The Sacred Act of Showing Up: What Anita Aasen Teaches Us About Presence in Grief

Grief isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s a long drive through the night with pretzels and prayer as your only companions.

Anita Aasen, a licensed therapist, in From Grief to Grace: A Therapist’s Personal Journey of Healing After Loss, doesn’t just write about grief—she lives inside it. What makes her story extraordinary is the depth of loss she experiences and how she shows up for it. Again and again.

This book is about meeting grief at the door, saying, “I’m here,” and walking straight into the storm.

Showing Up Is the Story

Anita didn’t start with a plan. She started with a phone call and a diagnosis: Her cousin Lou had bladder cancer. From that moment on, her life became a patchwork of highway miles, hospital visits, restless prayers, and coffee-fueled mornings beside a loved one slipping away.

She showed up to chemotherapy appointments.

She showed up to sit in silence while Lou watched car chase movies.

She showed up on Easter Sunday, sensing it would be their last.

She showed up not just as a therapist or a sister—but as a human being holding grief in both hands.

In a world that often avoids discomfort, Anita leaned in.

Presence Over Perfection

There’s a line in the book:

“I wasn’t just a sister or a companion in his struggle—I became a quiet architect, piecing together any form of support that might give him even a sliver of hope.”

Anita wasn’t always eloquent. She didn’t always have the right words. She second-guessed herself, wrestled with faith, and sometimes drove for hours fueled by desperation rather than direction.

But she was there.

And that’s what matters.

Anita’s presence was the prayer. Not the kind recited in polished sentences, but the raw, silent kind offered from a gas station parking lot, whispered between tears, scribbled in a journal.

The Quiet Heroism of Staying

There’s no dramatic breakthrough in Anita’s journey. No movie moment where everything “makes sense.” What we get instead is far more powerful: a witness account of what it means to love someone through their last days.

She’s not afraid to show her readers the mess—the contradictions of faith, the exhaustion, the guilt, the hope, and the helplessness that flood every chapter.

She becomes a living example of what therapists often ask others to do: stay with the feeling. Don’t rush it. Don’t bypass it. Don’t try to fix it. Just… stay.

And somehow, in staying, there is healing—not the disappearance of grief, but the transformation of it.

The Sacred in the Ordinary

Anita shows us through every long drive, every quiet coffee shared, every unspoken goodbye that sacredness isn’t just found in ceremony. It’s found in showing up when it’s hard and in making space for someone else’s suffering without turning away.

There’s grace in these ordinary moments.

There’s faith in folding the blanket one last time.

There’s love in choosing to sit beside someone when their body begins to fail, but their spirit still longs to be seen.

Why This Story Matters

In a world trained to celebrate hustle, outcomes, and getting over things quickly, From Grief to Grace offers a radical alternative: the idea that simply being with someone through pain is enough.

That’s what makes Anita’s story essential. She reminds us:

• You don’t need perfect words to be someone’s support system.
• You don’t need answers to show compassion.
• You don’t need to do everything—you just need to be there.

Even as professionals, caregivers, or friends, we often feel pressure to “fix” grief. Anita teaches that our job is not to fix the pain—but to honor, listen, hold space, and walk alongside it without judgment or agenda.

Reading Anita’s journey, you begin to understand showing up isn’t just something you do for others. It’s something you do for yourself. Every long drive. Every midnight journal entry. Every goodbye whispered into a hospital room.

All of it is presence. All of it is prayer.

In the sacred act of showing up, we don’t escape grief. We learn how to carry it—together.

Learn more about the author’s journey by visiting https://anitasalekaasen.com/