From Intern Elena's Desk: How Grief Changed the Way I See Everything: What I Learned in Six Months of Sitting With Loss, Love, and Letting Go

By: Elena Faddoul, Grieve Leave’s Undergraduate Intern.

When I interviewed for the Grieve Leave internship in January, I thought I knew grief.

I had experienced it—multiple times, in multiple forms.

I had lost both of my grandfathers, a cousin whose absence still haunts me, and the version of my childhood I left behind when I moved abroad at eleven years old.

I thought grief was something that came in sharp moments: funerals, goodbyes, endings. But over the past six months, I’ve learned that grief is much deeper, much quieter, and much more present than I ever believed.

Grief isn’t just about death. 

It’s about change. 

It’s about losing the version of a dream you once held tightly. 

It’s about realizing that the future you imagined for yourself at 13 may not match where you are at 20.  

It’s about learning how to hold both love and loss at the same time and choosing to move forward with both in your hands.

Before Grieve Leave, I thought people only talked about grief when they had no choice: when the loss was fresh, the tears still on their cheeks, and the pain was visible.

But what I’ve learned here is quite the opposite: talking about grief isn’t a sign that you’re stuck. Often, it’s what helps you move forward. It’s what helps you grow.

Fixing the way we talk about grief starts with normalizing it. It starts by recognizing that it doesn’t have to look like collapse to be valid. It starts by understanding that grief is a language we all speak, whether we acknowledge it or not.

One of the most powerful truths I’ve taken from this experience is that we are all grieving something. 

That realization has quietly shifted the way I see people: my classmates, my family, even strangers. Some are mourning loved ones. Others are grieving a love story, a dream that no longer holds, or a version of themselves they had to let go of in order to thrive and survive.

Grief doesn’t discriminate. It shows up in transitions, in adulthood, in workplaces, in libraries and study halls, in growing pains. It’s not the exception, it’s the rule. It’s part of growing.

Through my work with Grieve Leave, I’ve had the chance to reflect deeply on the quiet, invisible losses that have shaped me: the years spent adapting to a new culture, the grief of growing up too quickly, the realization that some of my earliest dreams were rooted in fantasy more than reality.

Grieve Leave gave me the tools to explore grief not just as a personal experience, but as something profoundly social and political. It helped me revisit my own stories of loss—my cousin’s death, my grandfathers’ passings, the immigrant child in me who didn’t know how to name what she was feeling—and gave me permission to hold space for those stories without trying to change or fix them.

And maybe one of the most transformative lessons I’ve learned—thanks to the brilliant Becki Feinglos—is to be more intentional with how we talk about grief. I’ve learned to avoid framing grief as something to “heal” from, as if it’s a wound that needs to close.

Because grief isn’t something broken. It doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s not a mistake in our lives, it’s a reflection of love, and change, and time. Learning to live with grief doesn’t mean overcoming it; it means integrating it, honoring it, and recognizing that it belongs.

(Also, Becki taught me that “less is more,” which—while slightly hard to grasp to my very wordy self—actually changed the way I think about everything. Including this sentence. So thank you for that, too.)

This internship has been one of the most unexpectedly transformative chapters in my life. I leave with a deeper sense of empathy, a stronger commitment to advocacy, and a belief that conversations about grief belong everywhere—in schools, workplaces, government agencies, community groups, and at dinner tables.

If I could share just one message with my classmates or anyone else, it would be this: you are not alone in your grief. And you don’t have to wait until it explodes to talk about it. Naming your grief doesn’t make you dramatic or broken. It makes you human. It makes you brave.

To the Grieve Leave team: Becki Feinglos, Laura Burns, and everyone who helps this great organization transform lives, thank you for opening this door for me, for letting me learn from your wisdom, and for helping me name what I’ve carried for so long.

And to the entire Grieve Leave community: thank you for always welcoming my voice and perspective. Your stories, your comments, and your honesty reminded me that storytelling itself is a form of care.

Though my internship is ending, the mission isn’t. I’ll be carrying this work, these stories, and these lessons with me far beyond these six months—into law school, into policy work, and into every space I hope to make a little more compassionate, and a little more human.

We’re all grieving. But we’re also growing. And that gives me hope.