Grief is a strange beast—messy, unpredictable, and something you can’t simply fix with logic or a spreadsheet. When I lost my son, Ty, I found myself in uncharted territory. As someone who’s spent years as an intermediate technical analyst—digging into data, spotting trends, and helping others navigate tech—I once believed that everything in life had a pattern. But nothing in my dataset had prepared me for the raw randomness of loss.
People always say “keep busy,” but they never tell you how to busy yourself when your heart feels like it’s been scrambled like a misfiring algorithm. So, I turned to technology—not just as a distraction, but as a way to impose a bit of order on the chaos. I dove headfirst into learning about science, AI, and using tech tools to schedule my grief. In the process, teaching others to be empowered through tech became a lifeline in itself. It wasn’t about sugar-coating the pain; it was about confronting it head-on with the tools I knew best.
I vividly remember when the quote, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed,” resonated with me. It felt like a quiet echo of Tyrone’s enduring presence—a reminder that even as everything changes, some things remain constant. Applying my analytical mind to understand not just tech trends but also the ebb and flow of my own emotions, I realized that every new insight was a small victory.
My journey hasn’t been neat or tidy—far from it. It’s been like working with raw data full of unpredictable outliers. Yet, in teaching, learning, and sometimes questioning every step along the way, I rediscovered a real, forward-thinking kind of joy. A joy that comes not from neatly packaged solutions, but from the willingness to face grief, messiness and all, and to find meaning in the process.
If you’ve ever leaned into learning—whether diving into science, exploring the frontiers of AI, or even using tech to carve out moments of healing—know that you’re not alone. Sometimes, the very things that keep us busy are the ones that help us heal.