On Grief and Letting Go
Little things I've learned along the way
I’ve navigated grief many times in my life and each time I learn something new.
The first time I experienced grief I was 9 years old. I’d met a cute boy at a campground (by met, I mean I rode my bike past his trailer about 8 times hoping he’d notice me. He didn’t). When I got home I sat on my windowsill and sang to the stars crying. I was lamenting a love that could have been, yearning for a romance that had never started and therefore ended.
Grief, I somehow knew then, was a feeling I never wanted to have again, and one I knew I’d have to stomach for the rest of my life.
When my aunt died from cancer I saw my mother grieve. When my grandfather passed I watched my father mourn. Neither of them told me about their grief, but I witnessed them express a rush of sorrow, and swallow it.
My mother lit candles for her sister every year—a Jewish tradition. We never talked about her. I don’t think that was tradition. I do believe both my parents weren’t quite sure how to talk to my brother or me about grief. Maybe they didn’t quite know how to grieve. I’m not sure.
What I do know is that when my high school sweetheart died in my early 20s, I drowned in grief. Whatever sorrow I felt, I felt with shame. Whatever anger I felt, I bottled up and used against myself, a weapon of sorts. Whatever love I felt for him turned into self-deprecating rage: I could not stomach loving someone who never knew I had loved them.
Grief visited me many times again over the years.
Always taking new shapes and representing different losses; loss of self, loss of future plans, loss of friends, loss of versions of me I thought I was or wanted to be, loss of my marriage, loss of career, loss of meaning, loss of time, loss of feeling like I had something to lose.
Loss, I’ve learned, is the nature of life. I lose today with every ticking second. Yesterday is constantly lost, as is tomorrow. I’m dying, and you are too.
We are losing everything always.
That, I believe, is what grief does best: she arrives in times that remind us of our impermanence to shake us and scream, “Wake up, this life is fleeting and before you know it, you’ll be gone and so will everything you’ve ever loved.”
Grief is how we remember not to waste what’s in our hands.
Grief is the cruelest package carrying the kindest gift, if we’re willing to open it. This is the challenge and imperative demand of grief: unpack your loss until you find the love.
You might find this cliché, and that’s ok. What’s cliché if not our most human desire that we’re afraid to admit? That all we want is to love and be loved in return? And what is grief if not a direct reflection of the extent of our love?
What is grief if not a direct reflection of the extent of our love?
This, I now know, is what life is about.
No—I’m sorry. I take that back. I know nothing, but that is what I know. That every moment of uncertainty is either a terrifying abyss or garden to grow.
That every opportunity to love holds the possibility of loss.
That grief, and the degree to which I mourn, is only a sign of my capacity to care, and a reminder that this heart has stayed open.
May your hearts stay open, may you feel grief, and may you walk into the unknown until it’s gone.
XX
-RACH
Rachel Havekost is the bestselling author of “Where the River Flows,” “Write to Heal,” and “The Inner Child Journal.” Rachel has single-handedly built an online social media presence with a combined 300k+ individuals devoted to de-stigmatizing mental health. She uses her writing and social platforms to share her wisdom and experience from 19 years of therapy for her eating disorder recovery, suicidal depression, anxiety, trauma, and divorce.
To read the full story of my eating disorder and experience with depression and suicide, read my memoir “Where the River Flows.”
For more written work, guided journals, and education, head to www.rachelhavekost.com