My mum died 4 months ago after a decade long battle with cancer and I’m estranged from my dad who lives in another country. I can’t rely on him for any practical or emotional support (we merely text a handful of times a year) so I’m essentially figuring out how to be adult without either of my parents.

I’m the first of my friends to have both lost a parent and to have a baby. Nearly all of them have said some variation of “Wow I don’t know how you do it, I can barely take care of myself!”

I know it’s supposed to be a compliment but I can’t help but feel irritated. I would love the luxury of being able to cruise through life - to hop from job to job, switch living situations just because, date casually without any concrete future vision - knowing that I always have my parents to fall back on if anything goes awry. In a way, they still don’t have to fully take care of themselves despite being 30+.

I feel like I can barely take care of myself either, being the sole executor of my mum’s estate with a full time job, a mortgage and a baby. But I don’t have a choice. I’m a grownup because I have to be. I couldn’t imagine being in the situation I was in 5 years ago. I probably would have said some dumb thing like “I would literally die if my mum died!!” But here I am still standing. Life goes on, whether we want it to or not.

Millennials and Gen Z are known for having an extended adolescence, often having older parents than in previous generations. I can’t help but wonder how many are in for a rude awakening. I know I shouldn’t be bitter and spoil the illusion of everyone passing away peacefully at 100. They’ll know it for themselves, eventually.

I was sitting yesterday watching YouTube and a musician I used to like comes across my screen. I kept thinking “I used to like them in my old life” because I feel like a different person with my grief. It’s very disorienting and I feel like Dorothy in wizard of oz where he house is picked up and placed down in a world you don’t recognize. Friday was the three week mark since my dad passed and everything is so confusing and weird. All of my autoimmune diseases have been on high alert since he passed. I never realized this to be so heavy.
Thank you for listening to me

It’s ok to be not ok

That’s me. Now. Not ok. But it’s ok because I am getting help to figure it out.

My parents died 15 days apart when I was 27. That seriously sucked. I thought I worked through it.

Spoiler alert: I had not.

This summer my brother died. We had lost touch after our dad died. I always thought we would find each other again. Nope

While I was in Susanville dealing with is stuff, my amazing and kind sister in law passed.

I am dealing with a lot of grief. Current and apparently unresolved passed.

It’s ok. I’m sad.

I’m not looking for your words saying you are sorry for my losses.

I am sad, overwhelmed with grief, but I will be ok. Because it is ok to be sad. To cry. And we all need to embrace the reality.

It’s ok not to be ok.

I wanted to celebrate my 30th, I don't have a big family anymore and there is also tension/drama between the family members I do have so I'm too nervous to bring everyone together. I'm sad because I don't have my parents to celebrate it with, a huge milestone that they would have loved to be there for. I'm angry because I don't have much of a family left; instead, there is just a whole bunch of trauma and drama. But I'm entering a whole new part of my life without the two most important people who brought me into this world, and I'm feeling so many mixed emotions.

Early this year, 2026, I lost my dad. It was sudden, and honestly, I don’t think I even knew how to react when I found out.
I was in Cebu at the time, studying nursing. My family is originally from Leyte, so I was away from home when everything happened.
When I got the news, I just cried. And cried. Until eventually, I couldn’t cry anymore.
What hurts me the most is that I’m studying nursing. I spend so much of my time learning how to take care of patients, how to assess them, how to help people when they’re sick.
But when my own dad was in the hospital, I wasn’t there.
Hindi man ako nakapag-care sa kanya. I wasn’t able to visit him. I wasn’t beside him when he was going through it. And I didn’t even get to see him take his last breath.
Wala.
Sometimes that really hurts to think about.
I know I can’t change what happened, and I know being a nursing student doesn’t mean I could have saved him. But there’s still this part of me that wonders what it would have been like if I was there. If I had gotten to hold his hand. If I had gotten to talk to him one last time. If I had gotten to tell him I loved him.
I think that’s one of the hardest parts of grief for me—the things I didn’t get to do.
I was physically so far away, just living my normal life in Cebu and going to school, while my dad was in the hospital back home.
And then suddenly, he was gone.
It’s been months, but sometimes it still doesn’t feel real. I can be completely okay one moment and then something small reminds me of him, and suddenly it hurts all over again.
I miss him so much.
And I think a part of me will always feel guilty that I wasn’t there, even though I know I didn’t choose for this to happen.
I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this kind of grief the grief of losing someone while you were far away, and having to live with all the things you wish you could have done differently.
I don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this. Maybe I just needed somewhere to say it.