Carrying Love Forward

I'm going to say something that might sound strange coming from a woman who writes about grief for a living: I can't stand the phrase "time heals."

People mean well when they say it. I know they do. But if you've lost someone who mattered, you already know better. Time doesn't heal. Time just keeps moving, whether you're ready or not, and it pulls you along. What time actually does is slowly teach you how to carry something you never agreed to carry in the first place.

And here's what nobody warns you about in the beginning. Grief doesn't show up the way you expect it to. You brace yourself for the big days, the birthdays and the anniversaries and the holidays, and you white-knuckle your way through them. Then you come undone in the fruit and vegetable aisle because their favorite fruit is in season and sitting right there, staring at you. You lose it at a green light because the wrong song came on the radio. Grief definitely doesn't keep a calendar. It shows up whenever it wants, taps you on the shoulder, and says, remember.

So I'm not going to pretend healing is a tidy little staircase where every step is easier than the one before. It isn't. It comes in waves, and some of those waves will knock you flat years after everyone else has moved on.

But I'll tell you what I've also found to be true, even on the hardest days. Somewhere underneath all of that ache, there can be a beginning. And I don't mean the shiny kind we love to announce, like a new diet that starts Monday, where we're absolutely convinced this is the time everything finally turns around. 

No, this beginning is a whole lot braver than that, and it’s the kind of new beginning that asks a really hard question: how do I keep loving this person in a world where I can't reach them anymore? 

That question is brutal. It's also, I think, where walking with grief actually starts.

Grief Is Not the End of Love

Here's something I had to learn the hard way. When someone you love dies, the relationship doesn't end. It changes shape, and much of the daily struggle is losing the way you used to express your love to your person.  That's the part that almost undid me. All that love, still showing up every single day, with no one to hand it to.

In your mind, you still live in your daily routine. You still catch yourself thinking, oh, they would have loved this. You still walk into a room half-expecting them to be in it, and then the absence hits you all over again like it's the first day.

That's not you being stuck. That's your love, still alive and looking for somewhere to land.

For some people, that love turns into prayer. For some, it turns into a cause, or a kindness, or just the stubborn decision to get up one more morning. There's no gold star for doing it the "right" way. The only thing that matters is this: you do not have to stop loving them in order to walk with grief.

Healing (really…no such thing in my experience) was never about forgetting. It's about learning to hold the love and the pain in the same two hands.

Can We Please Retire "Everything Happens for a Reason"

I need to be honest about this one too.

When people talk about finding meaning after a loss, it can start to sound like they're handing you a reason your person died, all wrapped up with a bow. And I'm just going to say it. "Everything happens for a reason" is not comforting when your heart is in pieces on the floor. Some things don't have a reason. And…maybe we do come into this life with soul contracts but let’s be real.  Even if we did, we don’t remember!  And some losses will never, ever be okay. And no amount of spiritual tidying will make them okay.

So that is not what I mean when I talk about meaning.

Meaning doesn't close the wound. It's the way you slowly learn to tend to it.

And it tends to start small. Lighting a candle on a day you know is going to be hard. Saying their name out loud at dinner instead of letting the silence swallow it. A morning ritual. Writing down a memory before it slips away from you. Helping someone else who's hurting. Letting yourself cry in the car instead of calling yourself weak for it.

None of that is small, by the way. That is the whole thing. We rebuild a life through tiny, ordinary acts of love.

And little by little, meaning stops being about explaining the loss and starts being about honoring the life, continuing to walk with your shared love, and continuing your relationship with the person who is still woven all through your heart.

You're Allowed to Become Someone New

Loss changes you. It changed me. Let's not pretend otherwise.

It changes how you see time, what you have patience for, who you let close, what you believe, even how you protect your own energy. And that can mess with your head, because you look in the mirror and don't fully recognize the person looking back. You miss who you used to be before all of this. Some days you'd give anything to have the old me back.

Or would I?

I’ve sat with that question longer than you'd think. Because truth be told, I'm not so sure I'd take her back.

Don't misunderstand me, I miss parts of her. The old me thought she had all the time in the world, that "someday" was a promise instead of a gamble. She took on way too much, trying to prove to herself how much she mattered; looking back, she didn’t cherish moments enough.

But she didn't know what I know now, either.

She didn't understand how deep love actually runs, the kind that doesn't end when someone leaves the room for good. She didn't know how to guard her peace or how to walk away from the kind of energy that would never treat it gently. And she hadn't learned to truly live, to soak up an ordinary Tuesday, to say the thing, to hug a few seconds longer, because she still believed she'd always get one more chance.

I'd undo the loss in a heartbeat if life worked that way. It doesn't. So here's where I've landed. Going back to being her, back to not knowing what I now know? I'm not sure I'd want that. The woman in the mirror carries scars the old me never had, and she also sees more clearly than the old me ever could.

So no. I don't think I want her back. I think I want to keep becoming whoever this is teaching me to be.

That's the strange, backward gift of it. Grief doesn't only take. Walk with it long enough, and it starts handing back a few things.

It shows you who can sit in the dark with you without flinching. And it shows you a strength you would have given anything not to need... and yet, there it is.

Turns out softness and steel can live in the very same heart.

Joy Is Not a Betrayal

This might be the tenderest thing I know about walking with grief. The joy comes back. It really does. Yet, it hits different.

And the first time you notice it, it feels almost wrong. It sneaks up on you. A real belly laugh. A morning where you feel something close to peace. A whole hour where the weight isn't sitting on your chest and beating through every thought. And right behind it, like clockwork, comes the guilt.

How dare I laugh. How can I enjoy this when they don't get to. What kind of person feels good when surrounded by the impact of death?

I have asked myself every single one of those questions. So let me say this as clearly as I know how. Joy is not a betrayal. Letting yourself feel good again doesn't mean you've stopped missing them, nor that you've moved on and left them behind. It means your heart is big enough to hold the sorrow and the light at the same time.  That was a profound understanding for me.

The people we love would never ask us to suffer forever just to prove we loved them. If love is truly love, how then can it destroy?  That question helped me a lot.

Instead, they become part of us. Their laugh, their sayings, the way they loved people... it keeps living through the way we live. Letting the joy back in is one way we carry their light with us.

You can miss someone with everything you have and still let life be beautiful again. Both. At the same time. I promise.

One Step at a Time

Moving forward has never meant leaving anyone behind. It means figuring out how to bring the love with you into whatever comes next.

Maybe you carry them in the values they drilled into you. Maybe in the way you love your own people. Maybe you tell their stories until everyone you know feels like they knew them too. There's no wrong way to do it.  I’d like to think I carry Jenna’s smile and laugh into the world.

And listen, there will still be hard days. There will be anniversaries, holidays, and plain old Tuesdays that bring you right back to your knees. Walking with grief was never going to erase every painful moment, and anyone who tells you different is selling something.

But somewhere along the way, I think you'll start to notice something tender and true.

You're still carrying the love. And the love is carrying you right back.

One breath. One memory. One small act of courage. One ordinary moment of grace.

That's the work. Not forgetting. Not replacing. Not pretending you're fine. Just learning, a little at a time, how to live with a love that refuses to leave.

So if today is one of the heavy ones, here's the only thing I'll ask of you. Don't try to carry all of it at once. Pick one small act of love today, however tiny, and let that be enough for today.

It's enough. You're enough. And you are not walking this alone.

Much love, Dena Betti