Michelle on Grief

What does self-abandonment actually look like when it’s happening in real time?

This week, I’m exploring the subtle ways we leave ourselves in order to maintain connection—overriding what we know, tolerating environments that don’t feel good, minimizing our own needs, and continuing to participate in relationships long after some deeper part of us has started saying no.

The backdrop for this conversation is something I jokingly call my Spotify pen pal: someone from my past and I communicating indirectly through playlists and songs. It’s tender, ridiculous, confronting—and it brought me face-to-face with a question much bigger than the relationship itself:

At what point does maintaining connection become self-abandonment?

I talk about the grief of caring about someone while knowing that closeness comes at a cost, what it means to be tolerated rather than truly welcomed, and why boundaries sometimes have very little to do with whether we love someone and everything to do with whether we’re willing to keep leaving ourselves to have them.

Because self-abandonment isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s one tiny compromise after another. One more accommodation. One more overridden instinct. One more song added to the playlist.

And maybe healing begins when we finally ask:

What would it look like to stop abandoning myself—even if it means grieving the connection?

Song of the Week: Cancelled! - Taylor Swift

Michelle on Grief Playlist

Instagram Reel on Self-Abandonment

Some of the hardest things to grieve are the things that almost happened.

The relationship that held so much promise. The life you could almost see. The person you thought someone was. The future that felt close enough to touch—until it wasn’t.

In this week’s episode, I’m talking about the grief of possibility: what happens when we aren’t only grieving what we lost, but everything we imagined might come from it.

I also share the story behind the rebrand to Michelle on Grief, and the realization that grief has quietly been the thread running through nearly everything I’ve created—from this podcast to my writing, poetry, and the way I’ve come to understand my own life.

Because I’m starting to see grief differently.

Grief is not meant to be still. Grief is meant to be moved.

Through art. Through writing. Through movement. Through connection. Through whatever allows all that energy in the body to become something new.

Sometimes the gold isn’t in getting over the loss and moving on to the next thing.

Sometimes the gold is in the space between.

Song of the Week: Anna Graves - Blue Hours

Michelle on Grief Playlist

Book Suggestion: The Smell of Rain on Dust

What happens when you stop asking people what happened—and start asking what their experience of it was?

This week, I’m sharing what I call the cut-through question: What was your experience of that?

It’s a deceptively simple question that can reveal how someone processes emotion, whether they can move beyond storytelling into self-reflection, how comfortable they are with vulnerability, and, just as importantly, whether they’re genuinely curious about you in return.

I talk about using this question in dating, friendships, and even job interviews, why emotional depth and reciprocity matter to me, and how learning to recognize incongruence has helped me stop overriding what I’m already noticing.

And, of course, we’re talking about Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero”, and what it means to finally recognize the patterns that once made you question your own reality.

Because sometimes the goal isn’t to become better at figuring someone out.

It’s to get enough information to trust yourself sooner.

Song of the Week: Patient Zero — Taylor Swift

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What happens when you stop trying to fix every uncomfortable feeling, and every unanswered question in your life?

This week, I follow a resurgence of compulsive urges beneath the behavior itself and into something much deeper: emotional loneliness and the lifelong need to feel known.

I talk about the ways we try to fill that space, with food, achievement, relationships, over-functioning, or constantly chasing whatever comes next, and what happened when I stopped trying to make the discomfort disappear.

I also share an unexpected shift that followed me home from Europe: I don’t feel the same urgency to figure my life out anymore. For once, I’m experimenting with letting life unfold instead of dragging it toward an outcome.

Show Notes:

Song of the Week: Taylor Swift - Babylon

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I went to Europe expecting mountains, adventure, and probably a few travel disasters.

I didn’t expect to find an old relationship blueprint waiting for me there.

In this week’s episode, I unpack what seven days across Europe unexpectedly showed me about attraction, attachment, and the emotionally unavailable men who have felt familiar to me for most of my life.

For the first time, I watched the pattern unfold in real time, and realized that what still feels familiar to a younger part of me no longer feels desirable to the woman I am today.

I also talk about rediscovering running in the mountains of Switzerland, traveling at a pace my body absolutely did not appreciate, and what it felt like to finally have enough space between stimulus and response to make a different choice.

Because we don’t heal abandonment through people who recreate the conditions that caused it.

Sometimes healing is recognizing the old blueprint, and realizing you don’t live there anymore.

Show Notes:

Song of the Week: Cassandra Coleman - Coming of Age

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What if the internal battle we call relationship OCD sometimes has another layer underneath it?

In this week’s episode, I take last week’s conversation about incongruence even deeper—into attachment, moral injury, emotional labor, and the conflict that happens when one part of us desperately wants connection while our adult self is saying, this doesn’t feel right anymore.

I explore what happens when we override our lived experience to preserve attachment, why I’m no longer willing to carry the emotional load for emotionally unavailable partners, and the important distinction I’m learning between loving someone and simply being attached to them.

I also talk about the mental “courtroom” that wants to reopen decisions we’ve already made—and what I’m learning to do instead: stop litigating the relationship and tend to the grief underneath the question.

Because sometimes “Should I go back?” isn’t actually a question that needs another answer.

Sometimes it’s a hurting part that needs somewhere safe to grieve.

Song of the Week: Post Malone - Hollywood Dreams/Come Down

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What happens when what someone tells you doesn’t match what their patterns are showing you?

In this week’s episode, I explore the incongruence gap, and why, for me, that gap can become a powerful trigger for OCD, rumination, and what I call the mental courtroom: the endless internal litigation between what I’m being told and what I actually see, feel, and experience.

I talk about hypervigilance, intuition, self-trust, and the difference between seeking impossible certainty and recognizing meaningful information about someone’s values and behavior.

I also share the questions I’m learning to ask when choosing a partner: Do I respect how they live? Do their words consistently match their actions? Do I admire who they are today—not who I imagine they could become?

Because discernment isn’t about finding certainty.

Sometimes it’s about trusting the pattern.

Song of the Week: Taylor Swift - Opalite

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In this week’s episode, I talk about the point where isolation stopped feeling like freedom and started becoming isolation.

What began as space to heal eventually became a place where loneliness, avoidance, and OCD could quietly take over. I explore how the same fears can show up whether we’re single or partnered; they simply wear different clothes.

I also talk about the deeper attachment wound underneath it all: the kind of childhood loneliness that no partner, pet, friendship, or achievement can fully fill.

This episode is about relationship OCD, isolation, reparenting, and learning that a partner was never meant to become the parent we didn’t have.

Sometimes healing isn’t about avoiding the trigger.

Sometimes it’s about learning how to stay connected without abandoning yourself.

Show Notes:

Song of the Week: Heartbreak is a habit - Sadie Fine

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In this week’s episode, I explore what happens when we stop trying to replace our losses and finally allow ourselves to grieve them.

Over the last four years, I’ve lost relationships, places, dreams, stability, and my beloved dog. Like so many of us, I’ve found myself wanting to fill the empty spaces—to get another dog, start dating, or chase the next chapter. But what if those impulses aren’t what we truly need?

I talk about grief as a state of being, how our protective parts try to distract us from overwhelming pain, and why healing sometimes means choosing not to move on before we’re ready.

This is a conversation about honoring your bandwidth, making room for the enormity of loss, and discovering that some seasons aren’t meant for replacing what’s gone—they’re meant for feeling it.

Because if we never fully grieve, we never fully love.

Show Notes:

Song of the Week: Orbiter - Noah Kahan

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Sometimes we learn the lesson, and then we have to live through the burn.

In this episode, I unpack the aftermath of betrayal, broken trust, toxic group dynamics, and having my intuition confirmed in ways I wish it hadn’t been.

I also connect with the part of me that desperately wanted to be heard, believed, and validated, and what changed when I realized she no longer needs anyone else to take her side. She has me.

We explore why people participate in unhealthy dynamics, what we’re willing to tolerate for belonging and connection, and what those choices can reveal about where we are emotionally.

And finally, the burn: greater discernment, lost relationships, changed access, and integrating the lesson cognitively, somatically, and through the nervous system.

Show Notes:

Song of the Week: Everyone Else - London Grammar

MC Somatics Playlist