April Showers & Emotional Plot Twists

April is a funny month. One day it’s sunshine and you’re convinced you’ve made it through winter. The next, it’s raining sideways and you’re digging back out the jacket you swore you were done with. (Ohio really likes to keep us humble like that.)

But April also carries something quieter. It’s the month when everything starts waking up again. The ground softens. Trees that looked completely done for start pushing out green like they never forgot how. There’s this steady reminder everywhere you look that growth is happening, even if you can’t always see it yet.

But April doesn’t just bring flowers. It brings feelings. For me, April holds my mom’s birthday. Every year, my sisters and I go out to dinner to celebrate her. We laugh. We tell stories. We remember things we didn’t think we’d forget but somehow did until one of us says, “Do you remember when…?” It’s good. It’s also hard. Both things can be true at the same time.

That’s the thing about grief that nobody really prepares you for. It doesn’t follow rules. It doesn’t stay in one lane. It doesn’t politely fade away over time like people like to suggest (usually the same people who say, “everything happens for a reason,” and… we’re just going to let that go for today). It changes. Some days it’s quiet, just hanging around in the background. Other days it shows up loud, usually when you weren’t planning for it. A song, a smell, a random memory that hits out of nowhere while you’re just trying to mind your business in the grocery store.

For me, April has a way of bringing it all a little closer to the surface. Maybe it’s the rain. There’s something about those gray, steady days that slow you down whether you like it or not. You get a little quieter. You think a little more. You feel things you’ve probably been too busy to deal with. April showers don’t just water the ground. They stir things up. Grief works the same way. It doesn’t go away, it settles in. It becomes part of you. And over time, you learn how to carry it. Not perfectly. Not gracefully all the time. But you carry it.

And here’s where I think we get it wrong. We treat grief like the opposite of growth. Like if you’re still feeling it, something must be wrong. But that’s not how it works. Grief is part of growth.

My mom had a green thumb that honestly felt like magic. She could take a plant that looked completely beyond saving and somehow bring it back. I’m talking full comeback, healthier than before. Meanwhile, I’ve kept exactly one plant alive, and I’m pretty sure it’s out of spite. But she never rushed it. She knew better than that. She understood that growth doesn’t happen overnight, and it definitely doesn’t happen without a little mess along the way. Sometimes things had to be cut back. Sometimes they looked worse before they looked better. Sometimes all the work was happening where you couldn’t see it at all.

Sound familiar? April proves that every year. Nothing blooms without first going through a season where it looked like nothing was happening. Grief lives in that same space. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unpredictable. It can feel heavy in ways that don’t make sense. But it’s also doing something underneath all of that. It’s shaping you. It’s deepening you. It’s connecting you to what, and who, matters most.

When we sit down for that birthday dinner, we’re not just remembering my mom, we’re recognizing how much of her is still here. In the way we show up. In the way we take care of people. In the little habits we didn’t realize we picked up until we hear ourselves say something and think, “oooh! That was Katie!” That’s not loss disappearing. That’s love continuing. Just in a different form.

April showers don’t ask if you’re ready. They come anyway. They soak everything, make a mess, and then help something new start to grow. Grief does the same thing. It doesn’t check your schedule. It doesn’t wait for a convenient time. But if you give it space, if you stop trying to rush past it, you start to see that it’s not just taking something away. It’s changing you in ways that matter.

So, if April feels a little heavier this year, you’re not doing it wrong. If the rain lingers, if the memories come a little quicker, if you find yourself sitting in something you thought you’d already worked through, that’s okay. That’s part of it. Sit with it. Honor it. And trust that something is still growing, even here. Because it is. It always is.

If my mom taught me anything, it’s this: Even the things that look like they’re gone can come back in ways you don’t expect. You just have to give them time.

Be kind to yourself!

Jamie McGrew