The Second Hit

Sometimes grief doesn’t hit when you expect it to.

Sometimes you make it through the hard part... the conversation, the event, the errand, the birthday, the gathering and you think, Okay... I’m doing alright.

You hold it together.

You smile at the right moments.

You answer the questions.

You do what needs to be done.

And then you get in your car.

Or you get home and close the door.

Or you finally sit down at night when everything is quiet.

And that’s when it hits.

That’s what I think of as the ‘second hit.’ The grief that waits until you’re alone, or until your body finally feels safe enough to stop bracing.

It can feel confusing, because you might wonder why you weren’t “more emotional” in the moment.

But sometimes the moment requires survival.

Sometimes you’re running on adrenaline, on responsibility, on “just get through this.”

And then later, when the pressure comes off, your nervous system exhales and grief rushes in.

The second hit can look like:

• crying out of nowhere after a day you “handled fine”

  • feeling irritable at night when you were calm all day

  • being okay at the event and wrecked after

  • feeling numb around people and emotional in private

  • needing sleep, needing silence, needing to disappear for a bit

It doesn’t mean you’re fake.

It doesn’t mean you didn’t care.

It doesn’t mean you’re going backward.

It can simply mean you were holding yourself together and then you stopped.

If this happens to you, sometimes what helps isn’t trying to talk yourself out of it, but giving it a small container.

A few gentle things that can help in that moment:

• Naming it: This is the second hit. This is the part I couldn’t feel earlier.

  • One slow breath, hand on chest, feet on the floor

  • A glass of water, a shower, a short walk

  • One text to a safe person: “I’m home. It hit me. No need to fix it.”

Not everything needs to become a big processing moment.

Sometimes it just needs to be acknowledged:

This is grief. It came late.

Have you ever been “fine” in front of people... and then felt it all later?

If you feel like sharing, what does the second hit look like for you?

written by Ashley Donovan