Breathing Through Grief: Learning to Live Again
Trigger warning: grief, loss, cancer, emotional intensity
Life Before Loss
My life was full of color, warmth, and love, until it changed in the blink of an eye.
It was stable and vibrant, warm, homey.
I had my mom, so I knew I was loved.
Everything changed in May 2021.
After the pandemic, my mom went to have a mole checked. They removed it, analyzed it, and then had to remove more. It was bad.
Melanoma.
Every time I heard the news, something happened in my body.
You get a sinking feeling in your stomach, like the ground drops a little inside you.
I held my breath so tight every time, as if, if I didn’t breathe, this wasn’t happening.
Things moved fast.
The cancer spread through her whole body, and she died. In just three months, she passed away.
When it happened, I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it.
At the same time, something strange happened. I felt everything more intensely, it was a moment of opposites.
Colors looked more vibrant ✦ → but food lost its taste ○
I could feel immense joy ✧ → and immense sadness at the same time
A pain so big it felt endless ⋆→ but I could also feel her love ♡
I was in shock.
I was breathing, moving, existing, but everything felt sped up, intense, out of control.
I wasn’t truly living; I was rushing through life, trying to escape the grief and keep myself moving.
The Piñata: Year 2–3 of Grief
Around years two and three of my grief, I felt completely disoriented. I didn’t know where to stand or what to hold onto. My body didn’t feel safe anymore.
During that time, I felt like a piñata 🪅
I was hanging from a very thin string, a small mecate, barely holding myself up. At the bottom, all the candy was heavy, pulling me down. I kept swinging from side to side, unstable, trying to find the floor, trying to ground myself.
Grief was like a deep ocean — cold, dark water stretching further than I could see. Like opening a door and seeing a cliff, a sheer drop I wasn’t ready to step off. Instinctively, I slammed the door shut, trying to protect myself, but I was still swinging, still holding on, still trying to survive.
I held onto that string with everything I had, clinging to anything that felt like stability, anything that promised I could make it through. And I kept holding my breath.
Until one day, the string broke.
I fell.
Everything scattered, like candy all over the floor.
Finding Breath Again
Somewhere in that collapse, I found pranayama and rebirthing. Simple breathing practices helped me start breathing again. Slowly, cautiously, I felt the air reach parts of my body that had been closed for so long. My chest loosened a little. My diaphragm moved. My mind started to soften. It wasn’t a cure, but it was enough to remind me that I was still alive.
Later, I began Conscious Connected Breathwork (CCB) training. It has challenged me in very deep ways because it asks me to step into that fear, to breathe fully when I’ve been holding so much, to move forward when grief wants to keep me frozen.
That’s when I realized how deeply grief still lives in me. The resistance is physical. My hips tighten, my lower back aches, my diaphragm closes. The grief is loud, heavy, present in every muscle. And it’s mental too. My mind resists change, resists moving forward, resists letting go of the pain that still connects me to my mom.
There’s also the challenge of doing something new, no longer just a stylist or designer, but letting myself be a new person, exploring something different, something my mom will never see. I am still in training, learning how to guide breathwork, and stepping into this new chapter of my life feels scary without her.
I hope that one day I will be able to share this practice with others, but right now, just being here, learning, is both exciting and frightening. She knew I loved all of this, and I like to believe she guided me here. She knew me better than I knew myself.
Moving Forward Step by Step
Recently, during my last 1:1 CCB session with my mentor Mike, something shifted. For the first time, I was able to move past the resistance that had been living in my body for years. Before, the tightness in my diaphragm felt like a hair tie, pulling me tight and holding me down. That day, it finally opened. I could take full, deep breaths. I felt expansion, a sense of space I hadn’t known in years. I felt relieved.
I felt hope — real hope — rising inside me.
In that moment, I also felt the shame of the pain I had been carrying. I allowed it to be there, and slowly, I let it go. I didn’t force it; I breathed it out, letting the breath carry it away.
That session reminded me once again: grief may close me, fear may tighten me, resistance may stop me, but it also pushes me to find ways to heal. Breath opens me, teaches me, and brings me back to life. And I am learning that this is only possible in the right space, with the right people, with those who make you feel safe, supported, and held.
Opening to Life Again
I am learning that moving forward doesn’t mean leaving grief behind. It doesn’t mean forgetting her. It means living with her memory, letting it guide me, while allowing myself to feel, to breathe, and to open to life again.
Each breath, each moment of presence, is a choice — to move forward, to feel deeply, to love, and to live.
I am moving forward, slowly, step by step. I can feel my mom with me in these moments, supporting me, encouraging me, reminding me that life is still full of love and possibility.
In that space, I can finally see that grief can coexist with hope, loss can coexist with love, and life can still be beautiful.
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