From Grief and Loss to Health and Happiness

There was a time in my life when happiness felt like something that belonged to other people. I could see it around me, but I could not imagine feeling it deeply again. I was carrying grief, infertility, disappointment, and years of emotional exhaustion, and I had forgotten what it felt like to wake up and simply look forward to the day ahead. My journey from grief and loss to health and happiness did not happen overnight. It began slowly, with one difficult realization: if I wanted my life to change, I had to start taking care of the person who had been hurting for years—me. My journey with infertility began around 2015. What I thought would be a temporary struggle became a long chapter filled with treatments, IVF, hope, waiting, and disappointment. Every time I started another treatment, I tried to believe that maybe this would be the moment everything changed. I learned how powerful hope could be, but I also learned how painful it could feel when hope was followed by another disappointment. Infertility affected much more than my plans for motherhood. It affected how I saw myself and my future. There were days when I felt surrounded by questions that had no answers. I wondered why something that seemed so natural for others had become such a difficult journey for me. I tried to stay strong, but strength becomes difficult when you are constantly asking yourself how much more disappointment you can handle. Then, in 2017, I experienced another devastating loss when my mother died from heart disease. Losing her changed something inside me. She was someone I wanted to have beside me during the important moments of my life, and suddenly I had to imagine those moments without her. Grief became a permanent part of my story, and I had to learn how to carry it while continuing with everything else that life demanded. In 2019, after years of infertility treatment, I became pregnant through IVF. For a moment, I felt the kind of hope I had been waiting for. I allowed myself to imagine a future that looked different from the difficult years I had already experienced. But during an ultrasound, I learned that there was no heartbeat. The pregnancy was lost, and with it came another wave of grief that was difficult to put into words. That experience left me emotionally exhausted. I continued with IVF treatments, but something inside me was becoming increasingly tired. I had spent years fighting for one dream, and I was beginning to realize how much of myself I had lost along the way. My emotional pain also began affecting my physical health. Stress, grief, hormonal medications, and emotional eating contributed to significant weight gain. Eventually, I reached 195 pounds. At that point, my weight was not just a number. It represented years of emotional struggle that I had never fully learned how to process. I often think about how easy it is to judge ourselves when we are struggling. We see the weight gain, the exhaustion, the lack of motivation, or the loss of confidence, but we do not always see the story underneath those things. My body was carrying years of stress and heartbreak, and I was expecting myself to simply move forward as if nothing had happened. Then came November 27, 2022. That day became a turning point for me. I decided that I could not continue living my life only through the lens of what I had lost. I could not change the past, bring back the people I had lost, or guarantee the future I had once imagined. But I could choose what I did next. I chose myself. That decision did not erase my grief. It did not suddenly make infertility easy to accept. It simply gave me permission to start caring for myself again. I began working with a registered dietitian and completed a medically supervised detox program. In January 2023, I joined a gym and started working with a personal trainer. At first, I thought I was simply beginning a weight-loss journey. In reality, I was beginning a relationship with myself that was based on care rather than criticism. I slowly learned that I could not hate myself into becoming healthier. I had to learn how to care about myself enough to make healthier choices. That change in mindset became one of the most important parts of my transformation. Exercise gradually became more than something I did to change my body. It became a way to reconnect with myself. I discovered aquabike classes, and through them, I found something I had been missing for a long time: joy. I found a community, movement, laughter, and a reason to look forward to being active. Eventually, my passion for aquabike led me to become a certified Aquabike fitness instructor. Something that started as part of my personal healing journey became a new source of purpose. Between November 27, 2022, and November 27, 2025, I lost 70 pounds, going from 195 pounds to 125 pounds. But the physical transformation was only one part of the story. The deeper transformation was learning how to live again. I became more confident. I became more intentional about my health. I learned to appreciate small victories instead of waiting for one huge change to make me feel successful. I began understanding that consistency matters more than perfection and that progress can happen even when it feels slow. Most importantly, I learned that happiness does not mean forgetting the people or experiences we have lost. I still carry memories of my mother. I still remember the pain of infertility and pregnancy loss. Those experiences are part of me, but they no longer have to control me. I can remember painful moments and still experience joy. I can grieve and still laugh. I can acknowledge what I lost while appreciating what I have today. That was one of the most important lessons of my healing journey: grief and happiness can exist together. For a long time, I thought healing meant reaching a point where the past no longer hurt. Now I understand that healing can mean something different. Sometimes healing means learning how to carry your past without allowing it to determine your future. My journey from grief and loss to health and happiness was not a straight road. There were setbacks, difficult days, emotional moments, and times when I questioned whether I was really changing. But every time I chose to continue, I was building a stronger version of myself. Today, I no longer see my life only through the things I lost. I see it through everything I have learned, everything I have survived, and everything I am still becoming. My transformation taught me that health is more than a number on a scale. Happiness is more than the absence of sadness. And healing is more than forgetting the past. Health is learning to care for yourself. Happiness is allowing yourself to experience joy again. Healing is accepting that your story can contain both loss and beautiful new beginnings. I cannot rewrite the chapters that came before. But I can decide what I write next. And today, I am choosing health. I am choosing happiness. I am choosing self-love. I am choosing purpose. After years of grief and loss, I finally understand that life does not have to be perfect to be meaningful. Sometimes, the most beautiful part of the journey begins when you finally decide to live again.