Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

The kind of grief no one talks about

There are some heartbreaks you don’t get sympathy cards for. No one checks in on you when it happens. No one knows you’re grieving. Because the kind of grief I’m talking about doesn’t happen in romantic relationships or family loss; it happens somewhere quieter. Somewhere sacred. It happens between coaches and athletes.

A lighthouse that went dark

I once trained under someone I deeply admired. Admiration might not even be the right word, it was reverence. I trusted them the way you trust a surgeon with your open chest. They guided me. Encouraged me. Gave me a sense of belonging when I wasn’t sure I deserved to take up space in the gym. I would have followed them anywhere.

And then something shifted. A truth surfaced I didn’t ask for but couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t just a disappointment; it was the kind of reveal that rattles old wounds you thought were already healed. I found myself stuck in a situation I didn’t choose, carrying information that felt like poison. I was forced to unsee someone I once believed in wholeheartedly.

Leaving that gym felt like losing a home. A death of belonging. A break with something that had been holding me up. I didn’t leave in rage. I left in grief. Quietly. With tears in my throat and loyalty still half-wrapped around my heart. I told very few the full story. I kept it buried. Because at the time, saying the truth felt like betrayal, too.

A fresh start that still hurt

What I didn’t know was how long the silence would follow me.

When I landed at a new gym, I told myself it would be a fresh start. But I brought the past with me; every unspoken hurt, every tight breath I never exhaled. I was also coming off of surgery, and my body was still figuring out how to move again. The barbell felt heavier. My confidence was brittle. And every lift came with a second voice in my head telling me I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t who I used to be.

And then the world shut down. COVID took everything that felt stable and flipped it inside out. I joined a new CrossFit council, thinking it might help me find some footing. Instead, it added pressure to a foundation that was already cracked. The weight of the world, the pressure of performance, the disorientation of physical recovery; it all piled on.

The coach who caught the storm

And in the middle of that storm was a new coach. One who didn’t ask for any of it, but received it anyway.

I wasn’t the easiest athlete to coach in that season; I was guarded, carrying more than I let on. I held back, not because I didn’t trust them, but because I didn’t trust myself. I had been so rattled by the loss of my last gym, I didn’t know how to start again without fear.

The truth is, I handed over pieces of my pain without ever saying a word. And that’s what stays with me. Not guilt just sorrow. For what was unspoken, what was unfairly inherited. For the grief that got passed on in silence.

The cost of silence

There’s something uniquely tender about the grief that comes from unsaid things. The things you never name. The things you swallow because you’re trying to protect others, or protect what you once believed in. But eventually, that silence gets too heavy. It weighs down your spirit. It dulls your joy. And it doesn’t let you move forward.

The years that changed everything

Seven years have passed. And I can still feel the echoes of both of those seasons; what I lost, what I gained, what I never said. But I also feel something else now.

Peace.

Not the kind that came easily. Not the kind handed to me. The kind I built, slowly, through healing. Through forgiving people who never apologized and releasing the image of who I thought I had to be. Through honoring the coaches who held space for me when I couldn’t hold it for myself and through telling the truth, even if only to myself.

I no longer need to carry the silence.

To the ones who were part of my becoming

TTo the coaches who shaped me in those years: you mattered. More than you probably know. Not just in what you taught me but in how you stood beside me, knowingly or not, during some of the most painful and formative chapters of my life.

It wasn’t perfect. None of it was. And if I could go back and change any of it, I’m not sure I would. Because changing it would change me. And I’ve come to love the woman I’ve become—the coach I’ve become—because of what I learned in those imperfect, soul-shaping seasons.

You were part of my becoming. Not just my technique, but my spirit. My grit. My ability to stay when it would’ve been easier to run. You are written into the architecture of who I am. And you always will be. And I’ll teach others from that place. Thank you for who you were to me. It meant everything. It still does.

To the athlete I was: thank you for surviving that season. For walking away when it nearly broke you. For trusting again, when it would’ve been easier to stay hidden.

And to the woman I am now: this is the life you built from ashes. Gentle. Honest. Unshakably yours

The weight of unsaid things used to live in my chest like an anchor.

Now?

It’s a story I’ve laid down. One that made me stronger. One I no longer have to carry.