Learning to Hold Grief & Gratitude at Once

WHAT LOSING MY MOTHER AND CELEBRATING MY DAUGHTER IN THE SAME WEEK TAUGHT ME ABOUT CARRYING TWO TRUTHS AT THE SAME TIME

Everything changed on September 1st. I got the call that my mother, who had been living with Alzheimer's, had suffered a cardiac event and was declining fast. I flew to Phoenix. I got to sit with her, pray with her, and hold her hand. On September 6th, I was with her as she took her last breath.

That same day, I flew back to Kansas City to help my daughter move into UCLA.

I didn't have twenty four hours to grieve before I had to show up for the next chapter of someone else's life. And for a while, I thought that meant I was failing at both, that I couldn't be fully present for my daughter while my heart was still in a hospice room in Phoenix, and that celebrating anything so soon after losing my mother made the grief less real. What I learned instead is that grief and gratitude were never meant to take turns. They can exist in the same breath.

You Don't Have to Choose Which Feeling Is Allowed

We're taught, often without anyone saying it directly, that emotions have an order. Grieve first, then celebrate. Mourn fully, then move on. But life rarely waits for one feeling to finish before handing you another.

Standing in my daughter's new dorm room later that week, after leaving my mother's bedside, I wasn't confused about what I felt. I was devastated and proud, heartbroken and hopeful, all at once. The teaching moment for me wasn't learning to separate those feelings. It was learning that I didn't need to.

Sacrifice Looks Different When You're the One Carrying It

My mother raised my sisters and me as a single parent, working as a teacher during the day and sewing dance costumes on evenings and weekends to make ends meet. I didn't understand the size of that sacrifice until I became a mother myself, and I understood it even more the moment I had to choose between staying in my grief and showing up for my own daughter.

Mom taught me, without ever saying it directly, that love sometimes means doing the hard thing and the joyful thing back to back, without either one canceling out the other. That's not resilience for its own sake. It's what showing up for the people who need you actually looks like, even when your own heart is asking for a break it isn't getting.

Community Doesn't Wait for You to Be Ready

When I returned to work, I walked into my office at UMKC and found my desk covered in cards from colleagues I'd known for less than two months. Calls, messages, texts of support and prayer arrived faster than I could respond to them.

I used to think leadership meant getting through hard seasons quietly, handling it so no one else had to carry any part of it with you. What I've learned is the opposite. We don't carry each other through seasons like this out of obligation. We carry each other because it's how love works. Letting people show up for you, even when you didn't ask, isn't a weakness in your leadership. It's often the thing that makes you capable of leading at all.

Legacy Is Built in the Overlap, Not the Order

If I'd waited for my grief to resolve before I let myself feel anything else, I would have missed watching my daughter start her next chapter. If I'd pushed my grief aside to only focus on celebration, I would have dishonored what my mother's life actually meant to me.

The overlap, the two feelings sitting together, uncomfortable and true at the same time, is where I actually lived that week. And I think that overlap is where most of us live more often than we admit. Grief and gratitude aren't opposites waiting to cancel each other out. They're both proof that something mattered.

In memory of my mother, MIND has opened a giving page: In Memory of Stephanie Mercomes: A Legacy of Mentorship.

 My mother was a teacher her entire career, and she believed in people other people had given up on long before this organization existed.

If her story moved you, consider giving in her honor, click here to donate.

What I Carry Forward

I don't think the goal is ever to master grief, or to rush toward gratitude so the grief feels smaller. The goal is learning you're allowed to hold both, fully, without one needing to wait its turn. My mother taught me that lesson in the way she lived. Losing her taught me again in the week I buried nothing but felt everything.

If you'd like to know more about the woman who raised me, you can read her full obituary here.

Enjoyed this article?

Stay connected with Leading Forward, Dr. Laila Hishaw’s monthly newsletter featuring thoughtful reflections on leadership, mentorship, education, and the future of dentistry. Subscribe Here!