Grief is love with nowhere to go

Working through grief is difficult. No day is the same as the one before.

We are thrust, without warning, into an emotional state we were never prepared for. We rarely talk about grief — about the impact of losing someone we love.

We grow up believing there is an order to loss. Grandparents first, then parents, and eventually, after a lifetime of our own, we die.

But what happens when that isn’t the order? When we are forced to grieve people we love at different stages of our lives?

Chaos. Heartbreak. Pain too heavy to bear.

The mind fractures. The body falls apart. Life as we know it changes forever. Unanswerable questions swirl like leaves in the wind — no direction, no place to land.

It’s strange that something guaranteed in life is so rarely spoken about. Are we supposed to fear death?

I am not afraid of death.
I am afraid of the grief my death will leave behind.

For the past few years I have lived guarded. Withdrawn. Distant. My daughter receives my love, but I also prepare her for the day I am gone. We joke that I’ll live to eighty, but I know too well that none of us choose our final day.

Over the past seven years my family has been stripped bare.

In 2018 I was newly married, with a six-year-old and another baby on the way. Four pets with personalities larger than life. And an honorary member of the family — nineteen, disabled, but with a laugh that filled our home with love.

Today my daughter and I visit the dirt that covers them.

The smell of the soil stays on my hands long after we leave.

Grief consumed me. I wore it like a choker around my neck. Life continued, but the words of how I felt stayed trapped in my throat, as if speaking the truth might destroy me.

Living through it taught me something about myself — the strength I had to stand tall through each gut-wrenching loss. Not only in my family, but among my friends too. Friends I leaned on for strength when I grew weak were suddenly gone as well.

The last phone call came in August 2024.

The man I had started dating — the one who had given me hope that happiness was still possible — had suffered a heart attack.

In a moment, the pain I had held down for years could no longer stay contained.

My mind fractured.
My heart shattered.
My body collapsed.

I knew how to move through the day on autopilot. Beyond that, I had nothing left to give.
I did the bare minimum I could as a single parent.
I was present in form, but not in spirit.

I drifted through the days like an empty vessel I once filled completely.

Numb.

Rock bottom.

Time has been my greatest healer. It allowed the emotions to surface, the hurt to be felt, the lessons to emerge.

The most powerful lesson I learnt was this:

Pain after loss is an extension of love.
It is love with nowhere to go.

Love once given, now left unanswered.

That is what breaks the heart.

After loss I had to relearn life. Relearn who I was. Or perhaps more truthfully — learn the new version of me emerging.

There is no return after grief. It leaves a permanent scar on the heart, and mine looked completely different.

The version of me that emerged began to see love everywhere. That we can give it freely to the world around us and feel it returned.

There is love in the way birds sing at sunrise.
There is love in the smell of freshly brewed coffee.
There is love in watching the world go by and noticing the beauty within it.

Wherever we look, there is hope.
Always a reason to keep living.

Pain does not last forever. Storms do not stay. Grief will always be transformed.

And if love is our baseline, it is where we will always return.