Grief, Love, and the Space In Between
Grief has a way of rewriting the room you’re standing in. One day, life feels familiar. The next, everything looks the same but nothing feels the same. In this episode of TURTZED, I sat down with Melissa Brown Smith to talk about grief in all its forms: losing loved ones, losing relationships, losing the version of life you thought you’d have.
What struck me most is how she moves through it all with equal parts honesty, faith, and grounded compassion. She doesn’t talk about grief as something you “get over,” but as something you learn to live with, slowly and gently.
Grief Is More Than Death
Melissa’s definition of grief is simple and unflinching: it’s the ache that comes with loss. Sometimes that’s the loss of a person. Sometimes it’s the loss of a relationship, a season of life, a dream, or even the future you imagined.
Grief, she reminded me, is both emotional and physical. It can feel like anxiety, heaviness, exhaustion, or an emptiness you can’t quite name. It shows up in your chest, in your sleep, in the way you move through your day. And because it is so universal, it is also deeply personal. No two experiences look the same.
Drawn to the Hardest Moments
From an early age, Melissa noticed something different about herself. While most people instinctively pulled away from others’ pain, she was drawn toward it. She wanted to sit beside the person who had just received bad news. She wanted to hold a hand, offer a hug, be a quiet presence in the middle of chaos.
That instinct led her to train as a hospital chaplain, working in trauma units and ICUs. She was often the first person to meet families after a sudden loss, the one who sat with a father who just lost his child or a woman saying goodbye to her partner.
There is no script for that kind of work. No class can fully prepare you to walk into the worst day of someone’s life. For her, it became an act of surrender and trust: “I show up, I listen, and I let love lead the way.”
Grief, Faith, and the Unseen
Over time, Melissa began to notice something else. In certain moments, especially around death, she would get a quiet knowing. A sense of what someone needed to hear. A feeling that a loved one was close, even after they had passed.
She describes it as an energetic connection, a way that love continues even when a body is gone. For me, that showed up most clearly when we talked about my grandparents. I struggled deeply after losing them both in a short period of time. I had been with them at the end, holding it together so I could be present for them, but when it was over I felt unmoored.
In our conversations, Melissa never rushed me or tried to “fix” anything. Instead, she held space for my grief and gently reminded me that their love did not end when their lives did. Whether you call it memory, spirit, or something else entirely, there is comfort in the idea that love can outlast loss.
The Debt of Grief
One line from our conversation has stayed with me: “Grief is like credit card debt. You can put it off, but it never really goes away.”
You can delay feeling it by staying busy, compartmentalizing, or numbing out. But eventually, it catches up, often with interest. Layers of unprocessed grief can pile on top of each other until you are no longer sure what you are crying about. The breakup, the death, the childhood wound, the friendship that faded, the apology you never got.
Melissa’s gentle invitation is not to rush into healing, but to stop running from it. Find a way to show up for your grief, even if it is just for a few minutes at a time. That might be therapy, prayer, journaling, a long walk, a support group, or simply sitting still long enough to admit, “This really hurts.”
You Do Not Have to Carry It Alone
What helped me most in my own grieving was not a perfect piece of advice. It was knowing I did not have to hold everything by myself all the time. Sometimes I needed someone else to hold the weight for a moment so I could breathe.
If you are grieving right now, for any reason, here is what I hope you hear:
Your grief is valid, even if no one else can see it.
There is no right timeline and no right way to do this.
You are allowed to seek help. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to heal.
And if all you can do today is whisper to yourself, “This hurts, and I am still here,” that is a beginning.
You are not broken. You are grieving. And you do not have to walk through it alone.
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