Carry

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What Grief Gave Me That I Never Asked For

There are things I would give anything to change. Moments I would go back to. Conversations I wish I could still have.

But grief gave me things too. Things I never asked for, and would never have chosen to learn this way.

It changed my relationship with fear.

Fear of failing, especially. Once you've experienced something that breaks your heart, the possibility of something not working out doesn't seem quite so frightening anymore.

You start to think: So what?

Try it.

Leave.

Begin again.

Say yes.

Say no.

What's the worst that can happen?

Grief also stripped away a lot of my need to be liked.

I've never been particularly interested in being popular or following a pre approved traditional life path. But if there were any remaining threads of people pleasing left, grief cut them away.

I realised I don't have the energy to build my life around other people's approval.

You are welcome not to like me.

I can live with that.

It also changed the way I think about relationships.

I stopped feeling quite so responsible for keeping every friendship alive. Grief is all-consuming, and there are times when you simply don't have the capacity to keep reaching out, organising, remembering and holding everything together.

You need to let yourself fall apart.

And when I did, it became very clear which relationships had a foundation of genuine mutual connection and which ones relied heavily on me doing the emotional work.

That was painful in its own way, but clarifying.

Grief also changed the way I think about time.

Losing someone makes the future feel less guaranteed.

Not necessarily in a frightening way. Just in a more brutally honest one.

I still make plans. I still have ambitions. I still care about building things and becoming better at what I do.

But I'm less interested in sacrificing the present entirely for some imagined future version of my life.

And, strangely, grief also taught me that not every moment needs to be used.

This took a while. I struggle with it.

WHen I first lost my Dad, my nervous system went into overdrive.

Go. Do more. Make the most of every day. Life is short.

But eventually I realised this is just another form of pressure and distraction.

Life being short doesn't mean every day needs to be productive.

Sometimes you need to stop.

Sometimes you need to sleep.

Sometimes you need to sit on the sofa and stare out of the window.

Sometimes you need a season where nothing much happens.

That is living too.

I think grief gave me a slightly different relationship with who I am supposed to become.

I'm less interested in some perfect future version of myself.

I'm more interested in being here.

In paying attention.

In saying what I mean.

In going where I want to go.

In loving people while they're here.

In allowing life to change me without constantly trying to control what I'll become.

None of this makes losing my Dad worth it.

I don't believe everything happens for a reason.

Some things are simply heartbreaking.

But I do believe we get to decide what we carry forward.

And these are some of the things I chose to carry.