—closely linked to mood and emotional balance.
Nuts and seeds add healthy fats for sustained energy, while a touch of citrus can help awaken the senses and support digestion.
Together, these ingredients create a simple, balanced bowl that gently supports your body—especially in moments when nourishment needs to feel easy, steady, and accessible.
"Food has always been how we gather, remember, and carry each other forward. Every meal made with care is an act of love — including the ones you make just for yourself." — Stella Rose
What’s Coming Next
May Calendar is getting full with exciting things.
Built entirely for you.
May is not just a new month. It is a new beginning for everyone walking this path.
Something has been quietly building behind the scenes — born from your letters, your questions, and the things you have carried in silence for far too long.
We are going to be wandering into new and exciting territory!
The Healing Grief Matters Journal
A space for the moments that rise unexpectedly — the quiet drive home, the stillness of night, the days that open into something deeper.
This journal is a companion for the full experience of grief — the reflections that surface, the identity that continues to evolve, the love that remains present.
Within these pages, your inner world is given room to be seen, expressed, and understood.
Grief becomes something you can meet with awareness, something you can move with, something that reveals the depth of your capacity to feel, to love, to continue.
This is a place for becoming — for reconnecting with yourself while carrying a life that has been shaped by loss and meaning.
A place where your voice has space. Where your experience is honored. Where your strength is recognized.
Through Stories, Tools, and Truth.
Coming in May.
Reserve your copy today!
🌿 Carried Forward Workshop
There is a moment in grief when something shifts.
For a moment, grief stops feeling like something happening to you — and starts feeling like something you can learn to carry with intention.
When you stop asking why do I keep feeling like this — and begin asking how do I carry this and still live fully?
The Carried Forward Workshop was built for that moment.
A live, intimate two-hour grief support experience — grounded in 15 years of hospice nursing, global healing traditions, and the lived knowledge of people who did not find their way through by accident — but by choosing, one difficult day at a time, to keep moving forward.
This is not a seminar. This is not a lecture.
Stories. Tools. Truth.
This is a community of people who understand what you are carrying — because they are carrying it too.
The people who show up will not leave the same way they arrived.
Details coming soon.
☕ Thursdays With Stella
For the grief that has been waiting — not for answers, but for a space steady enough to finally speak into.
Every Thursday. No scripts. No formulas.
No pressure to be further along than you are.
Just honest, real conversation about what it means to navigate profound loss — and still find your way back to yourself.
Thursdays With Stella began from one simple truth:
The most healing thing a grieving person can experience is being witnessed — fully, without judgment, without being rushed toward okay.
The moment they realize they are not alone in what they are feeling, things begin to shift, with tears of wondering giving way to tears of knowing.
That moment happens here. Every week.
Come as you are. Bring what you are carrying.
Starts May 22nd — details coming soon!
The Unfinished Canvas:
What the Hands Know
For the grief that lives below language — in the body, in the breath, in the part of you that knew them before words existed.
There are things inside grief that language cannot reach.
Ancient healing cultures across the world have always known this. And somewhere inside you — you know it too.
Art has always been the language grief understands.
Because grief does not want to be managed.
It wants to be expressed.
Not perfectly. Not beautifully. Not in any way that makes sense to anyone else.
Just honestly. Just fully. Just yours.
Long before words existed — before language had names for loss — people pressed their hands against stone and left something of themselves behind. Carved into canyon walls. Etched into rock faces worn smooth by wind and time.
They were saying what we are still saying today:
I was here. And I am still here.
The Unfinished Canvas — What the Hands Know
Carries that same ancient truth forward.
It is an invitation into something that has moved people through their darkest passages — not by forcing healing, but by making room for loss to finally breathe, expand, and find its shape.
No experience needed.
Just you. And what you carry within.
Details coming soon.
Begins in June. Supply List On Its Way.
Stay connected. Stay courageous. Stay nourished.
— Stella Rose 🌿
Stella Rose
As a hospice nurse, grief specialist, and the founder of Healing Grief Matters — a global grief support community built on one belief:
No one should have to walk through loss alone.
For more than fifteen years, this work has unfolded alongside the grieving — on the rugged coastal shores of the Pacific Northwest — sitting with those navigating profound loss, unresolved grief, trauma, and the quiet, life-altering shifts that follow.
The search for understanding moved beyond the clinical setting — reaching across cultures, traditions, and healing practices gathered from around the world.
What emerged was not found by moving on. But a way of moving forward with what is carried.
This became the foundation for 12 Grief Solutions — a research-based grief support system that helps you:
Honor your loss
Process what remains
And rediscover strength in places you didn't know still existed
Because healing was never about letting go.
Transforming how the world understands, supports, and heals from profound loss — by carrying love forward.
Not by leaving them behind.
Through stories, tools, and truth. We find our way.
Stay connected. Stay courageous. Stay nourished.
Stella Rose, RN, BSN
Grief Specialist · Hospice Nurse · Author · Founder
Connect With Us
Healing Grief Matters is dedicated to transforming the way the world understands and heals grief.
We value your thoughts and what matters most to you during these difficult times. Share with us your needs, concerns, or stories, and how this significant change has shaped your world and influenced your path in life.
Contact us at: [email protected]
Mail: PO BOX 1288, Kingston, Washington 98346
For more stories, tools, and ways in which we can support your journey, please visit our websites:
Get the Book- 12 Grief Solutions: How to Grow From Unresolved Grief
With Deepest Gratitude —
Thank you for reading. And for trusting me to walk this path alongside you.
Every person who opens this newsletter strengthens something larger than themselves — a global community of people who refused to carry their grief alone.
That is not a small thing.
That is how healing moves through the world.
With love, strength, and grace to keep us going — Stella Rose 🌿
Until Next Week-
Stay connected. Stay courageous. Stay nourished.