Your Grief Isn't a Flaw. It's Proof the Connection Mattered.
- Nick Smith
- Jun 28
- 3 min read
There are two ways to face a storm. Which one are you?
You can be the cattle. Or you can be the buffalo.
When cattle sense a storm approaching, they turn and run from it. A futile effort. The storm is always faster. They just end up running with the storm, prolonging their misery, exhausting themselves inside the very chaos they were trying to escape.
The buffalo, though. The buffalo is different.
The buffalo turns and charges directly into the storm. They run head-on into the wind and the rain and the darkness, because they know, instinctively, that the fastest way out of the storm is to go straight through it.
We often confuse grief and mourning. And in that confusion, we are taught to be cattle.
Grief is the storm.
Grief is the death of something.
As the great David Kessler teaches, it's not just the death of a person. It is the death of a relationship. The death of a marriage. The death of a future you were building.
Grief is the raw, internal reality of that loss. It's invisible. You can't see it on the outside. Your storm is your storm, and the worst loss is always yours. It's not a flaw. It's proof that a connection mattered.
But mourning… mourning is the buffalo.
Mourning is the conscious, voluntary, fucking courageous choice to turn and face the storm. It is not just feeling the weight of the grief. It is the active choice to pick up that burden and start walking.
Mourning is what you do. It is the external act of honoring the internal storm.
Our society teaches us to be cattle. "Move on." "Get over it." "Be strong." It tells us to run from the storm, which just means we end up stuck in it, dragging it behind us everywhere we go.
That is not the path to healing.
Be the buffalo. Charge.
How? You need a process. You need tools for the journey through the storm.
Your first charge is the "Funeral for the Fantasy."
This is the head-on collision with the heart of the pain. You write out the eulogy for the beautiful future you lost. Then you state the cause of death with brutal honesty: "This dream died from..." And then you perform the release. Burn it. A sacred act of turning a ghost into ash.
As you walk deeper into the storm, you use your tools:
When the rains of sadness hit, you mourn by opening an "Emotional Processing Window." A 15-minute timer. You let it pour, fully. When it’s done, you get up and keep walking.
When the thunder of anger rolls—not bitterness, but the clean, righteous anger that rises to protect your spirit—you mourn by stepping into the forge.
That anger is the sacred fire that burns away the poison of self-doubt. You use its heat to hammer your "maybes" into the unbreakable steel of "Never again," building the unshakeable boundaries that will protect your future.
When the fog of self-doubt whispers the familiar accusations—"You're too sensitive. You're overreacting"—you mourn by reframing the narrative; you remind yourself that a smoke detector that goes off in a burning house isn't "too sensitive"—it's working perfectly.
Your anxiety was not a flaw. You see your sensitivity not as a weakness, but as the very thing that showed you what is out of alignment.
This is the work.
We cannot heal what we do not feel. The only way to the other side, where we can learn to grieve with more love than pain, is straight through the heart of the storm.
I’m no master of this. I’m just a fellow buffalo in training.
Some days I charge hard. Some days I can barely lift my head against the wind. All I know is that running from the storm is a guarantee of misery. Running into it is the only chance at seeing the sun again.
What is the one part of your storm you've been running from? What would it look like to turn and face it today?
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