About Rachel, and why Happy Grieving exists

My dad died in August 2021. He was 64. I was 27, and I believed we had so much more time.

I had left home at 16 to study abroad, and work kept me abroad. Visits home were two or three weeks a year, and then Covid took even those. The last trip we ever took together was through Portugal's Douro Valley, before lockdowns split us between two countries. I didn't know it was the last one. You never do.

Two weeks after he died, a friend told me "it will pass, it'll make you stronger." That sentence taught me how invisible grief is, even to people who love you. The old me had an alive dad. I have been getting to know the new me ever since.

From one grief to 67,000

I started posting honestly about what grief actually feels like. The grocery store aisles. His jacket, which is not just a jacket anymore. The family group chat where his last message still sits, ordinary and unaware.

It turned out tens of thousands of people were carrying the same unspeakable things. Happy Grieving grew into a community of more than 67,000 people, mostly women, mostly grieving a parent or a partner, all tired of being told to move on.

Then came the trips

After my dad died, travel did something for me that nothing else could. Being somewhere new, with people who understood without needing it explained, let me feel the grief differently. Not fixed. Not bypassed. Held.

That became Grief Trips: small-group journeys of six to seven nights, eight to twelve people, real travel and real conversations, which I host personally. Since 2024 we have travelled together through Portugal, Bali, Spain, Australia and the Maldives. The trips are not therapy and they are not a wellness retreat. They are what happened to me, made repeatable: grief, in motion, in company.

What I believe

We don't fix grief. We feel it, together.

Grief is not a problem to solve or a phase to exit. It is love with nowhere obvious to go, and it deserves company, not correction. Everything on this site is written from that belief, from my own loss, and from five years of listening to this community. I am not a therapist and I will never pretend to be one. I am someone who gets it.

If something here sounds like your week, I'm glad you found us. And if today is one of the heavy ones, start here instead.

Warmly, Rachel

Founder of Happy Grieving and Grief Trips. Find me at @happy.grieving, the trips at grieftrips.com, or in your inbox via the letter.