When my mom was diagnosed with dementia, a neighbor asked her how she felt about it.
She said, "Well, it won't matter — I won't remember."
That's who I was watching. That's what I was learning to hold.
The middle of goodbye can carry more than grief. If you're in that season with someone you love, there's a place to put it down.
Hi, I'm Heidi.
I've lived through anticipatory grief — with my mom, my dad, and our elderly dog. Each one taught me something different about what it means to love someone through the end of a season.
My mom taught me the most. She met her diagnosis with humor, with presence, and with an outlook I'm still learning from. She didn't perform strength. She just kept living.
I'm not a therapist. I'm not a grief counselor. I'm someone who was in the room, paying attention — and who has been writing about what I witnessed ever since.
This isn't clinical advice. It's peer support from someone who's been in the middle of goodbye and found that it was possible to hold more than loss there.
The REAL Process™
RECOGNIZE
Before healing begins, truth must be named. Not the polished version you show others—what's actually happening inside you.
EMBRACE
Your emotions aren't wrong or too much. This is where you give yourself permission to feel what you feel without judgment.
ALIGN
Alignment means coming home to yourself. Not perfect decisions—honest ones that honor your capacity and humanity.
LIVE
Life doesn't pause for grief. This means showing up while staying connected to yourself, even when everything is shifting.
There's a name for what you're carrying.
Anticipatory grief is the grief that happens before goodbye. It's what shows up when someone you love is still here — but changing. Still present — but fading.
It's the exhaustion you can't explain to people who aren't in it. The love and the relief and the guilt, all at once. The moments of closeness you didn't expect. The moments of numbness you didn't expect either.
You're not doing it wrong. You're not a bad person for feeling the complicated things. You're in one of the most human seasons there is — and it deserves more than survival.
My mom showed me that. She didn't survive her diagnosis. She lived alongside it, with humor, until she couldn't anymore. That's what I'm here to write about.
A space to do what she did — in your own way.
The REAL Journal: The Middle of Goodbye is a 7-day guided journal for anyone in the middle of goodbye. Fifty-six prompts that ask the questions nobody else is asking you.
Not "find the silver lining." Not "practice gratitude." The ones that keep you up at night. The ones you can't say out loud.
Your grief is already valid. You just need a place where your truth is allowed.
