Welcome to Growth In Grief by CJ Infantino (A widowed dad who rebuilt his life after loss)
The approach to grief in this publication provides you with the mental shifts, tools, and validation needed to create your new identity after loss, rebuild your life, and start living again.
Welcome.
Let me explain everything you need to know about my Substack publication “Growth In Grief.” It will only take a few short minutes.
Misson
My goal each week is to help you take one step forward in your journey with grief.
What does that mean? It means waking up each day with 1% more of your life rebuilt. To do it, I need to show you what grief is, how it affects your life, and what to do about it.
If you spend enough time with my writing, you’ll:
Find your new identity
Take more action
Stop listening to society’s expectations of you in your grief
Normalize your grief experience
Sign up now so you can begin today.
About Me
TL;DR
My wife died from breast cancer in 2020 after five years of living with cancer. Leaving me with with three young kids, two dogs, and a shattered identity.
I spent years doing painful work to confront my grief. Seeking every kind of treatment, therapy, book that I could find.
Through all of the work, I was able to rebuild my identity and find my purpose and hope again.
Details
I walked away from a high paying tech career to write this Substack. It’s the main thing I do. There is no doing it half way. This is my life and my mission.
So, let me tell you about my life by starting with loss. Uncomfortable, I know, but it’s where the deepest truths live.
From childhood I carried undiagnosed mental illness; depression, OCD, and ADHD. The thoughts in my head were all consuming. Torture.
On my 30th birthday my wife was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. We spent the next five and a half years trying to hold it together while everything inside us shattered. I was a caregiver, a father to three young kids, and a husband watching the person I loved most slowly die.
On September 30, 2020, Ariana died. She was 35. I was 35. Our kids lost their mother. I lost my wife, myself, and my future.
Shortly after I started a clothing company called Hopeless Mope because I needed something to pour my grief into. Something that could hold the anger and the hopelessness I felt. And let others know they are not alone.
But clothing wasn’t enough. I started writing. Raw, honest posts about what grief actually feels like. Not the sanitized version people want to hear, but the truth. The posts that made people uncomfortable because they recognized themselves in the pain.
In 2023 I made the leap. I walked away from my 18-year career in tech to do this full-time. To write about grief, to coach people through their grief, to build resources that actually help instead of offering empty platitudes.
From 2020 to 2023 I built this on the side while raising three kids alone and working full-time.
In 2023 I became free.
That’s when I felt the shift to a fulfilled life. Not a life without pain, but a life where pain has purpose. It’s a life I want more people to experience by reading this publication.
My promise to you
In this Substack I promise to do the following:
I will give you every part of me.
I will tell you the truth about grief.
I will tell you things that make me look foolish, weak, and broken.
I will inspire you and give you hope, rather than dwell on the negative.
I will respond to every single comment.
So, please promise me this in return: I don’t want you to deny your own grief journey because it might look different from mine.
I simply want to show you a path forward, to give you options, hope, and a starting point for wherever you are in your journey.
When you commit to yourself and confront your grief, that’s when you begin to see your future take shape. When the glimpses of hope flash through the pain, when you find purpose again.
We will learn things together. We will share and support each other.
Sign up now so you can begin walking your path with intention and hope.
Why invest in premium Growth In Grief?
For an investment of $120 a year, I’ll guide you to the other side of your grief. Never abandoning the past, but carrying it forward.
Money spent on your well-being pays for itself and more. It is a level up in how you will handle your grief, rebuild your life, find your new identity, and capture the future that you thought was gone.
It you really are dedicated to paying it forward, join The Foundation Tier.
The table below shows you everything you get. I’m always adding more so it feels like you underpaid.
Words from our community
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe and start rebuilding your life one essay at a time.
A quick safety note
This publication is educational and reflective — not medical or mental health treatment.
If you’re in immediate danger or thinking about self-harm, contact local emergency services. In the U.S., you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).