There are moments that divide your life into “before” and “after.” For me, that moment came on May 19, 2000—the day my four-year-old son, Drew, passed away.
The language of grief
In the beginning, I didn’t know how to speak the language of this new world. Everything familiar suddenly felt foreign. Colours dulled, sounds dimmed and even my own laughter, when it came, felt like it belonged to someone else. People spoke to me, but their words didn’t land. They wanted to comfort me, but they didn’t speak the language of grief—and at that time, neither did I.
Over the years, I’ve come to believe that grief is a language—one we’re forced to learn, one word at a time, through heartbreak, silence and surrender. It’s not a language of logic; it’s a language of the soul. It’s the quiet recognition between two people who have seen the same kind of darkness and somehow found their way back to the light.
You can recognize someone who speaks it. It’s in their eyes—a tenderness behind the smile, the kind of quiet knowing that tells you they’ve known loss. It’s not something they say; it’s something you feel. Grief gives you that sixth sense. It makes you more present, more awake, more attuned to the unspoken ache in others.
That’s one of the greatest gifts my grief has given me. It has made me a more empathetic listener, a more caring leader and a woman who no longer looks away when someone is struggling to be seen. I know too well that being seen—really seen—can be the difference between believing life is still possible and believing that it’s not.
The letter that helped me begin again
Weeks after Drew’s passing, I received a letter from a woman named Teresa. It was handwritten, full of honesty and grace, and it arrived on a night when I wasn’t sure I could go on.
I’d reached the edge of my own endurance. I was drowning in guilt, shame and the unbearable question of how a mother continues living after losing her child. The silence in my house was so loud it felt alive. And then, out of nowhere, came this letter.
Teresa didn’t know me. But her words reached into that darkness and spoke directly to my soul. She wrote about her own loss—how she’d once stood where I stood, how she’d felt the same hollow ache and wondered if she could survive it. Her honesty cracked something open in me. For the first time, I felt understood—not pitied, not managed, but known.
That letter became a lifeline. It reminded me that we don’t always need someone to fix our pain; sometimes we just need someone to witness it. Teresa’s words didn’t take away my grief, but they gave it language, and in doing so, they gave me hope.
That moment was the beginning of my return to life. It’s what inspired me years later to write Dear Drew—my own love letter to others who are grieving, a book that says: I see you. I understand you. And there is still more life waiting for you.
What grief has shown me about love
I no longer see grief as love with nowhere to go. To me, grief is love begging to be acknowledged—asking us to stop pretending it’s gone, to recognize that it’s still here, alive and present in a thousand quiet moments. It lives in the laughter of my loved ones, in the sun on my skin and in the moments when I catch myself smiling at the sky, thinking of Drew for no reason at all.
For years, I thought I had to heal by moving away from the pain. But what I’ve discovered is that healing happens when we move closer to love—when we let it change its form but never fade. Grief taught me that love doesn’t leave; it just shows up in a new way.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped asking why this happened to me and started asking what love wants to do through me now. That shift from resistance to reverence changed everything. Gratitude showed me a way back into my life. It’s not just something I practice; it’s something I am. Gratitude is where my wisdom was born, where my compassion deepened and where my purpose began to take shape.
The everyday miracle of showing up
People often see who I am today—the coach, the author, the woman helping others heal—and they assume I’ve somehow “arrived.” But the truth is, I’m still becoming. Every morning, I wake up and make a quiet choice: to open my heart again, to participate in life again, to look for beauty even in the ordinary.
My struggle has been, and still is, real and profound. But that’s exactly why I see every single day as sacred. To get up, to breathe, to keep creating something beautiful out of pain—that, to me, is triumph. I’ve learned that healing isn’t a finish line you cross; it’s a daily devotion. It’s saying, “I’m still here. I’m still willing.”
Grief has made me pay attention—to the texture of the moment, to the tone in someone’s voice, to the stories behind their eyes. It’s made me gentler. It’s made me present.
Creating a life bigger than grief
I want people to know that grief isn’t the end of your story. It’s an invitation to begin again, to build something radiant out of what remains.
The Greater Than Grief movement I founded grew out of that truth—that we can honour what we’ve lost not by holding on, but by expanding into who we’ve become because of it. Through my coaching work and the Drew Gallemore Water Watchers Safety Initiative, I get to turn love into service, heartbreak into hope and memory into a movement. That’s how I continue my son’s story—not by living in the past, but by carrying his love forward into everything I create.
Grief has not only expanded my spiritual vocabulary, it’s made me softer, stronger and infinitely more human.
I’ve learned that we don’t heal because the pain disappears. We heal because we learn to hold love and loss in the same breath. We learn to speak the language of grief. And when we choose something greater than grief, we choose the miracle of life.
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image: Olichel
