by Lady Najm
Lady Najm is a Charlottesville-based singer-songwriter, writer and creative facilitator whose work explores healing through music, reflection, and community-centered experiences. She creates spaces where creativity and conversation support emotional wellness and personal growth.
I experienced loss at a young age after the death of my father. That experience shaped my early understanding of grief long before I had the language to describe it. Over time, I came to understand grief not as a single moment, but as something that can surface quietly in everyday life.
Grief is often associated with visible moments such as funerals or public expressions of sadness. However, grief can also appear in subtle and everyday ways—during ordinary routines, conversations, or moments when emotional responses feel unexpectedly intense or muted.
Grief is not limited to death. It can also follow the end of relationships, job loss or major life transitions.
“Sometimes it’s not about willingness,” said Evelina Jerido-Fair, a licensed clinical professional counselor in South Carolina. “It’s about the unknown. Not knowing how to express grief or to explain that they are grieving.”
Jerido-Fair works with individuals processing grief and trauma, particularly within Black communities.
Many people experiencing grief report difficulty concentrating or completing everyday tasks.
Grief includes emotional and physical symptoms such as confusion, anxiety, changes in thinking, and difficulty focusing on the present, according to the American Psychological Association. In more severe cases, grief can also affect overall health and functioning.
“Grief can leave people emotionally distracted long before they recognize what they are actually experiencing,” said Pastor Carl McPherson, a Church of God in Christ pastor in Fredericksburg, Virginia, who has more than 20 years of experience counseling grieving families.
Grief can also affect sleep and appetite.
Prolonged emotional stress can contribute to changes in appetite, difficulty concentrating and problems with sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC also notes that stress can affect both emotional and physical well-being.
“Sometimes the changes are subtle,” Jerido-Fair said. “A person may stop caring about routines they once kept up with, including grooming, appearance or everyday habits.”
Grief does not always appear as sadness. It can also show up as irritability or withdrawal.
“During grief, people often need presence more than advice,” McPherson said. “Sometimes support looks less like talking and more like simply sitting beside someone while they process what has changed.”
In many Black communities, McPherson added, “homegoing services” serve as spaces of collective mourning, faith and support.
Across Charlottesville and other communities, similar forms of gathering — both religious and creative — are part of how people process emotional experiences.
One of the parts of grief that can be most disorienting is the feeling that life has split into two chapters: before the loss and after it.
“Many grieving individuals describe feeling emotionally anchored to the moment everything changed,” McPherson said.
Grief often creates a sense of emotional pause, even as daily life continues.
Healing from grief is rarely immediate or solitary. It is often a gradual process shaped by small moments of connection, reflection and care.
“Life can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be done alone,” Jerido-Fair said.
And while grief may never fully disappear, many people learn to live alongside it — carrying both memory and meaning forward at the same time.
“You will never get over it,” McPherson said. “But you will learn how to live again.”