🌈 Grief and Rainbows: Where Do They Go When the Storm Stays?

donna conley
Jun 15
4 min read

Grief, Divine Light, and the Storm We Never Asked For

Grief and rainbows. This image shows divine light and a rainbow under dark skies. An image of my brother and father, reunited.

Grief is my current storm.

There’s no sugarcoating it—just clouds that linger, emotions that crash like thunder, and moments so quiet they feel deafening.

It has rained so much since my dad took his last breath, and in this space of heartbreak, one question keeps echoing in my soul:

Where do rainbows go?

Do they vanish?

Or do they retreat to some holy space we can’t quite see from here—waiting for the light to break just right again?

The Connection Between Grief and Rainbows

Science says a rainbow is created when sunlight meets moisture.

The world tells us that rainbows come after the storm.

But I think it’s more than that.

Grief and rainbows seem like opposites—one full of ache, the other full of light. But maybe they’re connected more deeply than we think.

A rainbow is a divine collaboration—light and water, joy and sorrow, warmth and tears. A covenant between the sky and our aching hearts. They’re a sign of peace, a promise of hope, a burst of beauty in the aftermath of chaos. A reminder that something beautiful can rise after the breaking.

But in grief, the storm doesn’t always end neatly. It lingers. It loops. It breaks you open over and over again.

And in that breaking, you wonder:

Where do rainbows go amid the storm?

Maybe grief itself is the moisture that allows divine light to bend through us.

What Rainbows Remind Us of When in the Season of Grief

Grief doesn’t erase beauty. It just changes the way we see it.

In the early days of grief, everything feels like too much—and not enough all at once.

Smiles feel wrong. Time becomes unreal. Even the sunrise, which once felt like a promise, now feels like an obligation to keep going when your soul wants to stop.

But then…In the middle of sorrow, a rainbow might not appear in the sky—but it shows up in subtler ways:

A song that brings a memory rushing back
A phrase your loved one used to say
A moment of stillness when you feel their presence again

And just like that, it’s as if a rainbow passed through the room—unseen, but deeply felt. A whisper of presence. A trace of color in the gray.

Maybe that’s where they go.

Not up into the clouds, but into the moments that bring them back to us.

Into the places where love still lives.

These are soul-rainbows. Fleeting, tender, sacred. Reminders that even in our darkest moments, love still finds a way to shine through.

Grief and rainbows both live in that in-between place—the space where pain and beauty meet. The space where we long for what was, but must carry what is.

Where Do Rainbows Go When the Storm Doesn’t End?

Just like a rainbow, that echo of grief bends and refracts. It shows up in unexpected ways that feel like more than a coincidence.

Grief is loud while rainbows don’t scream for attention.

Rainbows don’t break through the clouds with force,

unlike the pain of grief that tears through your heart.

Rainbows appear in stillness. In reflection. In just the right angle of light.

So maybe my grief isn’t blocking the rainbow.

Maybe it is the rainbow.

A sign that love is bending through me, even in this storm.

Because rainbows don’t leave, they move inward.

Into the shape of your tears.

Into the quiet prayers you whisper at night.

Into the sacred ache that reminds you how deeply you loved.

Maybe grief and rainbows share a more profound truth:

That love never disappears. It just changes form.

That even in sorrow, light bends through us.

And that every time we feel something beautiful again, it’s not despite the grief—but because of it.

Grief and Rainbows Are Both Part of the Journey

Grief is not the absence of love.

It’s the echo of it.

And rainbows? They are love’s reply.

A soft reminder from above that something beautiful still exists, even when everything feels broken.

Maybe that’s the real rainbow.

Not something you see with your eyes, but something you feel with your soul.

A knowing that love never disappears.

That Spirit never leaves.

That your person is woven into the light you carry forward.

So, Where Do Rainbows Go?

They go into the silence where we remember.

They go into our prayers, our pain, our poems.

They go into the arms of God, and maybe—if we’re lucky—into the corners of our hearts where love can still live alongside hope, even when the storm doesn’t seem to have an end.

And someday, maybe not today,

I’ll look up and see color again.

And I’ll know:

The rainbow never left.

It just became part of me.

Grief and rainbows may seem like unlikely companions.

But both are sacred.

Both are real.

And both can exist at the same time.

Even now. Even here.

Even in me.

~ Dad,