Choosing Steadiness Over Stability: Practices for Navigating Grief and Uncertainty
When the ground won't stop moving, you stop chasing stillness and start choosing steadiness. Here are the practices that held me through loss, and might hold you too.
(Content note: brief mention of suicide.)
Navigating grief changes everything about how you move through the world.
Good Friday, a chalet, a family trip. At the edges of my awareness, a quiet misalignment. No panic. No soundtrack. Just the heavy hush in my limbs and the sense my breath belonged to someone else. I told myself not to be dramatic. We flew home. Late on Easter Sunday, the phone rang, and the world shifted to the shape my body already knew. A dear friend was gone.
After that, I kept moving because movement used to be my answer to everything. Make a list. Make a plan. Make it make sense. But grief doesn’t obey project plans. It arrives like weather and stays as long as it wants.
I kept working and coaching leaders. Kept returning to the small, ordinary tasks that hold a life together. I wasn’t collapsing. I wasn’t fine. I lived in the middle, learning that balance isn’t a finish line you cross; it’s a way of walking when the ground won’t stop shifting.
So, I stopped trying to find stillness and started choosing steadiness. These are the footholds that held when nothing else would, and the guardrails that kept me from the ditch.
1. Body as Barometer: Navigating Grief Through Somatic Awareness
When the floor falls away, my mind bargains. My body tells the truth.
Now when unease pricks at me, I don’t debate it. I interrupt myself. Four rounds of box breathing (inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4). Both hands around a hot mug until the heat reaches my forearms. Ten minutes outside with no phone, even if it’s raining and the dog is unimpressed.
Not cures. Footholds. Five ordinary things in the room will do: the chipped mug; dust on the log burner I still haven’t cleaned; the sweating water glass; the dog’s enormous yawn; the slice of light through the rooflight above my desk. I name them out loud. My nervous system unclenches by a degree. Sometimes that’s the win.
2. Guardrails Not Frameworks: Building Boundaries During Loss
Corporate me loved frameworks. Home me needed guardrails, temporary supports while I repaired what was inside.
Mine are undramatic: Do Not Disturb from 9 p.m. No weekend client work. A pause before I accept invitations that flatter my ego more than my energy. A “threshold breath” before I enter shared spaces so I can choose how I arrive.
I practised three lines until they felt like mine (mostly self-talk):
“I can’t do that, but here’s what I can do.”
“I’ll decide tomorrow; tonight, I’m off.”
“Yes, if we keep it to 30 minutes.”
Tiny fences, big peace.
3. Rhythm Over Routine: Sustaining Connection Through Uncertainty
Routines break when life does. Rhythm tries to bend. Some weeks it just doesn’t.
I look for three small footholds when I can: one friendship touchpoint, one connection at home, one block that restores me. If I miss them, I start again next week. No gold stars, just a pulse.
Friendship touchpoints can be a two-minute voice note or a both-in-motion call whilst we walk. Dinner happens when it happens, reschedules included. Texts count on heavy weeks. The point is contact, not performance.
Restoration fits the day I’ve got: six minutes of “window time” naming what I see, or thirty seconds if that’s what there is. A slow shower when there’s space; on tight days, hot water on my neck and a breath. Movement that meets me where I am: a gentle run, a short strength circuit or nothing today, and I’ll try again tomorrow.
Imperfect counts. Missed days don’t cancel me out.
4. Triage the Work (and Tell the Truth About the Cost)
I ask: does this fit my real life, not the fantasy where I have endless time and an iron-clad nervous system?
I keep a scrappy red/amber/green for leaders and gigs, and I still get it wrong sometimes; I adjust.
Green: humble, curious, ready to do the work.
Amber: want change without discomfort, fine if scope is tight and the runway is clear.
Red: confuse proximity with progress; they drain me in ways that ripple through my home. When I step into a red, my house pays. So, I try not to.
Two guardrails help: a clear, kind “no, because…” email; and a “two in, one out” rule for calendar, clients, and especially expectations. Not rigid. Just human.
5. Witnessing Over Fixing: Holding Space Through Grief
Loss taught me the poverty of solutions in a storm, mine included. I still slip into fixing, so I have to stay present. I say to others and to myself: I won’t try to fix this. I’m here to sit with it.
Two sentences I keep close:
“This is heavy, and you don’t have to carry it alone.”
“I’m not going to jump to advice.”
Witnessing isn’t passive; it’s brave presence. It keeps love from turning into performance and lets the moment be exactly what it is.
6. Friendship as Infrastructure: Building Support During Crisis
Independence is a strength. It is not infrastructure. People are.
Asking still feels awkward; I do it anyway. I stopped hoping friends would guess and made a tiny help menu I can send when I’m stretched: a walk; coffee on my doorstep; a check-in text on Thursday; a meme that makes me snort-laugh. They choose; I practise receiving without apologising.
I also name what each friendship does for my nervous system: who calms, who widens, who lightens without diminishing. When the ground moves, I lean accordingly. It’s not a system; it’s a practice.
7. Loose Weave Rituals: Maintaining Connection in Unstable Seasons
Belonging, for now, isn’t a timetable. It’s the returns. With the older girls at university and moving between homes, we keep rituals that work together or apart: a “you’re home” drink within 24 hours; a shoes-on five-minute debrief before anyone vanishes.
We miss things. We start again. Patience, not perfection. Presence, not performance.
Some weeks everything tilts at once: a deadline crunches, someone is snappy for reasons that aren’t mine, the dog is sick on the rug, the inbox multiplies overnight. I start believing stability will arrive when I finally get the system right.
Then there’s a shared joke at dinner. A teenager leans in, not noticing, and tells me about their day. A client says the thing I used to have to pull out of them. I remember: this is the life I chose. It isn’t steady because it’s finished. It’s steady because I keep choosing it.
I don’t wait for the earth to hold still anymore. I trust my feet. I trust the guardrails I’ve built. I trust that rest can happen in motion. The body that knew before the phone call still knows where to pause, where to keep going, where to ask for help.
If “enough” were measured in energy, not output, what is enough today?
We walk the dogs in the rain for fifteen minutes. Then pasta, music and a body that remembers how to keep moving.