ABOUT THE BROAD

My name is Cassie Marie. I'm the person behind this blog, and I started it for the most selfish reason imaginable: I needed somewhere to put all of this. The rage. The disbelief. The 2 a.m. conversations with someone who can't answer anymore. Writing was the only thing that made the inside of my head feel slightly less like a house fire.

When my person died, I did what most people do — I Googled. I searched for something, anything, that would tell me how to survive what was happening. And you know what I found? Pastel infographics about the "five stages of grief." Articles that told me to "honor my healing journey." Blogs written by people who seemed to have their shit suspiciously together. None of it matched what I was actually going through, which was more like being hit by a bus every morning and then being expected to answer emails.

So I started writing the thing I wished I'd found. A grief blog that actually sounds like a grieving person. One that admits grief makes you angry, irrational, exhausted, and sometimes darkly funny in ways that horrify polite company. One that doesn't pretend there's a timeline, a finish line, or a version of you on the other side who's "stronger for it." Maybe you will be. Maybe you won't. Either way, you deserve honesty about what this is really like.

I'm not a therapist. I'm not a grief counselor. I don't have a psychology degree or a certification in anything related to death and dying. What I have is lived experience, an internet connection, and a vocabulary that would make my grandmother wince. If you need professional help — and there's absolutely no shame in that — please go get it. I've written about the difference between therapy and grief coaching if you're not sure where to start. This blog is not a replacement for professional support. It's the friend who sits with you in the parking lot after the funeral and says, "This is really, really fucked up," because sometimes that's the most helpful thing anyone can say.

Here's what you can expect from this blog: brutal honesty, occasional profanity (okay, frequent profanity), practical guides for the logistical nightmare that follows a death, and the kind of dark humor that only makes sense when you've been through something like this. I write about the things people don't talk about — the rage that comes out of nowhere, the guilt that follows the rage, the weird bureaucratic hell of death certificates and estate paperwork, and the slow, ugly, nonlinear process of figuring out who you are when part of your world is missing.

If any of that sounds like what you need right now, you're welcome here. If you're brand new to this, start here — I've put together survival guides for the first days and weeks. If you want to talk, vent, or just yell into the void, the contact page is open. I read everything. I can't promise I'll fix anything, but I can promise you won't get a single platitude in return.