Grief isn’t seasonal. It doesn’t arrive or recede according to the calendar. And yet, our journey through it, our thoughts, our moods, our ways of making meaning, can be shaped by what’s happening around us. News cycles, weather patterns, holidays, cultural moments, even sporting events have a way of stirring memories and emotions. As the 2026 Winter Olympics approach, I’ve found my mind drifting back to the years when our family enjoyed spending a few cold weeks in February watching the best-of-the-best competing for gold. For this brief period, we felt connected to these athletes… sharing in the joy of their victories as well as the agony of defeats. Like most people who watch a major sporting event, we had a feeling of connection to something larger than ourselves. 

Those memories have opened an unexpected door. As a mom who lost my son, Stuart, to suicide, I’ve noticed how often the language and rhythms of athletics mirror the grief process itself. Not the spectacle of competition, but the preparation behind it…the training that most people never see. The drills. The repetition. The quiet work, done day after day, long before anyone steps onto the ice or snow.

I’ve been thinking especially about athletic training because my children grew up in sports. Their dad coached them, and one of his guiding principles was “perfect practice makes perfect.” What he meant wasn’t as much about perfection as it was about commitment…the idea that consistent, intentional effort prepares you for moments when you don’t have time to think your way through difficulty. He believes, and trained his athletes to understand, that discipline carries over into most things worth mastering: learning to fix a car, developing a skill, honing a talent, becoming confident in a career. At the time, it felt like practical advice for life. I couldn’t have known how deeply those lessons would resonate later as we continue to move forward with our loss and grief. 

At EricsHouse, we often reference the work of grief. Living with meaning after a tragic loss requires so much of us…difficult, intentional, regular practice. Not the kind that leads to mastery, but the kind that builds familiarity. The daily work of getting out of bed. Of breathing through waves of memory. Of learning how to be in a world that no longer resembles the one we lived in prior to our loved ones death. We’re rebuilding our lives and the training is arduous, monotonous and often, uninspired.  Progress is hard to measure. Many days it seems as if nothing has changed at all.

The Olympics are only one competition in an athlete’s life. Long before that moment, there are missed attempts, injuries, losses, and events where giving everything still isn’t enough. Athletes don’t control outcomes, they control preparation. Grief work echoes the same truth for me. I can’t control how or when healing shows up. I can only tend to what’s in front of me… the support I accept, the boundaries I set, the care I give myself on the days when I have very little to give.

When athletes are told to ‘leave everything on the floor’, it isn’t a promise of victory. It’s an invitation to be fully present, even when the risk of disappointment remains. In the years since my son died, I (along with my husband and daughter) came to the realization that rebuilding a life of meaning, purpose and even happiness would be the only way to honor Stuart. I believe it is because all three of us have persisted in the drills…remembering good times, sitting with the pain, practicing gratitude (even when it feels forced), reaching out to others and pursuing excellence, that we have become reengaged with life. The pain of our loss hasn’t disappeared, but holding back would shrink the life my son was part of.

We grievers know that there is no finish line for us. No podium, no ceremony honoring achievement. But there is meaning in the work itself…in the steady, but imperfect practice of continuing on. For those of us who are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, friends and family, this work is deeply personal, shaped by the bond we lost and the life we shared. We each carry it differently, yet we are doing the same difficult, faithful work of learning how to live again. And in that effort, there is strength, even on the days it doesn’t feel like it.