E is for Emotion
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- March 23, 2025
This week has had me in a chokehold.
I have endured the kind of grief that sneaks up on you in quiet moments, the kind that turns the air thick and makes the world feel distant and unfamiliar. The sudden death of a childhood friend shook something loose in me, something I thought was stable, #unshakable.
But grief has a way of reminding you that no one is truly prepared for loss. No matter how strong you are, it will throw you off balance, shift your reality, and demand to be felt.
Yet, even in the midst of that pain, life does not pause. I have had to find the energy to execute all the epiphanies that demanded action because that is the brutal irony of life. It doesn’t stop to let you catch your breath. It keeps moving, forcing you to decide whether you will keep up or crumble under the weight of it all.
I have had to embrace change and, in doing so, embrace myself — who I am, my faults, my fears, my shortcomings, my lack of understanding of the way the world works. I have had to sit with the uncomfortable truth that some questions will never be answered, and some losses will never make sense.
I have been ravaged by empathy, feeling the sorrow of my childhood friend’s family as though it were my own because, in many ways, it is my own. Loss has a way of making us all kin.
And through all of this, I have felt lost.
So, earlier today, I did the only thing I know to do when the weight in my chest won’t lift, when the gaps in my mind refuse to close — I went for a run.
I took Emotion and its accompaniments — Energy, Evolution, Endurance, Epiphany, Embrace, Execution, Empathy — and I put them into motion. Step after step, breath after breath, I ran. And as my feet pounded against the pavement, I spoke to God.
I asked Him why.
Why does grief linger?
Why do some answers never come?
Why does the heart learn to carry what the mind cannot comprehend?
And He said:
‘Because in breaking, you find your becoming. In questions, you find surrender. And in the movement — step after step, breath after breath — you remember that you are still here. And as long as you are still here, purpose remains. Keep going.’
Those words settled into me, deep in the places where grief and exhaustion had taken root. Because if there is one #Unshakable truth, it is this: as long as we are still here, there is still work to do.
Life does not wait for us to make sense of it. Destiny does not wait for grief to subside. And so we must carry on, not because it is easy, but because we must.
So today, E is for Emotion. It is for all the things I carried with me on that run, all the things I refuse to suppress:
And finally, E is for Emotion.
For the weight of it. The rawness of it. The way it humbles you, shakes you, empties you—only to reveal what truly remains.
Emotion is not weakness. It is the proof that we are alive, that we have loved, that we have felt deeply. And as painful as that may be, it is also a privilege.
Because as long as we are here, purpose remains.
Purpose — and submission to the will of God.
Even when we don’t understand. Even when the weight of grief and unanswered questions press down on our hearts. Even when the road ahead is unclear.
Because to keep going is not just an act of survival — it is an act of faith.
Faith that there is meaning beyond what we see. Faith that even in breaking, we are being shaped. Faith that in surrendering to God’s will, we find the strength to move forward.
So keep going.
‘See’ you next week.
IG Handle: @unshakable.is.a.state.of.mind
