Bitter or Better: Choosing How You Live After Loss

Some phrases arrive too early. Others arrive exactly when you are finally strong enough to hear them.

In the raw early days of grief, words like healing or growth can feel insulting. They land as platitudes when what you are carrying is unbearable loss. But time changes what we are able to hold. Not because the loss hurts less, but because we do not stay the same.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 95 of my upcoming book, Flowers Bloom Anyway: Rebuilding a Life You Didn’t Choose. This chapter explores one of the hardest truths of grief. Loss will change you no matter what. The only question is how.

This is not a story about silver linings. It is about the quiet, daily choice to keep living fully in the aftermath of loss, even when it hurts.

 Chapter 95: Bitter or Better 

I remember reading a quote about two years after Josh died, where I read it is a mystery to me now… but it hit me so hard I made it my personal mantra: It can make you bitter, or it can make you better. 

If I had read those words in the early days, I would have thrown the book across the room. I would have screamed at the stupidity of it.

What do you mean better?! How am I better off with Josh dead? In what world is this “better”? I’m not better. I’m broken. I’d be better if he were here.

But two years out, I was ready to hear it. And it landed like a ton of bricks. Because the truth is, I was forever changed, and there was nothing I could do to bring Josh back. I would always miss him. I would always ache for the life he didn’t get to live—for the fatherhood he never fully experienced, for the hobbies he never got to explore, for the highs and lows of ordinary life that death stole from him.

But the time was going to pass either way. The flowers were going to bloom anyway. And I had a choice: let it make me bitter… or let it make me better.

It helps me to imagine that Josh can’t see us from Heaven. If it truly is paradise, why would anyone up there want to carry the burden of watching all the mess and pain down here? I don’t picture him looking down—I picture him waiting. And when I get there, I want to blow him away with everything that happened after he left.

I want to tell him not just about accomplishments and milestones, but about the everyday stuff too. The breakfasts with the girls. The inside jokes. The nights when life felt impossible but I showed up anyway. I want him to know that I didn’t waste a single moment—that I lived, fully, even in the shadow of loss.

Even now, there isn’t a day that goes by without something pulling me back to him. A song. A meal. A headline. A memory that sneaks up out of nowhere. I’ve stopped trying to avoid them. Instead, I let them wash over me. I let myself feel it. Because whether it’s bitter or better—it’s proof of love.

And at the end of the day, I’m still choosing better.

If this resonated with you, I invite you to order my book Flowers Bloom Anyway: Rebuilding a Life You Didn’t Choose. It is a collection of honest stories about grief, identity, love, and learning how to keep going when life does not turn out the way you planned.

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