My mother passed away on a Tuesday in September. I know the exact time — 3:47 PM — because I was watching the clock when the doctor walked in. I don't know why I kept watching it. Maybe I thought time would slow down if I kept track of it. It didn't.
For the following eight months, I functioned. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I answered messages. But I wasn't really there. Grief is like that — it hollows you out so quietly that you don't notice until one morning you're staring at a cup of chai and can't remember how to feel anything at all.
My friend Neha mentioned Friend You Need during a phone call. She didn't push it — she just said, "I talked to someone when Papa was ill. It helped." That was enough. I booked a session that same night, at 11 PM, half expecting to cancel it in the morning.
The First Session
I almost didn't show up. I sat in front of my laptop five minutes before the call, convincing myself it was pointless. But I clicked join. And Meera — my listener — said, "Hi Priya. You don't have to say anything yet. We can just sit here." I cried within two minutes. Not because she said anything profound, but because she didn't try to fix me.
What Changed
Over the next few weeks, I talked about things I'd never said out loud — the guilt, the anger, the moments where I'd been impatient with her in her last months. Meera never judged any of it. She asked questions that made me think, but never made me feel like my feelings were wrong or too much.
Grief doesn't disappear. I still cry sometimes when I smell her perfume in my childhood home. But now I know what to do with that feeling. I sit with it. I let it be. And somehow, that has made all the difference.
If you're reading this and you're carrying something heavy, please know — you don't have to carry it alone. Even one conversation can shift something inside you that you didn't know needed shifting.
