Some difficult things are never defeated.

They do not arrive, teach a lesson and politely leave once the lesson has been learned. They remain. They follow people into new homes, new relationships and new versions of themselves. They appear in the quiet after a long day and in the middle of moments that are supposed to feel joyful. They may change shape, but they do not always disappear.

Perhaps getting through the difficult things has never meant getting rid of them. Sometimes it means learning how to carry what happened without allowing it to take everything that still remains.

Saniya Rivers is learning the difference.

Her second season in the WNBA has asked her to begin again in ways she did not expect. During her rookie year, she arrived with something to prove and the conviction that she could take somebody’s spot. She established herself as a versatile defender capable of guarding some of the league’s best players. She earned recognition, found a role and believed much of what she built would naturally carry into the next season.

Instead, year two introduced uncertainty.

“Today, maybe I’ll play 10 minutes. Today, maybe I’ll play 30 minutes,” she said. “Today, I can take this shot. Next day, if I take a shot, maybe I come out.”

The uncertainty has challenged her confidence. It has required her to prepare without knowing exactly how she will be used and to remain present when the flow of a game does not offer the opportunity she expected.

“I think my confidence kind of wavers,” she admitted.

Still, she has decided that uncertainty will not determine what she gives.

“If I’m going to be on the bench, I’m going to cheer through it all,” she stated. “And when I’m out there, I’m just going to do the best that I can with my minutes.”

Basketball has given Saniya another chance to practice something life has already required of her: accepting what cannot be controlled without surrendering everything that can. A season can change. A role can change. A person can decide to reset.

But some changes cannot be undone.

When Saniya talks about her mother, Demetria, she does not begin with the day she lost her. She begins with her heart.

“My mom had the biggest heart ever.”

Saniya recognizes that heart in herself now. She sees it in the moments when she passes someone on the side of the road and cannot continue without offering something. If she does not have cash, she might give away her food or hand over the water she has with her.

It is not a calculated act of kindness. It is built in her.

“That’s all my mom right there,” she laughed. “The heart.”

More than anything, Saniya missed having her mother on the other end of the phone when life felt overwhelming.

“I think the most about my mom in the times of adversity, because usually when I’m going through something, I pick up the phone and I call my mom.”

There are losses the mind understands before the body does. Her mind knows the phone will not be answered. Her body still reaches for it. Her mind knows a familiar seat will be empty and her eyes still search the crowd.

“Sometimes even in games when I’m not doing the best, I’ll still look in the crowd looking for her,” Saniya recalled, “because that’s what I would do when she was here.”

There is hope that refuses to believe love becomes meaningless when life ends. The conversation has changed. The relationship has changed. But Saniya has not stopped being her daughter.

She does not pretend that grief has been easy. She does not soften it into something more digestible for other people to hear.

“Grief is just something I want no one to experience ever; I don’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

Saniya had experienced loss before. She had lost grandparents and aunts, but the death of her mother reached somewhere different.

“Nothing is equivalent to losing your mom, who carried you in her womb for nine months and raised you for 22 years.”

Nothing could have prepared her for it. There is no perfect response to a loss that large. There is no singular way a person is supposed to behave while their world rearranges itself.

“You can’t run from grief. You can’t prevent it. But you can find ways to balance it, ways to juggle.”

For a while, running was easier than sitting still. When something hurt, Saniya found somewhere else to place her attention. She could go out with friends. She could get another tattoo. She called those distractions temporary band-aids that covered what hurt. But eventually, Saniya began asking herself why she felt the need to run.

On the days when every part of her wanted to get up and find something else to do, another voice told her to remain. She told herself, “Feel this, so it’s not going to feel as strong the rest of your life.”

Healing, then, is not the act of becoming untouched. It is allowing the wound to become a scar instead of repeatedly covering it before it can close.

“The pain never goes away; it gets easier.”

Calling grief easy would diminish the love beneath it. Calling it easier simply means the person carrying it has learned how to breathe with the weight. And Saniya has not learned to carry that weight alone.

Her older sister “Nanna” has long been one of the people who helps her understand life differently. Before her mother died, Nanna had already worked with Saniya as an energy leadership coach, helping her shift her perspective on basketball, energy and the way she moved through the world.

When Saniya’s mother died, Nanna was the first-person Saniya called. Nanna offered her sister a sentence that changed the shape of the loss.

“Your mom isn’t gone,” Nanna told her. “Your mom’s still protecting you. She’s just protecting you in a different light.”

Saniya held onto that.

“She’s really not gone,” Rivers continued. “She’s still here.”

Her mother had done everything she could physically do for her during her life. Now, Saniya believes she guides her spiritually.

Saniya’s grief is present, but it is not the only thing present.

There is also joy. There is the joy of a woman who has found power in being unapologetically herself.

“I’m so misunderstood, but I honestly see it as a superpower.”

There is something joyful about no longer exhausting yourself, trying to be understood by everyone. It leaves more energy for the people who matter. More space for faith. More room for the things that make life feel lighter.

And when no other person feels available, she turns to God.

“If no one’s there in that present moment, He’s always listening,” she says. “Twenty-four hours a day, He’s on call.”

Faith has not prevented grief.

It has given Saniya somewhere to place the questions grief cannot answer. Getting through the difficult things is often presented as an individual triumph. The person suffers, overcomes, and emerges stronger, as though pain exists only to produce a better ending. Saniya has chosen joy because pain does not deserve to be the only part of life that survives.

Maybe that is what healing has been all along.

Not becoming the person she was before life broke her heart, but rather, becoming someone who discovers her heart can break and remain open. Because getting through the tough things was never about leaving the pain behind. It was about refusing to leave herself behind with it.

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