“Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you.” – Psalm 55:22 (NIV)

Let me guess — you thought you were handling things pretty well until a box of crackers took you down like a linebacker.

You were cruising through your shopping list like a functional adult.
Milk, check. Bread, check. Something green that counts as vegetables, check.
You were feeling almost… normal.

Until you turned the corner into the snack aisle and saw them.

His crackers. The ones with the weird flavor name you never understood but he’d demolish in one sitting while watching whatever sports thing was happening on TV.
The ones that are still on sale because the universe has a sick sense of humor.

And suddenly you’re standing there like an idiot, staring at a $3.99 box of processed wheat like it just told you your dog died.

Cue the waterworks. Right there between the Cheez-Its and the organic rice cakes, in full view of that mom with three kids who’s definitely judging your life choices right now.

Welcome to grief in the grocery store — the ambush you never saw coming.

Here’s what nobody tells you about widowhood:
It’s not just the big moments that’ll knock you flat.
It’s not just anniversaries and holidays and significant dates circled in red on the calendar.

It’s Tuesday at 2 PM in aisle six, staring at evidence that the world has kept spinning while your world stopped completely.

It’s the brutal reminder that capitalism doesn’t pause for your pain.
Those crackers are still on the shelf because someone, somewhere, is still buying them. Someone who gets to take them home to a person who will actually eat them.

And you? You get to stand there like a grief-stricken statue, wondering what the heck you’re supposed to do with this information.

Do you buy them anyway? Some weird tribute to his snacking habits?
Do you avoid this aisle forever? Create a mental map of grocery store safe zones?
Do you find a different store entirely? Because apparently Kroger is now a minefield of emotional triggers?
Do you just stand there and cry until security comes to check on you?

All valid options, by the way.

But here’s what I wish someone had told me during my own cracker-induced breakdown:
This isn’t actually about the crackers.

This is about the sudden, stabbing awareness that you’re shopping for one now.
That your cart will never again need to accommodate his preferences, his weird brand loyalties, his inexplicable love for foods that taste like cardboard but somehow made him happy.

This is about realizing that grocery shopping — something so mundane you used to do on autopilot — has become an exercise in navigating a world that wasn’t designed for your new reality.

Every aisle is a reminder of the life you used to live.
The couples shopping together. The families loading up carts with enough food to feed a small army.
The casual way people toss items in their baskets without wondering if they’ll ever eat them all before they expire.

You used to be those people.

Now you’re the woman crying over crackers, trying to figure out how to buy groceries for a life you never wanted to live.

And that’s not pathetic. That’s not weakness.
That’s not evidence that you’re “not handling things well.”

That’s just what grief looks like when it shows up uninvited in fluorescent lighting.

So here’s my radical suggestion: stop trying to handle it well.

Stop pretending that buying groceries should be easy just because you used to do it twice a week without thinking.
Stop expecting yourself to navigate reminders of your old life without feeling anything.
Stop apologizing for having feelings in public spaces.

Your grief doesn’t need to be convenient for strangers.
It doesn’t need to wait for appropriate moments or private spaces.
It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else.

If you need to cry in the cereal aisle, cry in the cereal aisle.
If you need to abandon your cart and sit in your car for twenty minutes, do that.
If you need to send someone else to do your shopping for a while, there’s no shame in that either.
If you need to order everything online and have it delivered so you can avoid the landmines altogether, that’s survival — not surrender.

You’re not failing at widowhood because grocery shopping has become an emotional obstacle course.
You’re just a human being trying to function in a world that keeps selling reminders of what you’ve lost.

And Earthling, functioning looks different now.
It looks like giving yourself permission to fall apart in unexpected places.
It looks like accepting that simple tasks might not be simple anymore.
It looks like being gentle with yourself when the ordinary becomes extraordinarily difficult.

It looks like understanding that healing isn’t about getting back to “normal.”
It’s about creating a new normal that accommodates the fact that you’re not the same person who used to breeze through grocery stores without a second thought.

So the next time you find yourself ambushed by a box of crackers, remember this:

You’re not losing your mind.
You’re not being dramatic.
You’re not doing grief wrong.

You’re just discovering that love doesn’t disappear when someone dies — it just has to find new places to land.
And sometimes, it lands in the snack aisle at the worst possible moment.

Let it land. Feel it. Honor it.

Toss the crackers in the cart like a boss, or leave them on the shelf like a prayer.
Both are holy choices. Either way, Earthling, you’re doing better than you think.

✨ Tired of grief ambushing you in the produce section?

Ready to learn how to navigate this new world without apologizing for having feelings in public?
Let’s talk about what it really means to rebuild a life when even grocery shopping feels like emotional warfare.