I've lost both of my parents. My father, Herman "Hy" Hochberg, died in October 2023 at 93. There is no version of that sentence that gets easier to write.
People talk about grief like it's a tunnel — dark, but with light at the end if you keep walking. That hasn't been my experience. Grief, for me, has been more like weather. Some days it's clear. Some days it storms without warning, triggered by nothing — a song, a smell, a Tuesday. You don't get through weather. You learn to live in the climate.
Here's what I've actually learned, not the inspirational-poster version:
Resilience isn't bouncing back. It's continuing forward as a different person. I will never be the person I was before my parents died. Resilience wasn't returning to her — it was building a life as the person grief made me. That distinction matters, because "bouncing back" sets an impossible standard that makes grieving people feel like they're failing.
Grief and ambition can coexist. There's a strange guilt in continuing to build your life while someone you love is gone — as if thriving betrays them. I've come to believe the opposite. My father built things. He led things. He showed up. The most honest way I can honor him is to keep building, not to pause my life in his memory.
Practical things matter more than profound things. Nobody tells you that grief is also an administrative avalanche — accounts, documents, decisions you have to make while barely functioning. If you love someone, the kindest thing you can do is get your own affairs in order so the people you leave behind aren't drowning in paperwork while drowning in loss. That's a big part of why I now advocate for estate planning, especially for younger people who think it's something to deal with "later."
Let people show up — and tell them how. People want to help and don't know how. "Let me know if you need anything" is kind and useless. The friends who helped most were specific: they brought food, they handled a task, they just sat with me. If you're grieving, it's okay to say "I need you to just come over and not try to fix this." If you love someone grieving, don't ask — just do the concrete thing.
You don't "heal." You integrate. Two years in, I don't feel healed. I feel larger — like grief stretched me into someone who can hold more: more love, more pain, more meaning, all at once. I wouldn't have chosen it. But I'm not the same, and some of who I've become, I'm proud of.
If you're in it right now — the early, disorienting part — I won't tell you it gets better on a schedule. I'll just tell you it gets different, and different is survivable, and one day you'll catch yourself laughing at something and realize you're still here. That's enough for today.
Marisa Hochberg is the founder of MJH Wellness and an advocate for estate planning awareness. She writes about wellness, resilience, and rebuilding.— MJH Wellness
