The Day Everything Changed – The Beginning of My Grief Journey

✍️ Personal Transformational Project (PTP) – BLOG 1 

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There are days that life splits you into two and leaves you with: before and after.  
For me, that day was April 2, 2021—the day my father, Jafford Gitonga Mbaka, took his final breath. I remember the phone call, the sudden stillness, and the way the air shifted around me—as if the world knew my heart had shattered.

Nothing prepares you for the silence that follows with the pain of loss of a loved one. Not the prayers, not the strength you thought you had and not even the words from well-meaning friends – & I had them. It felt like being pushed into the deep end of the ocean and forgetting how to breathe, slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the pain of grief. 

In the days that followed, I moved through life in a daze—smiling where I had to, leading where I must and had to, and crying when no one else could see me – I literally cried myself to sleep. I kept telling myself to be strong, and for the first days, I looked like I had everything figured out! But lo and behold, soon the reality that I would never see my father again dawned on me and it came flooding like heavy rain. But what happens when you’re your the first born and everyone is looking to you to make the key decision? What if you make the wrong decision? What if your too afraid to even make a move? This was me, a scary cat on the inside but I presented myself as a tough lionness on the outside! However, on the flip side of it all, I came to learn that grief, does not care about titles, roles, or responsibilities. It comes for all of us —fully, fiercely, and without apology.

This blog marks the beginning of a deeply personal project I am undertaking as part of my Leadwell leadership training: I journey I started in April 2025, I call it, “The Pain of Loss and Grief,” it’s a journey of transformation through grief and one that I have postponed for too long, not because I didn’t want to heal, but because at that moment I didn’t know how. Grief doesn’t come with a users manual, it doesn’t knock or prepare you for whats ahead! It breaks the door down, rearranges your life and soul and leaves you barely wondering, ‘what just happened?’ 

Through this jourmey I have also come to learn that grief is not a straight line. It loops, spirals, hides, and then suddenly floods. But with every tear, I am learning something beautiful: that it’s okay to fall apart in your grieving – there’s really no formula to it, that crying doesn’t mean weakness, and that love never truly dies—it only transforms.

But even in this pain, I’m discovering something surprising: growth. I’m learning that healing isn’t about forgetting. It’s about finding ways to carry love forward, even when the person who gave it is no longer here. Over the next several months, I will be journaling, blogging, and vlogging my way through the layers of loss—peeling them back one by one, not to fix them, but to feel them. I’ll be sharing memories of my dad, lessons I’ve learned from loss, reflections on faith, and the slow, sacred process of rebuilding my life. My hope? That my vulnerability becomes someone else’s validation—that my story meets yours in the soft space between grief and growth.

Why?
Because I believe healing happens when we give grief a voice and acknowledge that it happened.
Because silence kept me stuck, but words—raw, vulnerable, imperfect—have the power to set all of us free.
Because someone out there is grieving too, and they need to know they are not alone.

So this is me, inviting you into the messy, painful, and beautiful process of healing. Not as a leader who has it all figured out, but as a daughter who still misses her dad every single day. A woman learning to carry her grief with grace and purpose.

If you’ve lost someone, I want you to know: you’re not alone. Let’s walk this road, one honest step at a time.

Welcome to my heart’s journey, and thank you for walking with me. 

With love,
Cynthia Gitonga – Theuri