Melissa Lund Therapy

09/02/2026

I want to tell you about my weekend, because I think it says something truer about grief than anything I could pull from a textbook.

Four generations of women in my family — my mother, me, my daughter, and my granddaughter — flew down to San Diego for a wedding. And had an amazing time! We drove past houses we used to live in. We walked the beach with our shoes in our hands. We ate the kind of food that makes you close your eyes for a second before you say anything. And the wedding itself — the bride was stunning, the whole thing was just beautiful, one of those ceremonies where you can feel the room rooting for two people. I got to catch up with relatives I hadn't seen in years, the kind of conversations that pick right back up like no time passed at all.

It was, genuinely, one of the best weekends I've had in a long time.

And the whole flight home, I kept composing stories in my head to tell Michael. The funny ones. The tender ones. The disaster that was our flight home, which by the end had become the kind of story you can't wait to tell because you already know it's going to make someone laugh. I had a whole list queued up.
Then I walked in the door.

And there it was — that quiet, particular kind of ache. The one that shows up not in the big obvious moments, but in the small domestic ones. He wasn't there to hear about the beach, or the bride, or the flights. The stories had nowhere to land.

I share this because I think it's exactly the kind of thing that trips people up about grief — the assumption that it's supposed to behave itself, that it shows up predictably at anniversaries and holidays and stays quiet the rest of the time. In my experience, and in the experience of so many people I've sat with, grief doesn't really work like that. It doesn't wait for a sad occasion to make an appearance. It can show up in the middle of the best weekend you've had all year, walking through your own front door with a suitcase still in your hand.

What strikes me is that the joy was real. The wedding was real, the beach was real, the laughing with family was real, and tons of shopping with my granddaughter was real (Yay, a girl who loves to shop like me!) None of that got smaller or less true because grief was also there. It's not that the good weekend was secretly sad the whole time — it's that both things were true at once. I had a wonderful few days and I came home and missed my husband fiercely. Joy and loss aren't really opposites competing for space. They're more like two things that can sit at the same table, sometimes in the same hour, sometimes in the same breath.

If you're grieving someone, I'd gently push back on any voice — inside you or outside you — that says you're not allowed to have a good weekend. Or that having one somehow means you're "over it" or you've moved on too fast. You haven't. Loving people, laughing at weddings, walking on beaches — none of that erases the person you lost. It just means you're still a whole person, capable of holding more than one true thing at a time.

And if you come home from your good weekend and the missing hits you right there in the doorway, unannounced — that's not a setback. That's just what love looks like when the person it's pointed at isn't there to receive it anymore. It doesn't mean the trip wasn't good. It means the trip was good and he's gone, and both of those get to be true.

I don't have a tidy way to wrap this up, and I don't think grief really offers one. But I wanted to write it down while it was fresh — the beach, the bride, the family, the flight disasters, and the quiet weight of walking into a house where one of my favorite people to tell stories to isn't waiting to hear them.

If any of this sounds like your life right now, I see you. You're allowed to have both.

08/05/2026

It's been about six weeks since I lost my husband, and I think I'm finally in a place where I can put this into words.

Michael received his progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) diagnosis on January 15th. We knew something was wrong long before that, we spent months chasing answers, sitting in waiting rooms, being told it was just his celiac disease, that he needed to "get your numbers down," "get your weight up," and he'd be better. But actually getting the actual diagnosis was its own kind of devastating. Once we had the news, we did our research, the way you do when you're desperate for some kind of control, and we learned quickly that it was terminal. I told myself we had a couple of years. I really believed that based on what I read. But it turned out he was further along than either of us understood. He fought hard, quietly and stubbornly, for four years before that diagnosis ever had a name. And then I lost him within five months of finally receiving the diagnosis.

I've walked with loss before. I didn't think I was a stranger to grief. But this one hits different. This one lives in my body differently.

I miss the little things more than I thought I would. Him saying "meet me on the Lido deck" after work, and we would sit outside on the deck for a cold drink or bob around in the pool. Man, we had great tans! We would watch our favorite shows with an understood rule that we could NOT watch an episode without the other. We loved thrifting our way all over NWA.

I miss the bigger things too. Road trips to New York and Dallas, again with an understood rule that the driver got to choose the radio station. I miss the family trips to Tulsa for arts and crafts shows and the casino. I also miss the vacations to Niagara Falls and the Bahamas. And, of course, football season! I'm not sure if he supported me or actually enabled my Go Bills obsession! Then again, I did the same for his Razorback fandom. It's going to be hard returning to those games.

Most of all, I miss falling asleep in his arms at night. There is no substitute for that particular kind of quiet.

I've spent my career as a therapist sitting across from people in their worst moments, holding space for grief, loss, trauma, the unbearable weight of "before" and "after." But, holding that space and knowing the "normal" process does not make it any easier.

Here's something I knew clinically but now know in my bones: grief doesn't move in a straight line. It's not five neat stages you check off and graduate from. It's more like weather, some days are clear and almost normal, and then a song comes on, or you reach for your phone to tell him something, or you see his shoes still by the door, and you're right back in the storm. It doesn't get smaller with time, not really. You just grow bigger around it, and it becomes something you carry rather than something you drown in, most days. And it is entirely possible to be functioning, showing up, smiling, working, and still be devastated underneath all of it at the exact same time. Grief and normal life don't take turns. They coexist, awkwardly, every single day.

I think this experience, as much as I wish I'd never had to have it, is going to make me a better therapist. Not because grief is a credential, but because I now carry a kind of understanding I can't unknow. When a client tells me they miss the mundane things most, the way someone said their name, the sound of them in another room, I won't just nod because it's clinically appropriate. I'll know exactly what they mean.

I'm not posting this for sympathy. I'm posting it because I'm finally strong enough to say his name out loud in a public way, and because I think grief shared honestly is less isolating than grief carried alone, for me and maybe for someone reading this who's in it too.

I miss him. I will always miss him, and he will always live in my heart. But I will be okay.

08/26/2024

Happy National Dog Day to these two wild ones 🤣

05/25/2024

These two want to get in so bad!

05/18/2022

Haha 😂 I do feel married to this paper!! I might suggest a trial separation if it doesn’t get itself together soon 🤣

04/04/2022

Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Meryl Streep. What do these 4 people have in common? Aside from being iconic cultural figures, they are all identified introverts. Not all introverts are alike. Introversion is often mistaken for being shy or lacking social skills. In fact, according....

03/28/2022

Yes, those people whose eyes don’t glaze over the minute you say dissertation are true treasures…you know who you are 😊

03/25/2022

I just had a conversation about multitasking at lunch today. Everyone thinks they are good at multitasking…truth is no one truly is.

03/07/2022

We both lived to tell the tale that we survived America’s Most Haunted Hotel. However, I’m pretty sure Breckie, the 4-year-old boy who died from appendicitis at the hotel, and perhaps a friend, were trying to get my attention. In my pictures there is something on the floor…maybe footprints. On Michael’s photos…nothing!! Same time, same hallway. Curiouser and curiouser.

We both also survived axe throwing (another first for me), which honestly everyone was in danger as I was throwing! I did actually get a few on the target though 🤣

03/03/2022

I do not like to be scared. I see no purpose in repeatedly activating my sympathetic nervous system into fight, flight, freeze and increasing my heart rate without any benefit of exercise. I do not watch horror movies or visit haunted houses at Halloween for just this reason.

However, continuing in my attempts of stepping out of my comfort zone, I plan to spend the weekend in "America's Most Haunted Hotel" (https://www.americasmosthauntedhotel.com/) including a ghost tour. I'm good with the haunted mansion at Disneyland but this is a whole new kind of haunting.

This may be a time to practice what I preach and utilize those calming techniques. If those who know and love me do not hear from me by Monday, send HELP 😝

America’s Most Haunted Hotel is in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Officially known as the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, its legend has been formed from the many “guests who check out but never leave”. Have you heard about the Baker Burial Site? Schedule your trip to see the bottles beginning June 1st....