Grief: The Girl I Once Was

I remember when I worked three jobs: two fast paced and busy restaurants by night and personal training by day. I started my day at 7am and ended it at 1aM.

I remember when my days were filled with motion, bright lights, sweat, and noise.

When people used to say, “How do you do it? I know you’re young, but you have so much energy!”

And I’d smile, because it was true — I did have energy. I lived off it.

The gym was my sanctuary.

It was where I processed my emotions, where I felt most alive in my body.

I’d wake up excited to move, to challenge myself, to push my limits.

Now, some mornings, just brushing my hair or standing in the shower feels like an obstacle course.

And there’s no preparing for the heartbreak that comes when the things that once made you feel alive start to break you down instead.

That’s the kind of grief no one talks about and the grief of losing yourself.

Not all at once, but slowly, piece by piece, in ways that seem invisible to the world.

I grieve the days I could walk up the stairs without pain in my knees.

The days I could wear a purse on my shoulder without my neck seizing up.

The days I could try on clothes without my body screaming back at me.

The days I could shower without needing to sit down halfway through.

It sounds small until it’s not.

Until you realize how much of your identity was built around movement, productivity, and freedom and how suddenly those things were taken.

And then you really start to ask yourself, Who am I now, without all of that?

Living with fibromyalgia and POTS has been a slow unraveling.

It’s not just the debilitating physical symptoms but it has been a mental, spiritual, and emotional battle.

The way pain changes your relationship with time, with joy, with yourself is something hard to describe.

Some days I feel like I’m watching my old life through glass, just close enough to remember, far enough to hurt.

There are quick moments I still try to do things the way I used to, to prove that I can.

But my body always reminds me that it’s no longer built for the pace of who I once was.

Now, my body and my CNS needs gentleness, not pressure.

And yet… I fight it, because grief is stubborn.

It clings to the illusion of who we used to be.

Even when we know that version of us no longer exists.

I’ve had to learn that this kind of grief is cyclical.

It doesn’t fade with time like traditional loss.

It resurfaces and causes a million different emotions when I see people hiking, dancing, or planning things spontaneously.

It hits me when I scroll past old photos, or when someone says, “You look so good!” — not realizing that looking healthy and being healthy are two very different things.

But through the breaking, something else has been born.

A deeper relationship with myself — and with something greater.

Because when your body forces you into stillness, your spirit starts to listen differently.

I’ve started to believe that maybe this slowness-this stripping away- isn’t punishment.

Maybe it’s transformation and a chance to really get to know who I am at my core, a chance I had never been given.

I used to think healing meant “getting back to normal.”

Now I understand that healing means learning how to be fully present with what is.

It’s allowing your body to guide you instead of forcing it.

It’s learning to love yourself even when you can’t “perform” in the ways the world praises.

There’s a spiritual surrender that comes when you’ve been brought to your knees by your own body.

You stop begging life to go back to how it was and you start asking for the strength to meet life as it is.

You start to see beauty in places you once overlooked.

And somehow, grace starts showing up in the smallest, most unexpected moments- a good day, a breath without pain, a sunset that feels like it was painted just for you.

I won’t lie and say I don’t miss her: the girl who could do it all.

But I also know she was running on fumes, chasing her worth through validation and earning potential, slowly drowning by trauma unphased.

The woman I am now may move slower, but she moves with intention.

She listens and she feels and she honors what her body tells her.

Strength looks much different now.

It looks like resting when the world tells you to rise.

It looks like trusting that even when everything hurts, there’s still meaning here.

So yes, I grieve who I used to be.

But I’m also learning to love who I am becoming.

And maybe that’s its own kind of resurrection.