Busy Isn’t the Same as Connected (Especially in Grief)

When Growth Makes Us Busy, Not Connected

Yes, this another blog post about a line I heard on a recent podcast! 

“Growth often makes us busy, not connected.” by Brittni Schroeder

The more I sat with it, the more I realized how deeply it applies—not just to business or productivity, but to grief, healing, and the way we try to move forward after loss.

Because grief doesn’t respond to hustle.
It doesn’t heal on a deadline.
And it doesn’t care how full your calendar is.

Grief asks for something far more inconvenient and far more sacred.

Presence.

When Growth Looks Like Progress (But Feels Like Distance)

Let me say this clearly: growth itself isn’t the problem.

Growth can be beautiful. It can mean more people reached, more stories held, more hearts supported. It can mean a business finally standing on steady ground after years of uncertainty.

But growth without intention has a way of doing something subtle.

It fills our days…
without filling our connections.

Suddenly we’re answering emails instead of sitting with stories.
Posting content instead of holding conversations.
Creating constantly—but listening less.

And we don’t always notice it at first—because from the outside, everything looks successful.

But grief notices.

It always does.

Busy Is a Sneaky Thing in Grief

Here’s the part I understand not just professionally—but personally.

After the deaths that shattered my world, I stayed moving.
Traveling. Going. Leaving.

I packed bags and convinced myself that being away would be easier than being home. New places distracted me. Different scenery gave me breathing room. For a little while, grief felt quieter.

And in the moment, it helped.

But every single time we came home, the truth was waiting.

Death hadn’t gone anywhere.
The house was still empty.
The silence still lived in the rooms.

Nothing had been fixed. Nothing had been outrun.
I had only postponed the reckoning.

That’s the thing about grief—it doesn’t respect geography.
You can cross state lines, oceans, and time zones and it will still unpack itself right beside you.

Busy gave me motion.
But it didn’t give me connection.

Eventually, grief asked me to stop moving long enough to be present with what was real.

When Busy Disguises Itself as “Doing the Work”

This is where it gets tricky—especially in grief spaces.

Busy often disguises itself as service.

“I’m helping.”
“I’m creating.”
“I’m showing up.”

All of that can be true and still incomplete.

For grievers, busyness can be a way to avoid feeling.
For helpers and grief workers, it can become armor—productive, praised, and quietly protective.

But grief doesn’t need us to perform it well.
It needs us to witness it honestly.

Connection isn’t loud.
It isn’t optimized.
It doesn’t scale easily.

It asks us to slow down when everything else tells us to speed up.

The Grief Industry Is Growing—and That Matters

More conversations.
More language.
More permission to talk about loss without shame.

That’s a good thing.

But growth also carries a quiet risk if we’re not paying attention.

Grief work was never meant to be transactional.
It was never meant to be performative.
And it was never meant to be reduced to content alone.

This work is relational.

It lives in the pause before someone speaks.
In the moment you don’t rush to fix.
In the space where “I don’t know what to say” is met with “You don’t have to.”

If growth pulls us away from those moments—no matter how well-intentioned—it costs more than it gives.

Connection Isn’t the Byproduct of the Work

It Is the Work

Not more followers.
Not louder messaging.
Not constant output.

But more:

• being seen

• being heard

• being held

Sometimes growth looks like doing less so you can feel more.

Sometimes it means choosing depth over reach.
Truth over trends.
Faithfulness over flash.

The most meaningful growth I’ve experienced didn’t make my life louder—it made it more honest.

A Gentle Question Worth Sitting With

If you’re creating something—
a business, a body of work, a life after loss—

it might be worth asking:

Is this growth bringing me closer or just keeping me busy?

Because grief doesn’t need more noise.
It needs more attunement.

And the kind of work that lasts—the kind people return to years later and say “That helped me”—is rarely rushed.

It’s rooted.
It’s present.
And it stays connected…even as it grows.

A Soft Place to Land

If this stirred something in you, let it.

You don’t need to fix it.
You don’t need to decide anything today.
You don’t even need to do anything with it.

Just notice.

Notice where you’ve been moving quickly.
Notice where you’ve been productive but disconnected.
Notice where growth may have asked for more of you than it gave back.

Grief doesn’t ask us to stop living or creating or growing.
It simply asks us not to abandon ourselves in the process.

So maybe the question isn’t how to grow faster…
but how to grow truer.

And maybe connection—real, honest, human connection—isn’t something we find after the work is done.

Maybe it’s the way we’re meant to do the work all along.