I used to think “resetting” meant changing everything overnight.

A new routine.
A new mindset.
A perfectly organised house.
Early mornings. Green smoothies. Motivation. Discipline.

But the older I get — and the more life has humbled me — the more I’ve realised that real resetting is usually much quieter than that.

Sometimes resetting looks like finally making the doctor’s appointment.
Sometimes it’s walking into Pilates terrified but doing it anyway.
Sometimes it’s meal prepping instead of skipping meals.
Sometimes it’s getting out of bed after weeks of feeling emotionally exhausted.
Sometimes it’s allowing yourself to rest without feeling guilty for it.

For a long time, I lived in survival mode.

Grief does that to you.
Chronic stress does that to you.
Losing someone you love changes you in ways no one prepares you for.

You stop planning.
You stop dreaming.
You stop recognising yourself.

And somewhere along the way, you realise you haven’t really been living — you’ve just been surviving.

This year feels different though.

Not because everything is magically fixed.
Not because healing suddenly arrived one morning.
But because slowly, quietly, I’ve started choosing myself again.

I’m learning that strength doesn’t always look loud.
Sometimes strength looks like consistency.
Like showing up.
Like rebuilding your body after stress has lived inside it for too long.
Like creating routines that feel safe instead of punishing.
Like learning how to exist outside of survival mode.

Maybe resetting isn’t about becoming a completely different person.

Maybe it’s about slowly finding your way back to yourself.

Or maybe it’s about learning to navigate who you are becoming.

Because the truth is, after loss, you don’t go back to who you were before. You can’t. Grief changes you completely. The way you think, the way you move through life, the way you love, even the way you breathe — everything changes.

Things that once upset you now seem trivial.
And somehow, the most trivial things can suddenly upset you beyond belief.

It’s confusing.
Exhausting.
Isolating.

And another thing no one really talks about is the realisation that grief doesn’t necessarily get easier with time.

I honestly thought after six years things would feel lighter by now.
That maybe time would soften it all.

But truthfully, it hasn’t.

You just get better at carrying it.
Better at hiding it.
Better at functioning around it.

And there’s something incredibly daunting about realising this feeling deep inside you may never fully leave.

That this ache becomes part of you.

One of the hardest parts of grief for me — and something no one really talks about — is how complicated happy occasions can feel.

An engagement.
A wedding.
A milestone birthday.
A pregnancy announcement.
A baby.

Moments that should fill you with joy can instead leave you feeling completely shattered inside, especially when it’s people who were close to Tay.

Because these were the things she wanted too.

The engagement boards.
The weddings.
The babies.
The future she should have had.

It was all over her Pinterest.
The life she was planning before everything changed.

So sometimes when I see those milestones happening for others, it’s not jealousy and it’s not resentment — it’s grief.

A deep sadness for the life Tay didn’t get the chance to live.

Of course I say congratulations.
Of course I smile.
But internally, it can feel like I’m falling apart.

And to be completely honest, sometimes it feels dishonest pretending I’m okay with it all.

The feeling doesn’t just disappear either. Sometimes it lingers for weeks. Sometimes months.

So the safest thing for me has often been distance.
Pulling away.
Staying quiet.

Not from my own space online — because Taysvision has become part of my healing and connection — but from endlessly scrolling through everyone else’s lives.

I avoid getting too caught up in social media because sometimes I just don’t know what the next photo of happiness might trigger in me.

And that probably sounds awful to admit out loud, but it’s honest.

Another thing I’ve struggled with is the quiet shifting of relationships over time.

Not in an angry way.
Not with blame.
Just the slow realisation that people move forward with their lives — and sometimes that means they unintentionally move further away from yours.

Life keeps moving around you.

People grow.
Families evolve.
Friendships shift.
Priorities change.
New chapters begin.

And while part of me genuinely understands that, another part of me still feels hurt by the silence sometimes.

There are moments when I find myself upset over the people I no longer hear from the way I used to.
The missed messages.
The dates remembered differently.
The gradual distance that seems to happen without anyone meaning for it to.

And that part is confusing because logically, I understand life keeps moving.
I know people aren’t intentionally trying to hurt me.
I know everyone is navigating their own lives, responsibilities and happiness.

But grief isn’t always logical.

Sometimes it’s not the big things that break your heart.
Sometimes it’s the absence of the little things that used to make you feel remembered.

I think that’s another part of loss no one really talks about — grieving the changes in relationships while simultaneously understanding why those changes happen.

Both things can be true at once.

Then there’s the masking.
The constant effort of hiding your feelings to make other people comfortable.
The pretending.
The “I’m okay.”
The carrying it silently because you don’t want to ruin someone else’s happiness.

It’s exhausting.

So maybe resetting, for me, isn’t about reinventing myself at all.

Maybe it’s about getting to know this version of me.
Learning what I need.
Learning what I can handle.
Learning how to care for myself properly while carrying grief that never really leaves.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe giving myself the best possible chance at a half decent life moving forward is its own kind of healing.