Avoid & Outrun : Grief
Avoid & Outrun
Part I: Grief
Pain is a very intense emotion.
And I think part of what makes pain so complicated is that most of us are first taught to understand it physically.
When we hear the word pain, we usually think about something we can point to.
A backache.
A knee injury.
A shoulder strain.
A twisted ankle.
Something you can put an ice pack on.
Something you can take medicine for.
Something you can rest, stretch, treat, and eventually move past.
And, of course, I am not telling anyone to abuse aspirin or medication. I am simply making the point that physical pain usually gives us a clear location, a clear cause, and, in many cases, a clear solution.
You fall.
You bump your leg.
You hit your shoulder against the door.
It hurts for twenty minutes, maybe an hour, maybe a day.
But eventually, the body usually begins to heal.
That is what we are conditioned to believe about pain.
That it is temporary.
That it arrives, it hurts, and then it leaves.
That today might be difficult, but tomorrow we will be okay.
And for a long time, I think I believed that.
I believed that pain could not define anything.
I believed pain was just something you endured until it passed.
But the issue with pain is this: if you are never taught how to properly deal with it, it does not always leave.
Sometimes, it waits.
Sometimes, it hides.
Sometimes, it disguises itself as anger.
Sometimes, it becomes silence.
Sometimes, it becomes distance.
Sometimes, it becomes the reason why a person flinches emotionally when nothing has physically touched them.
And that is where pain becomes more than just pain.
That is where pain becomes psychological.
That is where pain becomes memory.
That is where pain becomes grief.
And grief is different.
Grief is not a toothache.
Grief is not a headache.
Grief is not a back pain, a shoulder pain, or something you can simply wrap up, ice down, and expect to disappear by morning.
Grief confronts you with the pain of loss.
And loss is one of those things none of us experience the same way.
We use the word loss casually sometimes.
Your favorite sports team loses a championship game, and yes, if you are a diehard fan, that hurts.
You sit there frustrated.
You replay the missed opportunities.
You question the coaching decisions.
You remember the bad calls.
You watch the other team celebrate, and it feels personal for a little while.
Then opening day comes around, and maybe the pain creeps back up when you have to watch that same team receive their banner and their championship rings.
But even then, everyone involved usually walks away.
The athletes still have their contracts.
The owners still make their money.
The broadcasters still go home.
The fans are disappointed, but eventually, most of them move on.
That kind of loss hurts, but it does not usually dismantle your identity.
The kind of loss I am talking about is different.
I am talking about the loss of someone who meant something to you.
Someone who represented safety.
Someone who represented familiarity.
Someone who represented a version of life that you thought would always be there.
And whether you have already experienced that kind of loss or you will one day, the truth is that it changes people.
Some people experience one loss that is so deep, so personal, and so permanent that they are never quite the same afterward.
Other people experience loss after loss after loss, and somehow, they are still expected to wake up every day and make sense of a world that keeps taking pieces from them.
That is the part we do not always talk about enough.
Grief does not only take the person.
Sometimes, grief takes the shield.
It takes the person you would have called.
It takes the person you would have run to.
It takes the person who made the world feel less dangerous.
And when that shield is gone, you are not just grieving a person.
You are grieving protection.
You are grieving access.
You are grieving reassurance.
You are grieving the version of yourself that existed when that person was still here.
That is why I struggle with the idea of giving people easy answers about grief.
Because as even-keeled as I try to be, and as intuitive as I can be in these conversations, I understand that telling someone, “Do not run from it,” is not always as simple as it sounds.
Facing grief can be terrifying.
Because facing it means admitting that something really happened.
Facing it means admitting that someone is really gone.
Facing it means accepting that there are conversations you will not get back.
Questions that may never be answered.
Moments that will never be recreated.
And in fairness, sometimes people try to face grief before they are ready.
We have all had moments in life where we walked into a test unprepared.
We thought we could figure it out as we went.
Then the test humbled us.
It exposed everything we did not study.
It showed us exactly where we were weak.
But with a school test, you can study again.
You can come back better prepared.
You can review the questions you missed.
You can learn why the trick questions caught you.
Grief is not that clean.
There is no perfect study guide for grief.
There is no universal answer key.
There is no one-size-fits-all method that guarantees you will heal correctly, quickly, or comfortably.
Some people need professional help.
Some people need therapy.
Some people need a confidant.
Some people need a safe place where they can say the thing out loud without being judged for how ugly, confusing, or unfinished it sounds.
Some people write.
Some people pray.
Some people visualize.
Some people work out until their body is tired because their mind refuses to rest.
And, unfortunately, some people self-medicate.
Now, I want to be very clear.
I am not condoning that.
I am not romanticizing that.
I am not suggesting that numbing yourself is a solution.
I am acknowledging that when we are having a real conversation, we have to talk about the real ways people try to survive pain.
Because sometimes people do things that may temporarily silence the hurt, but long-term, those things do not heal them.
They only delay the confrontation.
And grief is already hard enough because most people are trying to figure out how to deal with it by themselves.
Not because they want to be alone.
Not because they do not need guidance.
But because sometimes the adults around them were adults in age, but not grown-ups in wisdom.
And there is a difference.
There is a difference between someone who is older than you and someone who is an elder.
An older person has years.
An elder has wisdom.
An older person has age.
An elder has understanding.
An older person can tell you what they have seen.
An elder can teach you what it meant.
If you sit long enough with a true elder, they can teach you things without even raising their voice.
They can teach you how to fix something.
How to carry yourself.
How to read a room.
How to survive disappointment without becoming bitter.
How to keep your dignity intact when life tries to embarrass you.
But not everyone gets that.
Not everyone has elders.
Some people only have older people around them.
People with years on them, but no willingness to guide them.
People with life experience, but no desire to share the wisdom that should have come from it.
And when grief enters that kind of environment, it becomes even more difficult.
Because you go to certain people expecting depth.
You expect them to have some kind of stoic, grounded, emotionally intelligent answer.
You expect them to help you understand how to live in a world where someone you love is no longer here.
You expect them to pick you up when you are sad.
But what happens when you go to someone vulnerable, and they push you away?
What happens when you tell somebody, “I do not know how to feel right now,” and they respond with coldness?
What happens when you say, “I am hurting,” and they tell you, “You are not the only one upset”?
What happens when the first lesson you learn about grief is that your sadness is inconvenient to other people?
That does something to a person.
Especially a child.
Because what do you tell a twelve-year-old who already saw very little of his father?
How do you tell him that his father is not only never coming home, but that he will never receive another phone call from him again?
How do you explain that kind of finality to someone who is still young enough to need protection, but old enough to understand that something permanent just happened?
And what happens when that child has questions, but nobody has answers?
What happens when people look at his pain like an inconvenience?
What happens when they tell him, directly or indirectly, “That is not my problem”?
Then we wonder why people grow up not knowing how to process grief.
We wonder why they become guarded.
We wonder why they become distant.
We wonder why they struggle to trust affection.
We wonder why vulnerability feels like a setup.
But for some people, vulnerability was punished before it was ever protected.
Some people were told to “man up” before they were even allowed to be kids.
Some people were expected to have the best temperament, the calmest demeanor, and the most stoic response to situations that should have shattered them.
They were told life was not fair.
They were told to deal with it.
They were told to be strong.
But nobody taught them what strength was supposed to look like when their heart was breaking.
And I think that is one of the most dangerous ways we set people up for failure.
We put them in circumstances that damage them.
Then we expect them to succeed as if the damage never happened.
We clip their wings before they ever get the chance to fly.
Then we tell them to grow artificial wings and soar higher than everybody else.
And that may be inspiring in hindsight, but in the moment, it is brutal.
It is unfair.
It is heavy.
It is psychologically demanding.
Because now this person has to become more than what the people before them could give.
They have to learn emotional language they were never taught.
They have to become the guidance they never received.
They have to become the safe place they never had.
And they have to do all of that without accepting the permanent identity of a victim.
Now, let me be clear.
Some people were absolutely victimized by circumstances they did not choose.
Some people were done wrong.
Some people were neglected.
Some people were abandoned emotionally, physically, spiritually, or psychologically.
And pretending that did not happen does not make anyone stronger.
But there is a difference between acknowledging what happened to you and allowing what happened to you to become the only definition of who you are.
That is the line.
That is the challenge.
How do I tell someone, “What happened to you was not right,” without encouraging them to live forever inside the wound?
How do I validate the pain without building a home inside it?
How do I help someone understand that they were hurt, while also reminding them that they are still responsible for what they become?
That is not an easy conversation.
But it is a necessary one.
Because you can be a victim of your circumstances, or you can become victorious in spite of them.
And I know the sports fans will understand this.
That is what we look for.
That is what we admire.
We admire resilience.
We admire the person who gets knocked down seven times and stands up eight.
We admire the Rocky Balboa spirit.
We admire Michael Jeffrey Jordan getting cut, doubted, challenged, and still becoming undeniable.
We admire fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler because they represent endurance, discipline, courage, and the ability to keep moving when everything in front of them is designed to stop them.
The lesson is not that pain is beautiful.
Pain is not always beautiful.
Sometimes pain is ugly.
Sometimes pain is cruel.
Sometimes pain is unfair.
But pain can become useful when you are willing to learn what it is trying to teach you.
That is why my outlook has always been this: do not confront grief head-on unless you are willing to learn from it.
Because grief is a brutal teacher.
But it does teach.
It teaches us that tomorrow is not promised.
It teaches us that time is not guaranteed.
It teaches us that people do not last forever.
It teaches us to cherish moments while we still have them.
Make the phone call today because you can make the phone call today.
Wish somebody well today because you can wish them well today.
Tell your mother you love her today because you have the option to tell her today.
Tell your children you are proud of them today because you have the chance to do so today.
In 2026, we have video calls, voice notes, text messages, direct messages, FaceTime, social media, emails, and more platforms than most of us even use consistently.
We are connected in too many ways to keep pretending that connection is impossible.
There are four-year-olds walking around with iPhones.
So I struggle to believe that in an entire twenty-four-hour day, a person cannot find five seconds to tell someone, “I love you.”
Five seconds to say, “I appreciate you.”
Five seconds to say, “I am proud of you.”
Now, if someone says, “At that moment, it was not important to me,” I can respect the honesty.
If someone says, “I had pressing matters, and I chose to focus on those,” I may not agree, but I can respect the truth of the answer.
What I struggle to accept is the idea that we never have time.
Because we find time to scroll.
We find time to sit in traffic and look at our phones.
We find time to play games.
We find time to disappear into distractions.
We find time to waste five minutes without even noticing.
And somewhere in the world, there is a person dealing with grief who would give anything to have five more minutes with someone they lost.
Somewhere in the world, someone canceled plans with a loved one because they thought there would always be another weekend.
Then that person was gone.
And now they would give anything to have that weekend back.
That is what grief teaches us.
The problem is, it teaches us after the fact.
It teaches us after the phone can no longer ring.
It teaches us after the seat is empty.
It teaches us after the chance has passed.
So the question becomes: how do you deal with grief?
How should we be taught to deal with grief?
And if grief teaches us anything, what are we supposed to learn from it?
I know there are people who want a definitive answer.
A clean answer.
A perfect answer.
A simple answer.
But I do not have that for you.
What I can tell you is this: do not attempt to outrun it.
Do not attempt to run away from those emotions forever.
Because as painful as they are, as heavy as they feel, and as broken as you may feel in the moment, it is important to go through them so they do not spend the rest of your life chasing you.
Grief avoided becomes grief delayed.
And grief delayed has a way of showing up in places you never expected.
It shows up in relationships.
It shows up in your temper.
It shows up in your fear of attachment.
It shows up in your inability to receive love without questioning the motive behind it.
It shows up in the way you prepare for abandonment even when nobody has left yet.
That is why healing matters.
Not because healing makes you forget.
You do not forget.
You learn how to carry it differently.
You learn how to live without letting the wound drive every decision.
You learn how to honor what was lost without becoming permanently lost yourself.
And maybe that is the goal of life in some strange way.
We get broken down.
Then we get rebuilt.
We get hurt.
Then we learn.
We get humbled.
Then we grow.
The life of the common individual is often the life of the underdog.
You come from modest circumstances.
You start with questions you do not have answers to.
You are handed pain you did not ask for.
Then, somehow, you are expected to make purposeful decisions and create meaning for yourself and others.
And while you may not understand it today, you may understand it one day.
Because if we had all the answers early, none of us would have to play the game.
And I do not want to lean too far into the idea that life is a simulation, but as someone who has played countless video games and RPGs, I understand the pattern.
Usually, you start with nothing.
You are the unknown person in the village.
The humble beginner.
The person with no armor, no reputation, no resources, and no reason to believe the world is going to make it easy.
Then, through struggle, quests, losses, battles, lessons, and choices, you become something more.
The peasant becomes the king.
The errand boy becomes the CEO.
The kid running sandwiches and messages becomes the made man.
The person nobody saw coming becomes the person nobody can ignore.
Life plays out like that more often than we realize.
But only if we are willing to accept that there will be moments we are not happy with.
There will be moments that hurt.
There will be moments when people we love, care about, and cherish may not be there to see us cross the finish line.
And that should create weight.
That should create gravity.
That should create a deeper reason to make it there.
Not just for ourselves, but for them.
I thought I had the answers at seventeen, much like most seventeen-year-olds do.
And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you choose to look at it, the world sat me down very quickly.
Then it kicked my butt every chance it got just to remind me that I did not have the answers.
And I considered myself a pretty smart person.
Even then, I did not have the answers.
So I eventually had to realize that maybe we are not supposed to have all the answers early.
Maybe some answers can only come through experience.
Maybe some lessons cannot be explained to you before you live them.
Maybe some truths only become real after they cost you something.
And grief is one of those teachers.
It affects everybody differently.
It reshapes everybody differently.
Everybody has their own story about which experience changed them, which loss humbled them, which moment broke something inside of them, and which realization forced them to grow.
So no, I do not believe you should rush into grief pretending you have all the answers.
I do not believe you just deal with it once and suddenly become untouchable.
I expect you to have moments.
I expect you to question things.
I expect you to wonder if it is really worth it.
I expect you to feel tired sometimes.
I expect you to feel angry sometimes.
I expect you to feel lost sometimes.
But I also expect you to come back to your square.
I expect you to return to the starting blocks.
I expect you to look at the wall grief built in front of you and understand that some walls are not there to stop you.
Some walls are there to reveal whether or not you are still willing to move forward.
You cannot quit.
Whether you like your circumstances or despise them.
Whether you are proud of your upbringing or still trying to heal from it.
Whether you had support or had to become your own support.
There are people rooting for you to succeed.
And there are people waiting for you to fail.
I do not know if that number is balanced.
I do not know which side has more people.
But I will ask you this.
Who deserves the satisfaction more?
The people who believed in you?
Or the people who were waiting for you to break?
So do not outrun grief.
Run toward understanding.
Run toward realization.
Run toward healing.
Run toward enlightenment.
Run toward the version of yourself that can finally look pain in the face and say, “You changed me, but you did not finish me.”
And when you get there, lace up your shoes.
Look up with determination.
Breathe.
And get ready to race toward the finish line.
Because if grief does not stop you, if the circumstances of your upbringing do not stop you, if the detractors and doubters do not stop you, then nothing truly can.
And if nothing can stop you, then in the words of the late great Bray Wyatt:
“I suggest you run.”
Jason