by Kristin Bird
I don’t know what kind of sorrow you’re carrying right now.
Maybe it’s sharp and fresh, and you still catch your breath when you remember what’s missing. Maybe it’s quieter now—woven into your day like a thread you’ve learned not to pull, lest the whole thing unravel. Maybe it’s something no one else even knows you’re grieving.
Wherever you are, I’d like to offer you a companion. Not one who fixes it (because that’s not how this works), but one who stays.
Mary is known by a lot of titles—Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Mother of God. But the one that has meant the most to me in the seasons of my own sorrow is this one: Our Lady of Sorrows.
Because she gets it.
She knows what it’s like to ache for someone you love. She’s held a suffering child in her arms. She’s waited in uncertainty. She’s stood by while people she loved were misunderstood, mistreated, crucified—literally. She has stood in the space between hope and heartbreak—and not run from it.
She has stayed.
That’s what she does best, I think. She stays.
Photo by Isaac Withers on Unsplash
When we feel abandoned by God, when the ache is too deep for words, when everyone else seems uncomfortable with our grief…she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t rush to make it better. She doesn’t explain it away. She just stays.
I didn’t always get that. For a long time, Mary felt like a lovely idea—too serene, too clean, too perfect to really understand what I was going through. Then I saw her.
In a side chapel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—down a shadowy hallway past the chaos of tour groups and incense—there’s a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows. She’s tucked just outside the place where Jesus’ body was laid in the tomb. And the look on her face stopped me cold.
She wasn’t glowing or peaceful or radiant.
She looked wrecked.
Not dramatic, not theatrical. Just completely, quietly devastated. The way someone looks when they’ve run out of tears but still can’t breathe. And I remember standing there, staring at her, thinking: Oh. You know. You’ve been here too.
That moment changed something for me. I stopped needing her to have answers. I just needed her to stay.
And she did.
So how do we let her stay with us? Sometimes, it’s as simple as whispering her name. “Mary, be with me.” That’s it.
Other times, I light a candle next to an image of Our Lady of Sorrows and let the silence stretch out between us. No need to fill it. She’s good with silence.
I’ve prayed the Seven Sorrows Rosary—not because I expect it to magically take away the pain, but because naming her sorrows helps me feel less alone in mine. Her heartbreak doesn’t cancel out mine. It joins it.
And on the days when I can’t even do that, I just picture her face from that chapel in Jerusalem and think, Stay with me like you stayed with Him.
You don’t have to have perfect words. You don’t have to be especially holy. You don’t have to do any of it right. Just show up in the sorrow and let her meet you there.
She won’t fix it.
But she will stay.
Kristin Bird is a Catholic evangelist, speaker, and executive director of Burning Hearts Disciples. She believes authentic faith grows best through honest conversation, shared stories, and the holy, ordinary work of staying. She tries to practice what she preaches in her own messy, grace-filled family life in Wisconsin. Follow her on Facebook or Instagram.