How We Navigate Grief with Blair

Blair | How We Navigate Grief
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How We Navigate Grief is where we name what’s hard, share what helps, and move forward without erasing the past. It's like voice notes from your griefy bestie. howwenavigategrief.substack.com

  1. 6d ago

    The Glitter Crash: Travel Edition (And How I’m Fighting Back for Big Feelings Friday)

    You’re standing in your kitchen. The espresso machine hisses. Your kitchen. Not a Parisian café. Not a village in Tuscany where time moves differently. Your kitchen in actual life. That’s the glitter crash. What is a Glitter Crash, Anyway? A glitter crash is what happens when your brain suddenly remembers it’s supposed to operate on normal dopamine and serotonin levels. For 3.5 weeks, your nervous system has been bathed in novelty. New cities. New tastes. New conversations with strangers who become friends for a moment. Your brain was flooded with the good chemicals: excitement, discovery, zero routine, constant stimulation. Then you land. The clinical terms are familiar: post-vacation blues, post-travel depression, travel comedown, re-entry blues. Pick your poison. They all describe the same jarring emotional whiplash of stepping back into ordinary life after living an extraordinary one. The crash is real. It’s chemical. It’s also completely normal. But knowing it’s normal doesn’t make unpacking your suitcase at midnight feel any less empty. What I’m Doing to Combat the Blues I got home four days ago from Europe. Four days. My body is still operating on a different timezone and my heart is still half in the piazzas I wandered through. Here’s what actually helps: Get outside immediately. Not eventually. Not when you feel like it. Now. My first morning home, I walked for an hour before coffee. The same route I’ve walked a hundred times felt different. Maybe because I was different. The morning light was different. Moving your body out of the house breaks the spell of indoor melancholy. It’s not revolutionary. It’s just medicine. Keep the habits you built there. I spent weeks waking early, writing in cafés, moving my body. I could have surrendered to jet lag and couch time. Instead, I’m keeping 6 AM sacred. I’m still writing. I’m still moving. The structure that served me in Portugal can serve me here too. This matters: your traveling self isn’t a different person. Don’t abandon her when you land. Plan the next adventure. This one feels counterintuitive but it works. The glitter crash doesn’t disappear because you ignore it. It shifts when you redirect that dopamine-seeking brain toward something real to look forward to. I’m booking a trip for November. Nothing fancy. A long weekend somewhere. But my brain now knows: this isn’t the end of adventure. It’s just intermission. Reflect on what actually mattered. Not the Instagram moments. Not the “I’ve been everywhere” checklist. What felt true? What made you feel alive? For me, it was the quiet breakfasts, the conversations about grief with other humans, the way I could be alone in a crowd and feel held by it all. Those aren’t location-dependent. They’re portable. You bring them home. They live in you now. Lower your expectations for everything else. You just traveled 3.5 weeks. Your nervous system is recalibrating. Your sleep is weird. Your emotions are unpredictable. This is not the week to launch a new project or fix your life. Make toast. Drink water. Reply to emails slowly. Give yourself permission to be tired and not-yourself for a minute. Connect with other humans who get it. Text the friend who also travels. Call someone who understands that coming home is sometimes harder than leaving. The glitter crash thrives in isolation and feeds on the shame of not being grateful enough. It withers when you say out loud: I’m struggling with re-entry and that’s allowed. The Truth About the Glitter Crash The crash isn’t proof you chose wrong or wasted money or should have stayed home. It’s proof that you actually lived. You pushed yourself toward novelty and growth and the unknown. Your nervous system is processing that. Your heart is still there, partially. That’s not a bug. That’s a feature. The glitter crash will pass. The re-entry blues will fade. You’ll readjust to your normal dopamine levels and the ordinary will feel ordinary again. But something in you will stay changed. That’s the part worth protecting. So here’s my invitation for you: Where are you in your post-travel blues right now? Are you fighting them, surrendering to them, or already planning the next escape? Whatever your answer, stop punishing yourself for missing it. Get outside tomorrow. Plan something to look forward to. Keep one habit from your travels alive. And tell someone this re-entry is harder than you expected. Then keep going. The glitter crash ends. The memory stays. What’s helping you combat the travel comedown or post-vacation blues? Drop a note in the comments. I’m reading everything. XX Blair P.S. I am booking keynotes and workshops for winter and 2027. Interested in having me speak at your event or to your organization? Let’s chat: blair@blairkaplan.ca. Where’s Blair? * November 12 + 13, 2026, Los Angeles, California Alana and I will be in LA attending Endwell and Grieftastic. If you plan to be at either event, I would love to connect. * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games, laughter under the stars—reimagined for adults with an intuitive, soul-nourishing twist. Step away from the noise of everyday life and step into a sacred space designed just for you. At Camp Manifest, you’ll be guided through a powerful journey of self-discovery, healing, and intention-setting alongside an intimate group of like-minded women. Over the days, you’ll reconnect with yourself, deepen your intuition, and leave with renewed energy to manifest the life you truly desire. How We Navigate Grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading How We Navigate Grief! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwenavigategrief.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 5

    What an Online Grief Support Group Gives You Between Grief Trips

    Somebody tells you everything happens for a reason. Or your boss gives you criticism that was honestly kind of okay, and you completely melt down. Your next therapy session isn’t until next week. The next grief trip is months away. So who do you tell? That question is why Rachel and I built an online grief support group. I’ll argue that grief support which only shows up on a schedule misses most of grief, because most of grief happens on no schedule at all. Why is grief hardest in the ordinary moments? Grief often hits hardest in small, unremarkable moments, not on anniversaries or at funerals. Those moments arrive without warning, and that’s exactly when most formal support isn’t available. Rachel said it better than I can when she joined me on How We Navigate Grief: “Some of the most difficult moments are actually the everyday ordinary moments in between work breaks or on the way to work, maybe just before you sleep, just waking up on the weekends. Like all of those little moments can be some of the hardest.”— Rachel, founder of Grief Trips and Happy Grieving When I lost my mom over five and a half years ago, it was COVID. I had a grief therapist and a psychologist, and I read the books. I couldn’t travel, and travel is huge medicine for me. What I didn’t have was peer support. No grief group. Nobody I could text at 7 a.m. who gets it. Looking back, that was a really weird time in my life, and the missing piece was never information. It was people. What happens after a grief trip ends? When a grief trip ends, people go home with new tools and often a real breakthrough. Then they’re back in ordinary life, with the support suddenly gone. A grief trip is a one-week, in-person group travel experience where people grieve together while also experiencing the world. Rachel and I have been leading these together for over a year: two trips in Bali, plus Australia, the Maldives and Portugal. Morocco is coming in the new year, along with another Maldives trip. Some people are now coming on their second and third trips. I’ll be honest about what was missing (and why we built it). Every trip has a WhatsApp group, and it’s lovely. But it’s not structured. It’s not a program for continuing to move through grief and actually implement the tools. People told us so directly. They wanted more support. They asked what happens between trips. Someone might laugh or feel happiness for the first time in weeks, months or years on a trip, and then fly home to a quiet house and a group chat that slowly goes silent. A week is a week. As Rachel put it, grief isn’t something you compartmentalize into one week. Can travel help with grief? Travel can help with grief, though not always in the way people expect. For Rachel, the healing didn’t come from the destinations. It came from the strangers she met. Rachel’s dad passed away suddenly and very unexpectedly five years ago, during the pandemic. She was 27. She’d always loved travel, so she reached for it. It didn’t work, at first: “Going out, seeing a sunset, seeing that it’s beautiful and knowing it intellectually, but not feeling it is one of the most scary things I experienced early on in my grief. You look at the colours and be like, well, none of it feels that colourful anymore.”— Rachel, founder of Grief Trips and Happy Grieving The sunsets didn’t fix anything. What shifted things were chance meetings with other solo travellers her age who had also experienced loss. Some of those conversations gave her breakthroughs on the what-ifs and regrets she was carrying. Grief Trips and Happy Grieving were born out of those meetings, and I found her because I saw her advertising a Bali grief trip and got on the phone with her right away. How is a grief support group different from grief therapy? A grief support group is peer-based and coach-led. It is not clinical treatment. Rachel and I are not therapists or psychologists. I’m a grief and resilience coach, and we’re there to guide, push and pull people through using practical tools. Therapy matters. I had a grief therapist, and I’d tell you to get one. But a therapist is one person, for one hour, on one day. A group is a handful of people who’ve chosen to show up consistently over time, and who are there when the boss’s comment lands badly on a Thursday afternoon. I’ll say the part that might ruffle feathers. We can tell you things a therapist can’t. A therapist has to stay neutral. A coach who has buried both her parents, pets, ended a marriage, and suffered a miscarriage can look at you and say I’ve been there; here is what I did; now do it. “My mom died over five and a half years ago. My dad, four and a half years ago. And my marriage is in the middle. It’s ended recently. And people say to me, how are you doing so well right now? And I’m not okay, but I am because I have the tools and I implement them and I know what to do.”— Blair Kaplan, grief and resilience coach and host of How We Navigate Grief I teach these tools through my Navigating GRIEF framework, a five-part approach covering grounding, resilience, introspection, engagement with support, and forward movement. I call the resilience muscle the capacity to recover from hardship. It gets stronger the same way any muscle does: with daily, repeated use. What does the Happy Grieving online grief support group include? The Happy Grieving online grief support group is a rolling six-month program (join when you are ready) with two live calls a month, a private group chat and one-on-one time with both facilitators. Groups are capped at 10 people, and you can start at any time. The two monthly calls are different: * A workshop, webinar style, teaching a specific grief tool. * A hot seat call. A hot seat is an open coaching session where you bring whatever you’re working through that week and get support in real time. Calls happen at 9 a.m. Pacific, which is 12 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. UK time. Every call is recorded. Between calls, there’s the private group chat, with daily check-ins built around a gratitude alarm, because gratitude is a daily practice. Rachel and I are in different time zones almost all the time (she’s in Hong Kong, I’m in Canada), so someone is nearly always watching the group. You also get a private call with each of us, and we do some matchmaking to connect you with grief friends. We call them griefy besties. Members also receive: * A RESILIENT A.F. journal, mailed to you, which we work through together with guided exercises * $500 off a future grief trip * Digital PDF copies of every book The Global Resilience Project has published * $500 off being featured in a future Global Resilience Project anthology Pricing: $2,400 paid in full, or $450 a month for six months. Paying in full saves about $300. The first call is Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Details are at happygrieving.org/groupprogram. Is a grief support group a good first step before a grief trip? For many people, yes. Joining a group first lets you meet the facilitators who will likely lead your trip, and meet other people considering one, before you commit to a week abroad. Plenty of people tell us they want to come on a grief trip, but anxiety tells them it’s too different from what they’re used to. What will happen? Who will be there? A group lets you answer those questions from your own living room. As Rachel put it on the episode, the point was never to make anyone stop feeling grief. The point is figuring out, once you feel it, how you keep living, keep feeling joy, and keep making meaningful connections. So here’s my invitation. If you’ve been carrying the small moments alone, the 7 a.m. ones and the post-meeting ones, come to the first call on October 7. Bring whatever is on your mind that week. We’ll be there. XX Blair P.S. This is a really good opportunity to see what it’s like to work with Rachel and me and to get a taste of what a grief trip is like with us. Where’s Blair? * October 15, 2026 Online The Reimagine Virtual Summit is coming up soon, and I’m a speaker! We’re living through a time of overlapping losses—personal, communal, ecological, political, and existential. Yet most of us were never taught how to navigate grief, support one another through adversity, or channel pain into meaning, connection, and action. Grief in Our Time is an opportunity to explore what becomes possible when we face life’s hardest moments together. Through storytelling, ritual, music, guided reflection, and evidence-based tools, we’ll create a uniquely human online space to hold grief, deepen connection, and imagine new possibilities for healing and growth. Hosted by Reimagine, who are a nonprofit that has brought more than 250,000 people together through programs and citywide festivals—and is now building a healthier, more human digital platform for healing, connection, and growth. * November 12 + 13, 2026, Los Angeles, California Alana and I will be in LA attending Endwell and Grieftastic. If you plan to be at either event, I would love to connect. * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games

  3. Sep 22

    When Attending Synagogue on Yom Kippur Becomes Something to Fear

    I was sitting in our synagogue for Rabbi Rose’s final Kol Nidre service when I thought about my dad’s eyes snapping open. Rabbi Kliel Rose has meant everything to our family and to me, and now he’s moving to a new congregation in a different city. So I was already there holding grief. He has been a spiritual guide who’s been part of really important family events. Kol Nidre was starting, and we were sitting in a beautiful circle. The confession was about to begin. I was thinking about how this is the last time I’ll be in his congregation. While I was doing this, at the same time on Sunday night, September 21, while many families were gathering at Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville for Yom Kippur, a 29-year-old man showed up with a shotgun and opened fire on Const. Jeff Smith, who was stationed outside. Smith returned fire. Other officers responded. And in that exchange, 20 or 30 gunshots tore through the sanctuary’s stained glass windows. Twenty bullet holes in one window. Teenagers inside dropped to the floor. The president of the congregation, Norm Weddum, yelled at everyone to hit the ground. No one died during this specific incident; however, Smith is in critical but stable condition. Ward is in life-threatening condition. But here’s what I can’t unhear: the congregation was in the building when it happened. They were trying to observe the holiest night of the year, and violence found them there anyway. And this is one of my biggest fears of going to synagogue - being attacked. Why His Eyes Opened for the Drugs, Not the Prayer In 2022, my dad was dying. We got “the call” from the hospital and rushed there, and the rabbi came to his bedside. My sister Alana and I held him. The rabbi asked if he could pray, and he sang the Vidui. The confession. The unburdening. The prayer that says all the things we’ve carried wrong, all the ways we’ve failed, all the weight we’re ready to release. And we cried. It was beautiful. The nurses tried to wake him before we got there. They did everything. We couldn’t wake him, either. We thought we were saying one final goodbye. We thought this was it. Then the doctor walked in with more medicine (more drugs), and my dad’s eyes popped wide open. Not for the prayer. Not for us. Not for the unburdening. For the drugs. I don’t know what that means exactly. Maybe his body knew something his conscious mind didn’t. Maybe the soul recognizes medicine differently than it recognizes prayer. But I’ve sat with that image for long enough to know that sometimes the thing that keeps you here isn’t spiritual. Sometimes it’s just chemical. And sometimes those two things (the sacred and the survival) don’t align the way you hoped they would. The Vidui Is About Confession. So Is Yom Kippur. The Vidui is recited twice during Yom Kippur. You say it at Kol Nidre, which is where I was sitting. And you say it again at the end of the day, when you’re supposed to have done the hard work of atonement. The prayer uses plural forms: we have trespassed, we have been faithless. Because the tradition is that everyone carries shared human responsibility. It’s a communal unburdening. The Vidui is also a deathbed prayer. It’s the prayer for someone who’s dying, for someone ready to release their grip and move toward whatever comes next. My father heard the Vidui sung at his bedside. Our family heard it. And now I know the people gathered at Sons of Jacob in Belleville were preparing to say it together, as a community, as a way of releasing the year’s wrongs and starting over. And someone tried to stop that from happening with a shotgun. I’m not interested in spiritualizing this. I’m not going to say there’s meaning in the timing or that God needed them to learn something. That’s the kind of thinking that lets us sleep at night by pretending violence is part of a plan. It’s not. It’s just violence. It’s antisemitism. It’s hate. Trouble Finds Me People in my life have told me time and time again that trouble finds me. I don’t mean that dramatically. I just mean that I walk into difficult situations. I show up for hard things. I’ve made a practice of facing grief instead of running from it. But I don’t want to be caught in a mass shooting. I don’t want to be in a room full of people doing sacred work and have the windows explode around me. And I especially don’t want to lose the ability to go to synagogue without calculating risk. Without wondering if the officer outside is enough. Without checking the exits. Without feeling my nervous system spike when I hear a loud noise. That’s what learning about what happened in Belleville did to me. It wasn’t an abstraction. Some tragedy that happened somewhere else. It happened during Yom Kippur. It happened at a place of worship, to people in our community - the Jewish community. It happened while people were trying to unburden themselves, to confess, to make peace, to start over. It happened while Jewish people around the world gathered for Kol Nidre, and while I was thinking about my dad’s eyes opening for the drugs instead of the prayer and while atoning for my sins. And a man was outside a synagogue with a rifle, deciding that his rage mattered more than anyone’s life. You Still Have to Go I’m going back to synagogue. I’m going back because our community deserves a congregation that shows up, and because my family’s grief doesn’t get smaller in my living room. I’m going back because the Vidui isn’t just about confession. It’s also about restoration, about saying the things you need to say out loud, in community, with witnesses. I don’t go to synagogue often but when I do, I’ll walk in with my head held high. But I’m also terrified. I guess I am supposed to have resolution and tell you that faith wins, that community is stronger than violence, that we keep showing up. And maybe that’s true? Maybe that’s necessary. I’m not sure I fully believe it. In reality, I will be sitting in a sanctuary and part of my attention will be on exits. Part of my nervous system will be calculating danger. Part of me will remember that on September 21, 2026, the people at Sons of Jacob were doing exactly what I was doing at the same time (gathering for Yom Kippur, for confession and atonement and the annual practice of becoming new), and they had to hit the floor instead. My dad’s eyes opened for the medicine because his body was fighting to stay. Mine will always keep scanning the room because my body will be fighting to survive something that hasn’t happened yet. That’s where we are. That’s what the shootings at synagogues have done. They’ve made the place where you’re supposed to unburden yourself into a place where you carry hypervigilance instead. I’m still going. I’m going scared. I’m going angry. I’m going because my dad heard the Vidui at his bedside and because Rabbi Rose deserves to know his community will keep showing up, and because the Vidui says we have trespassed, and the only way to say that and mean it is to be there, in person, in the room, risking the fear. Why should we have to choose between grief and safety? Why should Yom Kippur (the day we’re supposed to let everything go) be the day we’re holding onto terror instead? I don’t have an answer. I just have the memory of my dad’s eyes opening, and the image of bullet holes in stained glass, and knowing that this isn’t the time for the Jewish people to hide. We must be loud, proud and love our religion. If you’re scared to go to your synagogue, to your mosque, to your church, to anywhere sacred: you’re not alone. Trouble finds all of us now. But it doesn’t get the last word on whether we show up or not. XX Blair Where’s Blair? * September 28, 2026, Vancouver, BC My spiritual awakening and journey began because I came across Gabby Bernstein. When I learned she was going to be live in Vancouver, a friend and I got tickets. I am stoked to finally be in the same room as her and see her live. Will you be there? I’ll be in Vancouver for a few days after. * November 12 + 13, 2026, Los Angeles, California Alana and I will be in LA attending Endwell and Grieftastic. If you plan to be at either event, I would love to connect. * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games, laughter under the stars—reimagined for adults with an intuitive, soul-nourishing twist. Step away from the noise of everyday life and step into a sacred space designed just for you. At Camp Manifest, you’ll be guided through a powerful journey of self-discovery, healing, and intention-setting alongside an intimate group of like-minded women. Over the days, you’ll reconnect with yourself, deepen your intuition, and leave with renewed energy to manifest the life you truly desire. How We Navigate Grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading How We Navigate Grief! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscr

  4. Sep 15

    The Smut Strut: When Pleasure Is the Medicine

    I’ve spent years reading autobiographies, grief memoirs, and self-help books. Books to sharpen my mind. Books as catalysts. Books as work. This summer, everything shifted. I was on a grief trip when one of the women mentioned the book she was reading, casually noting it was “spicy.” I’d never considered romance novels. Not once. But I was heading to Europe for work and a soul reset, and the thought of turning my work brain off and imagination on appealed to me. So I acquired my first one. A few days later, my best friend met me for my vacation in Portugal. We discovered we were both new to the genre. We rented a car, and on a long road trip to the Algarve, I started a second series as an audiobook. We listened together until we reached our destination, then I kept listening on my own. There’s nothing better than a walk to explore. But now something more interesting was happening. Every morning, I’d step outside with an audiobook—one that had nothing to do with healing, professional development, or business—in my ear. The walks changed. The day changed. We called them smut struts. I still take them almost daily. Why I almost quit after book one The first book wasn’t as spicy as I’d been led to expect. I nearly stopped. But book two proved otherwise, and something shifted in me—not just about the series, but about why I was reading at all. I realized I’d been waiting for permission to consume something purely for pleasure. And this, my friend, is new to me. And since I am calling in more pleasure into my life, I leaned in. As someone who uses books as tools, as teachers, as mirrors for processing loss, I’d internalized a rule: reading is work. Reading improves you. Reading must matter in a measurable way. A book about romance and desire that existed only to entertain me felt... frivolous. Like I was wasting time that should go toward something more important. I was wrong. I was once the person who didn’t care for books about whimsical creatures, high fae and magical worlds, but really, I just had yet to meet her. The friction wasn’t with the book. It was with my own resistance to the idea that joy doesn’t need justification. That pleasure can be a practice. That a story that asks nothing of me except to feel something might be the most healing thing I do all week. Sometimes the healing happens when you stop trying Grief work is real. Processing, reflecting, building resilience, showing up for others. I still do all of it. But this summer, I learned something about high performers and the specific way we’re broken: we believe healing requires effort. We expect it to look like journaling or therapy or some intentional practice. We don’t expect it to look like a walk with a story in our ears that makes us smile at nothing, that gives our exhausted brain permission to rest in someone else’s plot instead of solving our own. The smut strut isn’t about the books. It’s about the decision to consume something that serves no purpose except joy. No transformation arc. No lessons about loss. No relevance to my work or my grief or my resilience practice. Just pleasure. Just walking. Just imagining something unrelated to my life. It turns out that’s one of the most healing things I’ve ever done. What you actually need permission for You don’t need to improve yourself right now. You don’t need to be productive, intentional, or strategic about every hour. You don’t need your reading list to look like proof that you’re doing the work. Sometimes the work is the smut strut. Sometimes the healing is the pleasure. Give yourself permission to listen to a book that has nothing to do with becoming better, healing faster, or understanding yourself more deeply. Pick something popular and maybe a little spicy. Take a walk. Let your brain rest in someone else’s story. If you almost quit, keep going. Book two might be worth it. XX Blair P.S. What other spicy books can you suggest for me and my smut struts? Let me know in the comments or DMs. Where’s Blair? * September 28, 2026, Vancouver, BC My spiritual awakening and journey began because I came across Gabby Bernstein. When I learned she was going to be live in Vancouver, a friend and I got tickets. I am stoked to finally be in the same room as her and see her live. Will you be there? I’ll be in Vancouver for a few days after. * November 12 + 13, 2026, Los Angeles, California Alana and I will be in LA attending Endwell and Grieftastic. If you plan to be at either event, I would love to connect. * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games, laughter under the stars—reimagined for adults with an intuitive, soul-nourishing twist. Step away from the noise of everyday life and step into a sacred space designed just for you. At Camp Manifest, you’ll be guided through a powerful journey of self-discovery, healing, and intention-setting alongside an intimate group of like-minded women. Over the days, you’ll reconnect with yourself, deepen your intuition, and leave with renewed energy to manifest the life you truly desire. How We Navigate Grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading How We Navigate Grief! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwenavigategrief.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 4

    You Cannot Outrun a Feeling You Refuse to Name

    Big Feelings Friday is here, and we are going to talk about NAMING THEM. Shout out to Sutton from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for this epic pop culture moment - NAME ‘EM! I stopped an Instagram scroll last week, which almost never happens. The post was about Dr. James Gross, a psychologist at Stanford who has spent three decades studying emotion regulation. That is the science of what we actually do with our feelings once they arrive. His work has quietly reshaped how researchers understand the way emotions move through our thoughts, our choices, our relationships, and our bodies. One line in the post stopped me cold. “The naming was not a distraction from the emotion.” I have been sitting with that sentence for days. What the research actually says When you name what you are feeling out loud, you activate the language centers of your brain. That activation engages your prefrontal cortex, the calm, thinking, decision-making part of you. And an engaged prefrontal cortex turns down the volume on your amygdala, the alarm system that has been screaming since the phone call, since the diagnosis, since the morning everything changed. The intensity drops. Not because you buried the feeling. Because your brain finally processed it through language. Matthew Lieberman’s team at UCLA found the same thing in what they call affect labeling. People looked at emotionally charged images. The ones who named what they were feeling showed measurably less amygdala activity than the ones who stayed silent. Within seconds. Seconds. Naming is not avoidance. It is not talking around the pain. It is a direct intervention, and your nervous system responds to it faster than almost anything else we have. Why suppression costs you so much Now the flip side, and this is the part I wish someone had handed me years ago. Suppression, actively trying not to feel the thing, requires your prefrontal cortex to hold the amygdala down by force. That is metabolically expensive. It burns through the exact cognitive resources you need for clear thinking and good decisions. Suppression does not lower the emotional intensity at all. It only stops the emotion from being seen. Underneath, the stress response keeps running. Your body is still in it. You are just performing fine while your system pays the bill. I know that performance intimately. I know what it is to walk into a room and say I am doing okay when I am not remotely okay. I know what it is to hold a grief so heavy you cannot say its name, and then wonder why you are exhausted by two in the afternoon. I have lost my mom. I have lost both of my parents. I have carried loss I could not find words for. I used to call that white-knuckled composure strength. It was not strength. It was cost. I was spending everything I had to keep a feeling quiet, and the feeling never once agreed to leave. What this has to do with bouncing forward You have heard me say this before: Resilience is not bouncing back. There is no back. What you've lived through changes you forever, and no amount of pretending returns you to who you were before. Resilience is bouncing forward. It is building a life that has room for what happened. And you cannot build around something you refuse to name. This is why I keep saying that we have a resilience muscle. Every single time you tell the truth about what you are feeling, out loud, in real words, you are doing a rep. Not a metaphorical one. A neurological one. You are training your brain to move through the feeling instead of bracing against it. Suppression is not a rep. Suppression is holding the weight in the air indefinitely and calling it a workout. Try this today You do not need a therapist’s office or a journal or an hour alone to do this specific thing. You need one sentence and a voice. Say it out loud. Not in your head. Out loud. I am feeling grief right now. I am feeling terrified. I am feeling angry and I do not have anywhere to put it. I am feeling relieved, and I feel guilty for feeling relieved. Get specific. Sad is a country. Lonely, abandoned, aching, homesick for a person who is gone- those are addresses. The more precise the word, the more your brain has to work with. Then, and only then, see if there is another angle. Researchers call this cognitive reappraisal: finding a more balanced way to look at the same situation. Not lying to yourself. Not gratitude as a bandage. Just asking, honestly, is there another true thing here alongside the hard thing. Name first. Reframe second. In that order, always. You cannot reframe a feeling you have not admitted to having. The permission part If nobody has said this to you lately, let me: You are allowed to say the hard thing out loud. You are allowed to stop managing everyone else’s comfort with your composure. You are allowed to be a person who feels things at full volume in a world that keeps asking you to turn it down. The feeling is not the problem. The silence around it is what is costing you. So say it. To a friend, to your dog, to your steering wheel in a parking lot at nine at night. Your brain is listening either way, and it has been waiting for the words. Feel it to heal it. The science just caught up to what grief always knew. XX Blair P.S. If this landed, share it with someone who has been saying they are fine for a little too long. P.P.S. I am booking keynotes and workshops for fall and winter, into 2027. Interested in having me speak at your event or to your organization? Let’s talk: blair@blairkaplan.ca. Where’s Blair? * September 8-10, Champneys Tring, UK Often dubbed the “Glastonbury for business,” this two-day outdoor networking event is for founders and entrepreneurs. It features keynotes, startup finals, and wellness programming, running 9–10 September 2026 at Champneys, Tring, Hertfordshire. Get a special rate because you are in my inner circle. * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games, laughter under the stars—reimagined for adults with an intuitive, soul-nourishing twist. Step away from the noise of everyday life and step into a sacred space designed just for you. At Camp Manifest, you’ll be guided through a powerful journey of self-discovery, healing, and intention-setting alongside an intimate group of like-minded women. Over the days, you’ll reconnect with yourself, deepen your intuition, and leave with renewed energy to manifest the life you truly desire. How We Navigate Grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading How We Navigate Grief! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwenavigategrief.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Aug 26

    What Dying People Taught Me About the Wellness Industry

    The wellness industry does not sell health. It sells the belief that death is optional if you are disciplined enough. That is why the trends never stop coming. If any of them delivered what they promised, we would have stopped buying the next one. Living well is not the same as living long, and the two goals produce completely different daily choices. I still do the work. I quit drinking, I move my body, I sleep, I regulate my nervous system. But I do it to be present, not to be permanent. The graveyard of things that were going to save us Think back over the last twenty years of wellness. Low fat. Then fat was fine, and sugar was the enemy. Juice cleanses. Alkaline water. Gluten, for everyone, not just the people with celiac. Detox teas. Ten thousand steps, a number invented by a pedometer company. Superfoods, then adaptogens, then activated charcoal in a five-dollar latte. Keto. Carnivore. Intermittent fasting. Then cold plunges, sleep scores, mouth tape, red light, glucose monitors on people who do not have diabetes, biological age tests, peptides, protocols, stacks. Every single one arrived with the same energy. This is the one. This is the missing piece. The others were noise, but this is the signal. And every single one was replaced. Not that the trends were all useless, because some of them were not. But if any of them had done what it promised, the market would have closed. There would be no next thing. The fact that there is always a next thing is the tell. The product was never the protocol. The product is the feeling you get for the eleven days you believe you have finally taken control. What we are actually buying Fear does not sit still. It moves. It looks for a place to land. In some people it lands as rage. In some people it lands as numbness. And in a lot of very capable, very high functioning people, it lands as control. Control feels productive. That is what makes it such a good hiding place. Nobody stages an intervention for the person tracking their macros. You get praised for it. But watch the language the industry uses. Optimize. Extend. Reverse. Beat. Hack. Biohack. Every one of those words describes combat with an opponent, and it is always the same opponent. The premise underneath the entire category is that dying is a design flaw and a sufficiently disciplined person can engineer around it. You cannot. Nobody has. Not one person, ever, in the whole history of the species. That is not a reason to despair. It is a reason to stop spending your one life on a fight you have already lost and start spending it on the part you actually control. What dying people talk about I have watched two parents die. My mom had cancer and died three weeks after her diagnosis. My dad struggled with addiction for years and needed a lung transplant he never got. He died 360 days after Mom. In all of that time, across all of those conversations, in hospital rooms and on phone calls and in the long quiet stretches in between, not one word was ever about optimization. Nobody asked about biological age. Nobody wanted more years in the abstract. They wanted specific things. They wanted to be understood. They wanted the record set straight. They wanted to know the people they loved were going to be okay. They wanted to say something out loud to someone who would carry it forward. That is what it comes down to. Relationships, unfinished sentences, and whether any of it meant anything. I have never once heard someone at the end of their life mention their resting heart rate. Is doing the protocols bad? No. But the motive is the whole thing. I am not telling you to throw out your tracker. I sleep well on purpose. I move my body on purpose. I walk in the forest most mornings before the rest of the world is up, and it is one of the best things in my life. The biggest protocol I ever ran was quitting drinking, and it did not give me years. It gave me mornings. It gave me the ability to actually be somewhere while I am standing in it. So the question is not whether you do the work. The question is what the work is for. Here is the test I use, and you can run it today. If your protocol requires you to skip the trip, leave the dinner early, decline the thing that would have made a memory, and you tell yourself the trade is worth it because of the years you are banking, then ask yourself the obvious follow up. What are you planning to spend those years on? Because there is a version of optimizing for lifespan that quietly costs you the actual life. You cannot supplement your way into meaning. No stack has ever produced a moment worth remembering. And the version of you that makes it to ninety five with a perfect metabolic panel and no stories did not win anything. What living well actually means Living well is not a number. It is the quality of your attention and the quality of your relationships, right now, in the life you are already in. Same behaviours, different reason, completely different outcome. Choose your inputs on purpose. What you eat, drink, watch, read and listen to is the most controllable thing you have. Choose what nourishes your nervous system, not what scores well. Do the thing that brings you back into your body. Movement, breath, sunlight, stillness. These are not a down payment on the future. They are how you get to be here for today. Sleep because you want tomorrow to be good. Not because you are buying decades. Take the trip. Book it. Go. Say yes to the dinner. This is not a reward you earn after the discipline. This is the thing the discipline was supposed to be for. Have the conversation. Tell the people who love you what you actually want. Ask your parents what they want. Do it while everyone is healthy and it feels ridiculous, because that is the only window when it is easy. It is the highest leverage practice on this list and it costs nothing. Stop waiting for the next protocol. There will be one. There is always one. You do not need it. The point I am not trying to live forever. I have seen up close what the end of a life looks like, and I know with total certainty that no trend, no stack and no discipline would have changed the part that mattered. I am trying to be here. Awake, present, in my body, in the room, with the people I love, for however long I get. That is the only hack there has ever been. Everything else is a very expensive way of not talking about it. XX Blair P.S. Did you know that I’m the Founder of The Global Resilience Project? We help you to strengthen your resilience muscle, and in the next few days we are officially opening up submissions for our next two books. Learn more about these books, why you should share your story and add your name to the waitlist to get first dibs on the limited spots: SKIN DEEP STORIES and STORIES OF RESILIENCE VOL. 4. Where’s Blair? * August 23-29, Porto, Portugal - happening now I will be co-facilitating the Portugal Grief Trip alongside Rachel from Happy Grieving. There is still room for you. Learn more and book your spot! * September 8-10, Champneys Tring, UK Often dubbed the “Glastonbury for business,” this two-day outdoor networking event is for founders and entrepreneurs. It features keynotes, startup finals, and wellness programming, running 9–10 September 2026 at Champneys, Tring, Hertfordshire. * October 2-4, La Le Jeune, BC Join me, Kayla and Simone this May at the Regulated Retreat. I’m stoked to be speaking at Regulated - Autumn Exhale, a three-day nervous system reset retreat for people who are done surviving and ready to feel steady again, because most of us don’t need more motivation; we need regulation. And that’s what makes this experience different. This retreat blends nervous system science, movement, nature, and honest conversation to help your body downshift and reset. I’m honoured to create and be a part of this experience and would love to share it with you! * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games, laughter under the stars—reimagined for adults with an intuitive, soul-nourishing twist. Step away from the noise of everyday life and step into a sacred space designed just for you. At Camp Manifest, you’ll be guided through a powerful journey of self-discovery, healing, and intention-setting alongside an intimate group of like-minded women. Over the days, you’ll reconnect with yourself, deepen your intuition, and leave with renewed energy to manifest the life you truly desire. How We Navigate Grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading How We Navigate Grief! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwenavigategrief.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Aug 21

    The First Wedding Anniversary After Separation: How I Gave August 18 a New Meaning

    Another Big Feelings Friday is here, and it’s a doozey for me. There is a version of this post where I tell you I forgot the date. I did not forget the date. Nobody forgets the date. You can lose your keys, your job, your entire sense of who you were at 26, but the date sits in your body like a second birthday. August 18. It arrives whether or not you are ready, and this year it arrives without the person it was built for. It would have been my ninth wedding anniversary. Fifteen years of my life, if you count the whole relationship, which I do, because I lived it. This is the first one alone. What a grievorcee actually is A grievorcee is someone grieving a person who is still alive. That is the whole definition, and it is the part nobody prepares you for. Death comes with a script. There are bagels and food. There are people who know exactly what to say because their grandmother taught them. Divorce comes with paperwork and a lot of well-meaning people asking if you are “doing okay now,” as if there is a now, as if grief files itself away once the legal part is done. But the person is out there. Buying groceries. Having a Tuesday. Existing in the same world as you, on the other side of a door that used to be a hallway. So you grieve, but you do it sideways. You grieve a future that was scheduled. You grieve the version of yourself who booked that future. And you grieve on a calendar that keeps handing you dates you did not ask to keep. Why the first anniversary after divorce hits harder than the divorce The separation/divorce is an event. You survive events. You show up, you sign, you drive home, you eat something out of a bag. The anniversary is different because it is a rerun. It is the day you chose on purpose, once, out of all the days in the year. You picked it. You put a dress on for it. And now it comes back annually, forever, asking what you plan to do about it. Here is what I learned in the weeks before mine: you do not navigate a hard date on the day itself. By then it is too late to decide anything. You navigate it three weeks out, on a normal afternoon, when you notice the calendar, feel your chest go tight, and have a choice about what happens next. That is the moment. Not the day. The moment you notice it coming. I noticed it coming. And instead of bracing for it, I gave it a job. What I decided to do about August 18 I booked a flight to Romania. Not to run. I want to be precise about that, because the internet loves a “she ran away to Europe” story and that is not this. Running is when you leave to avoid feeling something. I left in order to feel something specific, on purpose, in a place with people I love. I chose Romania because that is where some of my people are, and I had to be in Europe a few days later for the Portugal Grief Trip. Friends who have known me across versions. Friends who do not need the backstory, who will not tilt their heads and say “how are you, really.” Friends whose houses smell like food and whose company does not require me to perform recovery. The plan was simple. Be in the air. Land. Be held. Let the date happen to me somewhere it has never happened before. Because the date has geography. If I stayed home, the day would find me in every room. So I moved the day. What 18 means in Judaism In Judaism, 18 is Chai. It means life. The Hebrew letters chet and yud carry the numbers 8 and 10. Together they add to 18, and together they spell chai, living. It is why Jews give money in multiples of 18. Weddings, births, bar mitzvahs, donations. You hand someone 180 dollars and what you are actually handing them is a wish that they live. I did not pick that number by accident nine years ago. I do not think many of us do. And here is the part that undid me, in a good way, sometime around week two of planning this trip: The number never belonged to the marriage. It belonged to life. The marriage borrowed it. So the date is not contaminated. It was never his, and it was never ours. It was always pointing at the same thing it points at now. I just have to stop reading it as an anniversary and start reading it as an instruction. August 18. Chai. Live. That is not a silver lining. I am not doing the thing where grief gets tidied into a lesson. It still hurts. I still have a body that remembers a Tuesday in 2017. But the number has a second meaning that predates my wedding by a few thousand years, and I am allowed to take it back. Reclaiming a date is not the same as erasing it I am not deleting August 18. That would require deleting fifteen years, and those years were real. Some of them were very good. I am not going to lie about the good ones just because the ending was bad. Reclaiming is different from erasing. Erasing says it never happened. Reclaiming says it happened, and it is over, and the day is still mine. The date keeps its history. It just stops being the only thing the date is for. If you have a date coming Some things I would say to you, if your calendar is about to hand you something: Decide early. The worst version of a hard date is the one you did not plan for. Make a decision two or three weeks out, while you still have the room to make it. Give the day a job. Not a distraction. A job. Distraction is scrolling until midnight. A job is a flight, a hike, a meal you cook for people, a thing that requires you to show up somewhere. Change the geography if you can. Hard dates live in rooms. Different room, different day. Pick people who do not need the backstory. This is not the day for explaining. This is the day for being known already. Do not perform being fine. You can be in a beautiful country with beautiful people and still go quiet for twenty minutes. That is allowed. Nobody is grading this. Let the day be ordinary if it wants to be. Some hard dates arrive and simply pass. If that happens, do not go looking for the pain to prove you loved someone. You loved them. It is documented. The thing I keep coming back to Fifteen years is not a mistake. It is a chapter with an ending, which I helped to write. And the first anniversary is not a test you pass or fail. It is a day. It has twenty four hours in it, same as the rest. What you do with those hours is the only part that was ever up to you. I spent mine somewhere I have never spent it, with people who love me, on a date that means life. Jess, her son and I went for a beautiful dinner, and she held my big feelings. For that, I’m grateful. XX Blair P.S. I am booking keynotes and workshops for fall and winter, into 2027. Interested in having me speak at your event or to your organization? Let’s talk: blair@blairkaplan.ca. Where’s Blair? * August 23-29, Porto, Portugal I will be co-facilitating the Portugal Grief Trip alongside Rachel from Happy Grieving. There is still room for you. Learn more and book your spot! * September 8-10, Champneys Tring, UK Often dubbed the “Glastonbury for business,” this two-day outdoor networking event is for founders and entrepreneurs. It features keynotes, startup finals, and wellness programming, running 9–10 September 2026 at Champneys, Tring, Hertfordshire. Enter to win a free ticket and join me! * October 2-4, La Le Jeune, BC Join me, Kayla and Simone this May at the Regulated Retreat. I’m stoked to be speaking at Regulated - Autumn Exhale, a three-day nervous system reset retreat for people who are done surviving and ready to feel steady again, because most of us don’t need more motivation; we need regulation. And that’s what makes this experience different. This retreat blends nervous system science, movement, nature, and honest conversation to help your body downshift and reset. I’m honoured to create and be a part of this experience and would love to share it with you! * January 3-9, 2027, Marrakech, Morocco Join me and Happy Grieving for the Morocco Grief Retreat to kick off 2027. Grief can make the world feel small. Morocco does the opposite: it fills the senses without demanding anything from you. The souks, the spices, the calls to prayer, life continuing everywhere, in colour. And then there’s the stillness to balance it: a traditional hammam to let your body release what it’s been holding, pottery in the medina, a full day in the Agafay Desert where the horizon gives your thoughts somewhere to go. Daily grief workshops thread it together, always optional, always held by facilitators who have walked the path of loss themselves. Learn more and book your spot. * January 23-24, 2027, The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa Join me at Camp Manifest this January. Rekindle the carefree joy of camp days—bonfires, group games, laughter under the stars—reimagined for adults with an intuitive, soul-nourishing twist. Step away from the noise of everyday life and step into a sacred space designed just for you. At Camp Manifest, you’ll be guided through a powerful journey of self-discovery, healing, and intention-setting alongside an intimate group of like-minded women. Over the days, you’ll reconnect with yourself, deepen your intuition, and leave with renewed energy to manifest the life you truly desire. How We Navigate Grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading How We Navigate Grief! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwenavigategrief.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Aug 14

    Life Falling Together: Why What Feels Like Falling Apart Is Actually the Rebuild

    I’m bringing back BIG FEELINGS FRIDAY, and this one has been floating around my brain for a while. If you are here because your life feels like it is coming undone, let me give you the short answer first, before the story, before the metaphors, before any of it. Sometimes the collapse is the correction. What feels like your life falling apart is often your life falling together. The structure you built is coming down because it was never load bearing. The version of you that held it up is exhausted. And the thing you are calling a breakdown may be the first honest reorganization your life has had in years. That is not a platitude. It is a description of what actually happens to a person, in a body, in real time. Below is mine, and what I did in the days when I could not think my way out of anything. * Falling apart and falling together can look identical from the inside. The difference is only visible in hindsight. * The breaking point is rarely about the final straw. It is about everything the camel was already carrying. * You cannot rebuild while dysregulated. Regulation comes before insight, decisions, or meaning making. * Regulation is environmental, not just internal. The right places and the right people do work that willpower cannot. * Co-regulation is a nervous system skill, not emotional dependence. Humans are built to settle in the presence of other settled humans. What does it mean when your life falls apart? When people say their life is falling apart, they usually mean several load bearing structures gave way at once. A relationship, a job, an identity, a belief about who they were and where they were going. What is actually happening is often quieter and more specific. A version of you that was holding a structure together has run out of capacity. When that version steps back, the structure comes down. The structure coming down looks like the crisis. The version of you stepping back was the real event, and it happened long before. Life falling together is the process of a life reorganizing around who you actually are, after the version of you that was performing something else finally runs out of room. I lost a part of who I was along the way. Not dramatically. Slowly, in the way that people lose things they were not tracking. By the time the last straw landed, I was not carrying one problem. I was carrying every accumulated compromise that came before it. The final straw gets the blame. The camel had been overloaded for a long time. Why it does not feel like falling together in the moment This was not an immediate realization. I want to say that clearly, because a lot of writing about this skips straight to the meaning and leaves out the part where you are on the floor. It felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. My body did what bodies do. It went into survival mode. What survival mode actually is Survival mode is your nervous system prioritizing immediate threat management over everything else. Digestion, sleep, long term planning, creativity, nuance, and your sense of self all get deprioritized, because none of them help you survive the next hour. This is why people in crisis cannot think clearly, cannot make good decisions, and cannot access perspective. It is not a character flaw or a failure of mindset. Perspective is a function that requires a regulated nervous system to run. When the system is in survival mode, that function is offline. Which means the advice to reframe your situation, find the lesson, or focus on the positive is being given to a system that is physically incapable of receiving it. Regulation has to come first. Meaning comes second. Every single time. What I did first: I regulated before I rebuilt I knew, almost immediately, that I had to regulate my nervous system. Not fix my life. Not figure out what it meant. Not decide anything. So I did three things, and they were all environmental rather than internal. 1. I put myself in situations that regulated me Not situations that distracted me. Situations where my body could actually come down. Movement. Repetition. Being outside. Anything with rhythm to it. The nervous system responds to inputs, not intentions, and I stopped expecting myself to think my way calm. 2. I put myself in places that supported that Environment is not decoration. Some rooms wind you up and some rooms let you exhale, and when you are in survival mode you do not have the reserves to override a room that is working against you. I got specific about where I spent my time and stopped apologizing for it. 3. I put myself around people I could co-regulate with This one mattered most. What is co-regulation? Co-regulation is the process by which one nervous system settles in the presence of another regulated nervous system. It happens through tone of voice, facial expression, pacing, breath, and physical presence. It is the mechanism by which a calm parent settles an upset infant, and it does not stop working when we become adults. We are not designed to regulate alone. Self-regulation is a skill built on top of years of co-regulation, and it is the first thing to become unavailable under acute stress. In a crisis, borrowing someone else’s steadiness is not weakness. It is the system working as designed. I stopped looking for people who could advise me and started looking for people I felt calmer around. Those were not always the same people. That distinction changed everything. The disco ball: things that must break to become beautiful Here is the image I keep coming back to. A disco ball (ya’ll know that I love a disco ball) is a broken mirror. Every fragment is a piece of something that shattered. Assembled and given light, those fragments throw more of it across a room than the intact mirror ever could. The world is full of these. * Rainbows require light to be broken apart. The splitting is the entire point. * Kintsugi repairs broken pottery with gold, treating the break as part of the object’s history rather than a flaw to hide. * Wildfire ecology includes species whose seeds only open under extreme heat. The burn is a precondition for growth. * Sea glass is garbage that the ocean spent decades tumbling into something people collect. * Coastlines are reshaped by storms, not maintained by calm weather. None of these are metaphors about how suffering is secretly good. They are observations that construction and destruction are frequently the same event, viewed at different points in time. The break is not the opposite of the build. Sometimes the break is the first step of it. Signs your life is falling together, not apart You will not know for certain in the moment. But here is what I noticed in hindsight, and what I hear from other people who came through something similar. * Things are ending that you had already outgrown. The loss is real and the relief is also real, and both being true does not make you a bad person. * You cannot go back to who you were. Not out of stubbornness. That version genuinely no longer fits. * You are being honest at a level that scares you. Crisis burns off the energy required for performance. * Your standards for people have quietly changed. You notice who you feel calm around and who you do not. * The stuff you used to care about has gone silent. Some of it will come back. Some of it will not, and its absence will feel like room. * You are tired in a different way. Not the tired of holding something up. The tired of having put it down. A message that lands, I hope I did not choose this. I would not have chosen it. That matters, and I am not going to dress it up as a gift. But I am also not going to pretend the life on the other side is worse. It is not. It is smaller in some ways and much more honest in all of them, and the parts of me that got lost along the way turned out to be recoverable. Not all at once. Not by trying harder. By being in the right places, with the right people, for long enough that my body remembered it was safe. If you are in the middle of it right now, you do not have to believe any of this yet. You only have to get through the next hour, and then the one after that. The rest of it falls together later. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a therapist, doctor, or a trusted person in your life. This is a personal account, not clinical guidance, and there is no version of this you are supposed to handle alone. If this landed, subscribe. I write about the unglamorous mechanics of rebuilding, and I would rather be useful than inspirational. Tell me in the comments: what is one thing in your life that you thought was falling apart and turned out to be falling together? XX Blair P.S. I am booking keynotes and workshops for fall and winter, into 2027. Interested in having me speak at your event or to your organization? Let’s talk: blair@blairkaplan.ca. Where’s Blair? * August 23-29, Porto, Portugal I will be co-facilitating the Portugal Grief Trip alongside Rachel from Happy Grieving. There is still room for you. Learn more and book your spot! * September 8-10, Champneys Tring, UK Often dubbed the “Glastonbury for business,” this two-day outdoor networking event is for founders and entrepreneurs. It features keynotes, startup finals, and wellness programming, running 9–10 September 2026 at Champneys, Tring, Hertfordshire. Enter to win a free ticket and join me! * October 2-4, La Le Jeune, BC Join me, Kayla and Simone this May at the Regulated Retreat. I’m stoked to be speaking at Regulated - Autumn Exhale, a three-day nervous system reset retreat for people who are done surviving and ready to feel steady again, because most of us don’t need more motivation; we need regulation. And that’s what makes this experience different. This retreat blends nervous system science, movement, nature, and honest conversation to help your body downshift and reset. I’m honoured to create and be a part of this experience and would love to share it with you! * January 3-9

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How We Navigate Grief is where we name what’s hard, share what helps, and move forward without erasing the past. It's like voice notes from your griefy bestie. howwenavigategrief.substack.com

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