Our culture tells us there are only two acceptable endings: if someone hurt you, you should hate them. If you still love them, you should go back.

But what if neither is true?

In this episode, I explore one of the loneliest and least-talked-about forms of grief: the transformation of love after relational hurt. We untangle the differences between understanding and excusing, forgiveness and reconciliation, love and access, and hope and responsibility.

This isn’t an episode about staying in harmful relationships.

It’s about what happens after you’ve already left—and discover your heart didn’t stop loving just because the relationship ended.

If you’ve ever felt ashamed for still caring about someone who hurt you, this conversation is for you.

Long after the breakup.Long after the friendship ends.Long after the conversation you wish you’d had.

This week, I’m reflecting on seeing someone from my past for the first time in years, the uncomfortable humanity of Beef Season 2, and a kind of grief we rarely talk about: the grief of realizing we’ve hurt someone we loved.

What happens when accountability is real, but repair is no longer possible?

How do we carry regret without letting it become our identity?

And can we become better people, even if we never get another chance?

This episode explores shame, accountability, restorative justice, self-forgiveness, and the painful reality that some of the most important lessons cost us relationships we wish we’d known how to save.

If you’ve ever replayed an old conversation wishing you knew then what you know now, this one’s for you.

Pride. Juneteenth. Progress. Visibility.

But what happens when the thing we’re celebrating isn’t finished?

In this episode, Chris explores the tension between joy and responsibility, tracing a thread through Pride displays, Juneteenth commemorations, Frida Kahlo merchandise, and the stories we tell ourselves about social progress.

Together, we’ll ask what happens when movements become symbols, when celebrations become evidence that the work is done, and what it might look like to celebrate without forgetting the people still carrying the struggle.

This isn’t an argument against joy.

It’s an invitation to stay connected.

Because the fight didn’t end.

We just started throwing a party.

After watching Is God Is and spending a weekend supporting a family through an end-of-life transition, I found myself questioning one of the most common phrases about grief.

Because grief doesn’t always look like sadness.

Sometimes it looks like laughter in a hospital room.

Sometimes it looks like anger.

Or relief.

Or storytelling.

Or a cup of coffee when there’s nothing left to fix.

In this episode, I explore the idea that grief may be less of a destination and more of a crossroads—a place where love encounters change and takes on new forms.

We talk about complicated relationships, hospice, revenge stories, Alua Arthur’s challenge to the phrase “grief is love with nowhere to go,” and the question I’ve been carrying lately:

What is grief trying to grow?

But this episode isn’t really about gaming.

Using Destiny as the emotional anchor, this episode explores ambiguous loss, third spaces, fandom, identity, ritual, online communities, and the very human grief that can happen when something meaningful changes instead of fully disappearing.

From weekly rituals and late-night raids to homebound community connection and the emotional architecture of belonging, this is an episode about the kinds of grief that don’t always receive public permission—but still matter deeply.

Because not everything meaningful leaves a body behind.

Topics include:

Destiny and live-service grief

ambiguous loss

disenfranchised grief

online community and identity

third spaces

fandom and belonging

grief for changing relationships and futures

ritual, continuity, and emotional attachment

Not because I thought I was in immediate danger.

Because some things don’t register as information. They register as memory.

In this episode of Soft Endings, I’m talking about unresolved collective trauma, COVID grief, nervous system memory, and what happens when something changes us collectively—but we’re expected to process it mostly alone.

This isn’t a public health episode.

It’s a grief episode.

About disrupted rituals. Fractured trust. Isolation. Survival mode. The pressure to “move on.” And the strange feeling of realizing your body may still be carrying something the world never really made space to process.

If you’ve ever had a “not again” reaction to a headline, this one’s for you.

Jewelry.

Family cheekbones.

And some things get passed down as habits, instincts, and survival strategies so old they start to feel like personality.

In this episode of Soft Endings, I’m exploring the grief of realizing that some of what people raised inside girlhood inherit may not be universal truth—but adaptation.

The “good girl.”

The therapist friend at fifteen.

Being “mature for your age.”

Learning to monitor your body, your tone, your safety, everybody else’s emotions.

And the harder truth: we may never fully know where survival ended and authenticity began for the people who came before us—or even for ourselves.

This isn’t an episode about blaming mothers.

It’s about tenderness.

Complexity.

And gratitude for the people who survived enough to hand us more room.

If you’ve ever wrestled with inherited expectations around femininity, emotional labor, safety, desirability, or simply what it means to become yourself—this one’s for you.

Stop feeling so much.Stop caring so deeply.Focus on yourself.Keep moving.

But what happens when softness is the very thing that makes connection, care, grief, and love possible in the first place?

In this episode of Soft Endings, I talk about the real cost of staying soft in a world that rewards emotional shutdown — from exhaustion and heartbreak to trying to build a meaningful life while overwhelmed by everything happening around us.

This episode is for the people who feel too much.The people trying not to become bitter.The people carrying tenderness through systems that don’t always make room for it.

We talk about:

emotional exhaustion

survival under capitalism

grief and connection

boundaries without losing yourself

why softness can become a form of resistance

And why maybe… your softness isn’t the thing that needs to be erased.

If you need support like this, or space to move through grief, care, transition, or creative legacy work, I offer this work through MavenHaven.

Thanks for being here.

The late nights. The calculations. The moments you don’t say out loud.

This episode is about the grief that shows up before anything officially ends—the kind that lives inside caregiving itself.

It’s about love, exhaustion, resentment, devotion, and the parts of this experience people don’t always feel allowed to name.

In this episode, we move through:

What caregiver grief actually is (and why it starts early)

The resentment + guilt loop that so many people carry silently

The loss of who someone used to be, even while they’re still here

The identity shift of becoming “the one who handles everything”

The role systems play in making caregiving heavier than it needs to be

What it means to be witnessed inside something that doesn’t have a clean ending

If you’re caring for someone right now, or have been, this is a space to put some of that down for a minute.

You’re not the only one carrying this.

Soft Endings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This episode is about the private ceremonies people make when formal mourning cannot hold the whole truth — the small rituals, repeated acts, funny moments, and intimate forms of remembrance that help love keep speaking after loss.

I talk about laughter at funerals, why unscripted moments can feel truer than polished ones, and how private rituals can become a real place of contact when public grief feels too stiff, too narrow, or too far from the person you actually knew.

In this episode:

laughter and tenderness existing in the same grief space

why formal ceremony cannot always hold the whole truth of a person

private rituals like songs, voicemails, recipes, objects, and undone tasks

chosen family, queer grief, and unofficial mourners

continuing bonds and why staying in contact is not the same as being stuck

a gentle invitation to create one small ritual on purpose

If your grief has ever felt misplaced, flattened, or left out of the official story, I hope this one keeps you company.

Soft Endings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This episode is about grief inside systems that were never built to hold human pain well. It explores what it means to hurt while still being asked to work, answer emails, stay polite, stay legible, and keep moving. It names grief not as a personal failure, but as an embodied reality shaped by labor, class, race, disability, and the pressure to perform normalcy.

In this episode, I talk about:

having to go to work and keep performing while grieving

brain fog, exhaustion, numbness, slowness, and overwhelm being misread as laziness or incompetence

the extra pressure marginalized people face when their grief is watched, judged, or racialized

how poor and working-class people often do not have the luxury to stop

why not everybody is allowed to grieve the same way

what it means to put the humanity back into human experiences

If this episode met you somewhere tender, I hope it helps you feel less ashamed of what grief has done to your body, your pace, and your capacity.

In this episode of Soft Endings, I’m talking about the losses that can come with becoming more yourself — and why those losses still deserve to be named, even when the choice was right.

This is for anybody who has felt the room change after honesty.

Anybody who has been looked at differently once they stopped performing an older version of themselves.

Anybody who has lost access to ease, certainty, belonging, or safety while moving toward a life that feels more true.

I talk about:

the nervous system cost of becoming more visible

why authenticity is not always freeing in a simple way

grief for the old role, old shelter, or old legibility

why some people cannot safely “just be themselves”

how relief, fear, loneliness, and rightness can all exist together

becoming more tender with the selves that helped you survive

If you’ve ever thought, “Why am I grieving if this is what I wanted?” — this episode is for you.

You are not wrong for mourning what your truth cost you.

Soft Endings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A lot of us don’t know what to do with grief except keep moving.

We work. We clean. We take care of everybody else.

Or we shut down, scroll, go flat, and call it rest.

This episode is about another possibility: making something with grief.

Not because art fixes loss.

Not because everything painful has to become beautiful.

And not because you need to be an artist.

This is about expression on purpose.

About letting grief move through your hands, your voice, your body, your ritual, your senses. About giving it somewhere to go besides your muscles, your chest, your nervous system, and your private exhaustion.

In this episode, I talk about:

why grief that doesn’t move often turns into tension, numbness, overwork, or survival mode

why words aren’t always the door

how making something can help grief change form without denying it

why beauty, color, pleasure, and even laughter are still allowed in the presence of sorrow

how MavenHaven is meant to hold not just the invitation to make, but support in the making too

This one is for the strong ones.

The competent ones.

The ones people lean on.

The ones who know how to keep going so well that nobody notices they’re disappearing a little.

And it’s for anyone whose grief needs witness, rhythm, form, or somewhere tangible to land.

If this episode met you somewhere tender, I hope you let something move this week.

Through your hands.

Your voice.

Your body.

Your ritual.

Whatever feels possible.

And if you want company in the making—someone to listen, witness, and help turn memory into something tangible—I’m here for that too.

Follow Soft Endings, share this episode with someone who may need it, and find more through MavenHaven.

In this episode of Soft Endings, I’m talking about grief that doesn’t fit the script — the grief of breakups, estrangement, identity shifts, and futures that disappear without a funeral.

This is for the kinds of loss people step around. The kinds that can make you question your own pain simply because nobody else knows how to mirror it back. We talk about why invisible grief can feel so heavy, how becoming can carry its own kind of mourning, and what it means to make witness when there is no ready-made ritual waiting for you.

The heart of this episode is simple:

your grief does not need to be publicly recognizable to be real.

If it altered the shape of your life, it counts.

In this episode:

Why some grief gets recognized and some gets made to stand outside

Breakups, estrangement, identity change, and other losses without public ritual

Why invisibility can deepen grief

Naming as the first act of witness

Small rituals for losses the world doesn’t know how to honor

A few lines from the episode:

“Your grief does not need to be publicly recognizable to be real.”

“If it altered the shape of your world, it was big.”

“Ritual does not erase grief. It gives grief somewhere to stand.”

“Unrecognized grief does not become unreal. It becomes lonely.”

If this episode meant something to you, consider subscribing to Soft Endings, sharing it with someone who may need it, or leaving a comment.

Soft Endings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We start with the image of a covered bridge: not a destination, just enough shelter to get across. Because a lot of grief isn’t about the loss alone—it’s about carrying it while the world keeps moving and expecting you to keep up.

You’ll hear the core lens of the show—power, identity, and art—and why I’m not interested in making grief polite or neutral. We talk about how endings land differently depending on who you are and what the world demands of you.

I also share how I came to this work through love and loss, and how the intimacy of end-of-life conversations taught me something I return to again and again:

Endings are relational.

Finally, I introduce MavenHaven as grief care through art—not decoration, but a container—especially for the losses that don’t get recognized as “real grief,” like breakups and identity endings.

In this space, we confront what is avoided, see what is ignored, and comfort what is neglected.

If you’re in the middle of something, you’re not alone here.

Mentioned / themes in this episode

Grief as “the crossing” (covered bridge metaphor)

Why grief isn’t neutral—and why this show won’t pretend it is

Art as a tangible container for memory and endings

Breakup and identity grief as real grief

The difference between being rushed vs being held

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Transcripts

A transcript is included with this post for anyone who prefers to read or revisit slowly.