Everyone Else Was Grieving the Dead. I Was Grieving Being Alive

No one prepares you for the silence after the sirens stop and the news crews pack up. 

When the hurricane last fall passed through Perry, Florida, the town didn’t look wounded. 

It looked erased.

I walked away with just cuts and bruises.

Others weren’t as lucky.

My supervisor at work.

The baker who always saved me the last blueberry muffin on Fridays.

The neighbor who brought over tomatoes from his garden.

Now their names show up in memorial posts and candlelight vigils.

And I’m still here.

My therapist called it Survivor’s Guilt.

It isn’t just grief.

The guilt showed up every time I heard “You’re so lucky.”

It showed up when I laughed while helping sorting through rubble and immediately felt like I’ve done something wrong.

I tried staying busy.

Sorting donated clothes. 

Joining rebuilding committees.

Saying yes to every request.

If my hands were moving, my mind didn’t have to wander.

But it still wandered.

One evening, my eldest daughter suggested I try writing.

She was worried about me. 

She kept mentioning that I wasn’t the same as she remembered. 

“Just get it out of your head,” she said.

But I didn’t know where to start. 

A blank page felt like standing in the wreckage all over again.

But most of all, I didn’t want to relive it. I didn’t want to make it real.

A few nights later, while scrolling, I came across an article about therapists recommending Memowrite.

It promises to help you write your life story – but I wasn’t sure how that would help me.

But still, I decided to try it. I had nothing to lose.

Memowrite asked simple questions.

And I found myself answering honestly.

I wrote about the first time I felt safe.

About what community has meant to me.

About the people who shaped me long before the storm.

There were 50 prompts in total.

You can see the questions for yourself here:

I didn’t answer them in order.

Some made me close the laptop and come back days later.

But something slowly changed.

When I was answering those questions, I began to see my life more than a single, devastating chapter.

I was finally healing.

I wrote about surviving – not as something I had to apologize for, but as something I now have to live with.

The guilt hasn’t disappeared.

I still have hard days. I still miss Linda, the baker, and Peter, my dear gardening neighbor.

But writing my story with structure and care has given me a place to hold both gratitude and grief at the same time.

I can reread how much those people meant to me and feel a little calmer. 

I’m not “over it.”

I’m just learning, slowly, how to carry it without letting it crush me.

And for now, that feels like enough.