The Invisible Load

On carrying grief quietly in a world that keeps moving

It’s a random Saturday and we’re moving through what looks like a normal schedule. Kenton takes Kairo to swim. I take Marcus to flag football. We’re driving and suddenly it feels like every person I see is pushing a stroller.

Maybe that was reality. The two weekends before, we had snow and ice storms, so maybe everyone was just out enjoying the sunshine. Or maybe my brain simply locked onto every stroller as a reminder of what I don’t have.

Either way, I spiral.

Or the time I was back at the same doctor’s office where we were told Kensleigh was no longer alive. Two weeks after delivering, I was there for a check-up, barely holding myself together. A mother walked in with her newborn. The baby started crying. And then I did too. My chest tightened. My heart raced. No one in that waiting room knew that I had just lost my daughter. That Kensleigh should have been in my arms.

It’s having a conversation and forgetting how much time has actually passed. It’s 2026, but sometimes my brain is still in 2025. September doesn’t feel far away. It feels recent. Immediate.

It’s someone asking how many children I have and feeling the calculation happen in real time. How do I answer? Do I say three? Do I say two? What if they ask about ages? Not everyone is entitled to Kensleigh’s story.

It’s saying Kairo is my second child or my middle child and wondering if someone will follow up with another question.

It’s replaying that Tuesday in my head without warning. Driving. Folding laundry. Sitting still. Suddenly I’m back there. I relive moments vividly. I notice new details. I think of new questions. I know there will be no new answers.

And in the middle of all of this, life keeps moving.

Texts. Emails. Phone calls. Checking on friends. Planning date nights. Celebrating birthdays. Responding to the world as if my brain isn’t running two timelines at once.

The mental load is exhausting. So if I don’t respond to a text or answer the phone, it’s not because I don’t care. I might send a funny meme or a silly TikTok and ignore a longer message because that’s what I have capacity for. I have over a thousand unread texts. Thousands of unread emails. Notifications stacked on notifications.

Some of the heaviest parts of grief are invisible. They don’t announce themselves. They don’t always interrupt the day in obvious ways. They just sit quietly beneath everything else, shaping how I move through the world.

And most of the time, no one knows they’re there.