Chapter 2 Grief has different forms

The moment I had a single thought—everything changed.

It was as if a thread had snapped. The weightless peace I had been floating in—the warmth, the stillness, the absolute absence of pain—was suddenly slipping away. I felt something shift, like a current beneath me reversing direction, pulling me downward.

Then came the resistance.

At first, it was subtle, like a gentle nudge. But within seconds, it became an overwhelming force pressing down on me, pushing me down—falling.

I hadn’t realized how free I had been in the void. I hadn’t noticed that there was no air, no weight, no gravity—just existence without form, without limits. But now, I could feel air again, thick and heavy against me, pressing into my skin like a damp fog.

Something was changing. I was going back.

No.

I didn’t want this.

A deep, instinctual panic rose inside me. I could feel myself fighting against the pull, clawing at the nothingness, trying to hold onto whatever remained of that weightless peace.

No, no, NO!

I didn’t want to go back.

I tried to scream, but there was no voice, no sound—just the desperate, silent protest of a soul trying to outrun its own body. I wanted to push away, to dissolve back into the stillness where nothing hurt, where nothing existed except for pure, undisturbed being.

But it was too late.

I landed.

Hard.

A crushing density consumed me, slamming into me with all the force of a thousand pounds of pressure. It was as if I had been dropped into a body that wasn’t mine—but it was.

And the pain—oh, God, the pain—was unbearable.

Every nerve screamed. Every breath was jagged and raw, like inhaling broken glass. The weight of my own body was suffocating. My chest, freshly stitched and torn apart from the inside, burned as if I had been set on fire. My pectoral muscles, newly reattached, felt like they were being ripped from my sternum with every tiny movement.

My eyes shot open. Bright, fluorescent hospital lights stabbed into me. The sterile smell of antiseptic and plastic filled my nostrils, yanking me fully into reality.

I had never felt so heavy. So painfully, unbearably trapped.

I was back.

And for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to truly grieve, feel the weight of physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, and the loss of connection.

I had spent my entire life fighting to stay alive. From the very first hours of my birth, when doctors told my parents there was nothing left to do but "hope." A child in and out of SickKids Hospital, poked, prodded, tested, and treated. A teenager struggling just to finish high school, while my body betrayed me with an illness I couldn’t control. A young woman pushing through college, determined to carve out a future despite the overwhelming pain. 

 And later, a mother—a mother who refused to accept the limitations of a debilitating autoimmune disease, who self-healed, who fought tooth and nail to understand her body, to reclaim her life, to prove that she was stronger than every doctor’s prediction. 

 And now? Now, I was being forced back into the very thing I had spent my entire life trying to survive. 

 I was so angry—angry at the loss of that connection, angry that I had been shown something so peaceful only to have it ripped away. I had come so close to feeling free, to feeling whole. And yet, here I was again, locked inside this fragile, aching body. 

 But little did I know—my soul had one more mission. 

 I wasn’t here just to keep surviving. I wasn’t here just to fight through another round of suffering. 

 I was here to heal—for real this time. 

 Not just physically, but from the turbulence of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual pain—all at once.