Thank you for these remembrances of your loved ones. I subscribe to your substack not only for your insightful analysis, but especially for the moral center in your worldview.
Your life contains so, so much loss. As someone who also experienced much loss early in his own life (dad at 9, mom at 15, all grandparents by 23), I’d gently suggest that ‘putting one foot in front of the other’, isn’t dumb, but wise and yes, hopeful. To paraphrase an incredibly helpful piece of writing on grief and loss, loss can transform us to become more compassionate people and to discover new reservoirs of strength. And when you channel that compassion and strength to help those around you, you not only make their lives better but honor your lost loved ones in doing so. It’s odd to say that I’m a better person for all of my loss (no matter how much I miss them); it’s also undeniably true.
I do my best to apply those lessons to navigate the ‘everything everywhere all at once’ political era we’re trapped in. There’s just too much good being shredded in real time to keep up or fully cope. So I do what I can, revisiting Rebecca Solnit’s counsel: ‘The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.’ So I help wherever I can and hold faith that our rebuilding will create something better and more decent.
Your writing is also a light shining up and pointing the way out for the rest of us. Onward.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I'm sorry about all the loss you've endured. I'm proud of you for making it through all of it beaten down but still alive and fighting. Your resilience is one of the most valuable qualities you can offer your children and the world. This guy, for one, is grateful for that.
🫂🫂🫂🫂 you've experienced more loss than most. My heart goes out to you. Your children are fortunate to have you as their father. I'm glad you and Eevie found each other.
Wow. That’s a tremendous amount of loss, grief, and guilt you’ve been carrying. I’m really sorry you’ve had to carry so much.
I’m really glad you’re in a place now that feels safe enough to process some of this. It sounds like so much of your strength and resilience comes from wanting to create something different for your kids.
Grief is something you process at your own speed. I was stuck and unable to do this for over 30 years. I got involved in Al-Anon recovery and learned about acceptance. With time, I processed the grief and I can think positively on the past, regardless of how badly it ended. I've had a lot of death in my life also - brother, sister, father while I was very young - the inability to process it left me stuck for many years with a negative attitude. There are many paths to recovery. I hope you find one as soon as you can.
Much love to you man. You did some hard work to get where you are today. I’m learning to express myself and once it’s out it helps. Writing has become my path as well as gardening.
This stranger's arms around you. It was brave AF to write what you have, but braver to get up and keep going. I'm struggling after just having lost my closest and dearest girlfriend of 30 years, the only other person who isn't blood, who I loved as much as I love my husband. Losing the people who lit our internal lights seems unsurvivable. I know they'd insist that we do, though. But yeah, it sucks. Linking arms with you and the awesome people who read your work and who participate.
This helped me. I hope it will do the same for you 💔💔💔
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.”
All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.
Grief is just love with no place to go” ~ Jamie Anderson
Grief is not a road we walk, or a journey we take. It is not a process that can be defined by stages we are told we must feel – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It is not a textbook diagram, or a framework we must comply to.
It isn’t a task we must complete.
We don’t push through it, we don’t move into it and out of it, we don’t follow a linear progression until we reach the other side of it.
There are no rules to grief.
We can only succumb to it, surrender to it, let our hearts break open for it.
It is an ebb and flow, a dance of pain and love, a coming together only to once again fall apart.
It is a feeling of overcoming, only to awake every single morning in the arms of grief once more.
Grief is an alteration of who we once were, to who we now become.
It is an adjustment of ourselves, an adaptation to our souls.
We don’t work through our grief and return to who we once were.
There can never be a return to the people we once were.
We are broken by grief; shattered.
We can never look the same, mend the same, be the same.
We lose fragments of ourselves, leave behind the pieces that cut too deeply, the pieces we long to forget, need to forget.
Whatever we now become, we put together from the brokenness we scrounge from what little we have left.
Grief changes us.
Grief breaks us.
Grief is love with no place to go.
And so in our grief, the only thing to do is to give our love a place to go.
Love with word, love with deed, love with action.
Love one another so fiercely that our love is spent, that are chests are no longer hollow, that the lump in our throats hurts a little less.
Love for those who hurt the most, who have lost the most, and then love them even harder.
Because the truth about grief is that it never leaves.
Grief lasts as long as love lasts – forever.
Somehow, may love become light in the darkness of our grief.
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness,” she wrote. “It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
Believe it or not, in time, you will find a place for that love to go.
But for now, just remember grief has only 2 rules:
#1. THERE ARE NO RULES
#2. THERE ARE NO RULES!
So, if one day in the near future you forget where you're driving or some random thing; that's normal.
You will cry.
You will smile.
You will laugh and you will cry again.
You will do whatever happens at that moment and wonder if "it's right"
It won't matter. Grief has no rules.
Let it happen just like it does. You're gonna feel like you're going crazy but, you're not. It's just the way it is.
I promise one day you will feel a little less pain and on another you'll feel more. It ebbs and flows.
I know in my heart of hearts that you will find a place for your love to go. ♥️♥️♥️
Thank you for your honesty, and your courage in sharing such painful and personal parts of your life. I think anyone with either a heart or a brain feels lost most of the time these days. My kids are now young adults, but I see how much they're struggling, and how betrayed they feel for what they're inheriting. It's impossible not to feel guilty for the world we're leaving them.
But the choice is either to fight, or to surrender. If we can give our children nothing else, we can still show them how to not quietly give in to the corrupt nihilism being pedaled by the people stealing from all of us.
That was terribly brave of you, and powerful. I had a second grade classmate pass from accidental hanging, and then no intimate death until my early fifties, losing grandparents, and then parents. I’m so sorry for what you’ve endured.
Your stack is one of my faves. I served in MI, and respect the edge, the veracity and the insights you bring. Grateful for you. May peace and joy accompany you as you soldier on. Thanks.
Wow...in the same way that your writing talent is able to make highly complex events and processes understandable to your readers, your gift with words captures the deeply personal, yet globally human experience, of loss. It was a deeply moving piece, thank you.
Thank you for these remembrances of your loved ones. I subscribe to your substack not only for your insightful analysis, but especially for the moral center in your worldview.
Your life contains so, so much loss. As someone who also experienced much loss early in his own life (dad at 9, mom at 15, all grandparents by 23), I’d gently suggest that ‘putting one foot in front of the other’, isn’t dumb, but wise and yes, hopeful. To paraphrase an incredibly helpful piece of writing on grief and loss, loss can transform us to become more compassionate people and to discover new reservoirs of strength. And when you channel that compassion and strength to help those around you, you not only make their lives better but honor your lost loved ones in doing so. It’s odd to say that I’m a better person for all of my loss (no matter how much I miss them); it’s also undeniably true.
I do my best to apply those lessons to navigate the ‘everything everywhere all at once’ political era we’re trapped in. There’s just too much good being shredded in real time to keep up or fully cope. So I do what I can, revisiting Rebecca Solnit’s counsel: ‘The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.’ So I help wherever I can and hold faith that our rebuilding will create something better and more decent.
Your writing is also a light shining up and pointing the way out for the rest of us. Onward.
Thank you Dane. Truly, from the bottom of my heart.
Beautiful response. Thank You 💖
What great words. Thanks, Dane
Thanks for sharing these very personal reflections. It’s a very scary time to think of our children inheriting this world.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I'm sorry about all the loss you've endured. I'm proud of you for making it through all of it beaten down but still alive and fighting. Your resilience is one of the most valuable qualities you can offer your children and the world. This guy, for one, is grateful for that.
Thank you Will. Much love man
🫂🫂🫂🫂 you've experienced more loss than most. My heart goes out to you. Your children are fortunate to have you as their father. I'm glad you and Eevie found each other.
So am I. She’s my everything
Thank You 💖
I feel you, brother. Take care of yourself. 🫂
You are the strongest person I know. I love you.
Wow. That’s a tremendous amount of loss, grief, and guilt you’ve been carrying. I’m really sorry you’ve had to carry so much.
I’m really glad you’re in a place now that feels safe enough to process some of this. It sounds like so much of your strength and resilience comes from wanting to create something different for your kids.
I really do. The world they are inheriting is a damn shame and we have to fix that.
You are a big part of what is going well. Take good care of yourself
Grief is something you process at your own speed. I was stuck and unable to do this for over 30 years. I got involved in Al-Anon recovery and learned about acceptance. With time, I processed the grief and I can think positively on the past, regardless of how badly it ended. I've had a lot of death in my life also - brother, sister, father while I was very young - the inability to process it left me stuck for many years with a negative attitude. There are many paths to recovery. I hope you find one as soon as you can.
Much love to you man. You did some hard work to get where you are today. I’m learning to express myself and once it’s out it helps. Writing has become my path as well as gardening.
This stranger's arms around you. It was brave AF to write what you have, but braver to get up and keep going. I'm struggling after just having lost my closest and dearest girlfriend of 30 years, the only other person who isn't blood, who I loved as much as I love my husband. Losing the people who lit our internal lights seems unsurvivable. I know they'd insist that we do, though. But yeah, it sucks. Linking arms with you and the awesome people who read your work and who participate.
This helped me. I hope it will do the same for you 💔💔💔
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.”
All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.
Grief is just love with no place to go” ~ Jamie Anderson
Grief is not a road we walk, or a journey we take. It is not a process that can be defined by stages we are told we must feel – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It is not a textbook diagram, or a framework we must comply to.
It isn’t a task we must complete.
We don’t push through it, we don’t move into it and out of it, we don’t follow a linear progression until we reach the other side of it.
There are no rules to grief.
We can only succumb to it, surrender to it, let our hearts break open for it.
It is an ebb and flow, a dance of pain and love, a coming together only to once again fall apart.
It is a feeling of overcoming, only to awake every single morning in the arms of grief once more.
Grief is an alteration of who we once were, to who we now become.
It is an adjustment of ourselves, an adaptation to our souls.
We don’t work through our grief and return to who we once were.
There can never be a return to the people we once were.
We are broken by grief; shattered.
We can never look the same, mend the same, be the same.
We lose fragments of ourselves, leave behind the pieces that cut too deeply, the pieces we long to forget, need to forget.
Whatever we now become, we put together from the brokenness we scrounge from what little we have left.
Grief changes us.
Grief breaks us.
Grief is love with no place to go.
And so in our grief, the only thing to do is to give our love a place to go.
Love with word, love with deed, love with action.
Love one another so fiercely that our love is spent, that are chests are no longer hollow, that the lump in our throats hurts a little less.
Love for those who hurt the most, who have lost the most, and then love them even harder.
Because the truth about grief is that it never leaves.
Grief lasts as long as love lasts – forever.
Somehow, may love become light in the darkness of our grief.
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness,” she wrote. “It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
Believe it or not, in time, you will find a place for that love to go.
But for now, just remember grief has only 2 rules:
#1. THERE ARE NO RULES
#2. THERE ARE NO RULES!
So, if one day in the near future you forget where you're driving or some random thing; that's normal.
You will cry.
You will smile.
You will laugh and you will cry again.
You will do whatever happens at that moment and wonder if "it's right"
It won't matter. Grief has no rules.
Let it happen just like it does. You're gonna feel like you're going crazy but, you're not. It's just the way it is.
I promise one day you will feel a little less pain and on another you'll feel more. It ebbs and flows.
I know in my heart of hearts that you will find a place for your love to go. ♥️♥️♥️
For now, just follow the rules.
Thank you for your honesty, and your courage in sharing such painful and personal parts of your life. I think anyone with either a heart or a brain feels lost most of the time these days. My kids are now young adults, but I see how much they're struggling, and how betrayed they feel for what they're inheriting. It's impossible not to feel guilty for the world we're leaving them.
But the choice is either to fight, or to surrender. If we can give our children nothing else, we can still show them how to not quietly give in to the corrupt nihilism being pedaled by the people stealing from all of us.
Peace and courage.
Agreed. Peace and courage to you as well. I think we need to say this more often. It’s powerful.
That was terribly brave of you, and powerful. I had a second grade classmate pass from accidental hanging, and then no intimate death until my early fifties, losing grandparents, and then parents. I’m so sorry for what you’ve endured.
Your stack is one of my faves. I served in MI, and respect the edge, the veracity and the insights you bring. Grateful for you. May peace and joy accompany you as you soldier on. Thanks.
Thank you Siegfried, respect brother.
Your writing really moved me. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much Donna.
Thank you for trusting your readers and baring your soul. You are so much more than you realize, to this reader, anyway. Be well.
Much love Sue.
Wow...in the same way that your writing talent is able to make highly complex events and processes understandable to your readers, your gift with words captures the deeply personal, yet globally human experience, of loss. It was a deeply moving piece, thank you.