May is hard...
...and why that's okay.
For those of you who don’t know (which to be honest, may be all of you because I haven’t talked about my WIP very often), I am currently working on the zero draft of a novel about grief and healing and burnout recovery.
I spent half of 2025 in creative burnout, November and December in what felt like a grave of despair, and the past five in recovery.
There was a point in December that I thought I would never write another word again. Ever. It sounds dramatic, I know. But that’s the truth I was living with. I would wake up every morning and want, more than anything, to be able to write.
But I couldn’t.
Not really. Not what I wanted to anyway.
In January I started feeling something. I couldn’t explain it and I probably still can’t. All I knew is that I felt this pull back to my keyboard, so I would trip over twelve words in a blank document and close my laptop.
I considered that a win.
Progress.
I had to.
There was a story in my heart that wanted to be told.
One that had been started once, twice—five times?
The story of a woman who lost someone that she loved dearly. Someone who taught her his love of nature and the open road. Someone who listened to music too loudly and solved problems with blue slushies and vanilla ice cream.
Armed with a Stalogy B6 Notebook and a Uniball One gel pen, I sat down at my desk in February and started drafting that novel by hand.
Over the next 100 days I wrote 55,192 words that I absolutely adore. Words that have made me laugh. Words that have made my chest cave in. I have shed tears for this woman. For her loss. For her memories.
I have smiled with her, too.
Because on the other side of the sadness, of the soul-crushing darkness, is warmth.
Faint at first. Then it grows.
After a while grief and warmth live side by side.
Most of the time the warmth glows bright. Sometimes grief is louder.
How do I know? I’m getting there (I promise).
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At the end of April I put together my (somewhat) ambitious plan for May:
Post at least once on my main Substack
Launch my second Substack (it exists but hasn’t been built out yet)
Work on my author website
Continue writing kickass words in my WIP
Do all the things I need to do at work that are both fun and exhausting
Be a mom and a partner (the most important of the bunch tbh)
I was a woman with a plan and I was ready for it (mostly).
Each day flew by. I was busy and tired, but I was making progress and had gotten to the sweet spot of my novel with Sadie and Oliver, and was loving every moment I got to spend with them.
On the morning of May 14th I woke up before the sun like I always do, sat down at my desk, did a little journaling about my story, and started working on a scene that I had a feeling would be tough, but I was looking forward to it none-the-less.
It’s a scene where Sadie pokes the bruise of her grief. She listens to a song her dad loved. She finds a half-roll of mints that belonged to him. She feels warmth along with her grief.
Nothing big.
Nothing life changing.
I cried a little, finished the day with 199 words added to my manuscript, and closed my laptop before heading to my day job.
It wasn’t until I got home that night that I realized that song had been playing on repeat in my heart all day.
It wasn’t until I got home that grief gripped me by the throat and I cried, really cried, for my own father.
My body realized before my mind did.
It was 10 days until the 5 year anniversary of my father’s passing. A man who was complicated and warm and brilliant. A man who I loved and who loved me fiercely.
[Five years is such a strange amount of time. It’s long enough that grief shouldn’t overwhelm, but it’s also only five years so why are you being so hard on yourself Jackie?]
I went to bed that night telling myself I would feel better in the morning. It was just the song that made me sad. I was “better”. I had “healed”.
But you know what? Healing from grief doesn’t have a finish line.
It’s a road that keeps stretching and stretching. The only thing that changes is that navigating it gets easier.
So, I learned from my past mistakes that pushed me into active, soul-crushing burnout in November 2025, and I stepped away from the story for a while. I would be a liar if I said it wasn’t a little scary and if I said it didn’t suck.
It still does.
But. But. But, I found warmth again in an unexpected place.
And because of that place I can go there when I’m feeling down, and see that warmth still exists (thanks to a man named Dean Mercer who cannot exist in the same room as the woman he loves without toppling over a chair).
In life there are few certainties (death and taxes anyone?) but here are mine:
May is hard.
It may always be hard.
But I have hope that it will get easier to navigate year after year.
And Pinball Wizard will always sound like my dad.
But it won’t always make me cry.
Until next time,
Jackie ✨
Jackie, This resonated deeply. I think one of the most powerful observations here is that your body recognized the anniversary before your mind did. Grief often works that way—quietly moving beneath the surface until something as simple as a song reveals what has been there all along.
I also appreciated your distinction between healing and finishing. So many people expect grief to conclude, when in reality we simply learn to carry it differently as the years pass.
“And Pinball Wizard will always sound like my dad.”
What a beautiful and heartbreaking truth. Thank you for sharing this.
Monica
Thank you reading this and engaging so thoughtfully.
Its been an interesting ride from grieving through healing. Every day *is* easier, and June has been looking up, thankfully.