Permission to Dress Your Grief in Beauty (And Take Her Out)
A soft manifesto for when getting dressed is an act of resurrection.
“I see you posting pics with friends, smiling,” a bestie said softly over a long-overdue coffee this weekend. “But,” she paused, “I also see what’s in your eyes…” Oh shit, I thought, is it THAT obvious? She took a breath, cocked her head, stared squarely into my eyes and said, “It’s grit.”
“Thank you,” I replied, feeling seen. “But honestly, I’m so damn tired of having to be strong all the time.” She nodded in understanding. I knew she’d know that feeling, having gone through more difficult grief events than a human should bear in a lifetime.
There's a thing that happens when you've been knocked down by life so many times that getting up feels optional. I call it the "fuck it" threshold. Not in a self-destructive way, but in the "what even matters anymore?" kind of way. And as an optimist and generally sunshine-y human, getting to that kind of apathy DOES. NOT. FEEL. GOOD.
In 2025, it feels like we're all hitting that threshold at once. Grieving old versions of ourselves, broken systems, vanished dreams. Like my perimenopausal body, the world keeps turning — but slower, heavier, meaner.
I've been quiet lately. Not because I don't have words — goddess knows I rarely have trouble finding those — but because the words that keep coming out are wrapped in a grief so raw and expansive that sharing them feels like bleeding in public. And who wants to be that person at the party?
I am so tired of being Debbie Downer. I’m trying not to be the person who answers every, “That’s so sad about The Bay closing down,” with “Yeah, but they have such a crappy history. Do you know about their part in colonialism and Indigenous genocide in Canada?” (OK, okay, I’m not trying that hard.)
But the horrors persist. (Stay with me here. I promise this isn’t a post where I go through a laundry list of my opinions on controversies and hard things.)
I don’t know about you, but my social media feed shifts from cries for aid for starving children in terror zones to tips on making a smoothie that promises to save my face from melting off due to lack of collagen. Then come the memes (which I’m not mad about it). The Italian leather slides I hovered over a beat too long. And finally, a family-size bag of orange Cheetoh-dusted, capital-F fascism. It’s a wonder any feeling person can put on pants these days, let alone a fancy dress.
And yet, I feel truly guilty, given this is not a grief kicked off by a person’s death. Nothing is really happening to me — not directly. It’s all just… happening. I find myself struggling to swim to the surface lately, to admire the sun glistening on the water’s surface. But if I stay down, I’m afraid I’ll drown in my sorrow.
How do we honour our grief while still finding ways to live beautifully alongside it?
When Poets Speak Truth
The other night, that question was answered.
I went to see Mustafa the Poet perform live for the second time in a year. The first time I experienced one of his deeply spiritual shows was in November, when all of my current grief was slowly making itself known. My life was quietly unravelling — a beautiful relationship disintegrating in a raw mess of jumbled feelings and truths, like a cake you didn’t bake long enough. News kept coming for people I love — too fast, too heavy, ready or not.
Back then, I was still waking up to what I was carrying, what I’d been denying, putting off the realization of. I was only beginning to notice the bone-deep fatigue and the sense that everything was coming undone.
During the show, Mustafa said something profound in between his heartachingly gorgeous songs. (Poets tend to do that.)
"Dress up your grief.
Your grief deserves to see beauty, too."
And something in me that had been surviving quietly stood up and said, Yes. That.
His words felt like a bookend to this chapter — like slamming a heavy, hardcover shut after making it through the hardest part. It hit like a revelation, the kind that flips the light on in a room you’ve been fumbling around in for months. In the darkness of grief, I'd forgotten there was another way to carry it.
Dress Up Your Skeletons and Take Your Ghosts Out
Those words felt like a call to prayer. An invitation to remember: there is still beauty here. Even now. Especially now.
Like a spring breeze whispering, “Please, move toward beauty. She’s here, patiently waiting for you to see her again. The answers you seek are in the noticing.”
So I’m beginning again, slowly. Dusting off the old Nadine costume from the back of the closet. It's a bit frayed, misshapen, and outdated — but I think I can still slip it over this skeleton, this scaffolding that once held a vibrant woman who knew how to inhabit her own light.
I reach for my “Inappropriate Red” lipstick — the one reserved for special occasions and bold declarations. I put on the earrings that kiss my shoulders with each step. I coax each curl into that perfect chaotic spiral. Not to be seen, not to perform. But to remember: she’s still part of me. And so is everything I’ve carried since.
Dudes! I’ve been ghosting MYSELF! And that realization is a kind of reverence. A kind of remembering. An offering to both the woman I was and the woman I’m still learning to be.
I want to greet myself the way you greet an old friend you haven’t seen since the Before Times.
Strange how life works. We spend the first half building identities through accumulation — more accomplishments, more relationships, more titles, more stuff. Then midlife hits like a wrecking ball, and suddenly it's all about subtraction. What can I shed? What doesn’t fit? Which of these stories was never mine to begin with?
And then — quietly, awkwardly, sometimes against our own instincts — we begin again.
Not because it’s easy. Lorde, no.
It seems easier to stay sloth-y and sad, wrapped in the familiar weight of your own undone-ness. Easier to scroll. To stew. To cocoon in grief’s fleece blanket and tell the world, I’ll emerge when I’m good and ready.
But then, spring taps your shoulder.
She doesn't shout. She nudges.
And suddenly, you’re noticing.
The snowdrops, hanging their heads like naughty schoolchildren. The sunset painting a seemingly dead tree back to life. Hyacinths and crocuses caressing the earth, reminding us what it means to have seasons. What a gift, this living. What a quiet, stubborn miracle to begin again.
In my garden, tulips and peonies push through the dirt with grit and grace, cracking the hardened surface to let the light meet their newborn faces.
“Hey, buds,” I say as I pass, laughing at my own corny joke. It was the first time I’d laughed at myself in months.
The Archaeology of Joy
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror before stepping out to greet the tulips — making an effort, adorned, showing up for my grief. Not trying to erase it. Just choosing not to let it be the only thing that gets dressed.
It’s not about reclaiming who I was, but making space for her — to sit beside the version of me that’s survived all this. Both deserve my love. Just in different ways.
It feels like archaeology. Like carefully dusting off fossilized joy to see if it’s still intact beneath all this sediment of sadness and weariness.
How far back does this grief go? I mentally scroll through life-altering moments over the past decade — and the one before that. I physically scroll past headlines that stack like stones. In 2025, personal losses and collective chaos blur together, forming a grief that feels both uniquely mine and universally shared.
And I realize: grief has never been far. It’s always walked beside me. But I’ve never thought to show her beauty — not with intention — until now.
Maybe that’s the key. Not to outrun grief. Not to overcome it. Not even to “heal” from it in that sanitized, Instagram-quote kind of way.
But to befriend it.
To buy Grief a fancy dress.
To take her dancing.
To say, Yes. You belong here, too.
Two things can be true at once: the world can be falling apart while you notice a perfect tulip breaking through the soil. Your heart can be cracked open while your lipstick is perfectly applied.
You can cry into your pillow, wondering where it all went wrong, or worrying who will take care of your decrepit carcass in 25 years.
But when we remember to notice all the wonder we’re privileged to witness — and take a beat to feel astonished, even — we start to find the path out.
You can grieve what’s gone while adorning what remains.
So What Now? Find Your Way Back, Slowly
Today I'm writing again, even with shaky hands. Because maybe grief needs to see not just beauty, but also creativity, community, and connection — the things that make us most human in the face of what tries to strip our humanity away.
And in this moment, when the world seems determined to break our hearts daily, letting joy and grief coexist isn’t a luxury — it’s a rebellion.
If it feels safe, pull out something from your past self’s closet — the jacket, the playlist, the lipstick. Not to cover your grief, but to offer her something lovely. Take her out. Let her notice some shit. Let her feel the breeze, the beat, the beauty.
See what happens when these two parts of you meet.
What small thing might connect you to who you were before everything changed?
I love what I here, when it is winter everything gloomy and I say to myself ( soon would be spring again ) The couleurs the smell and more to come. Love you