Unfixable Things
as the grief settles, so do I
Love Notes To Grievers was first an Instagram page, which turned into a self-published book, then got picked up and turned into an expanded version and is now this newsletter. Please share with your people, like, comment, and subscribe. Oh, and please pick up a copy of LNTG for yourself and for the people in your life too.
Grief becomes a practice of making peace with unfixable things.
I had an entirely different essay written. I deleted it to see if I could name what is emerging.
I don’t know if the word is surrendered, grounded? acclimated? The loudness of grief in my body has quieted down to something tolerable. It started back in 2024 and slowly built around the choices I’ve made since.
Grief is no longer rearranging my life and those in it, but I needed it to do just that.
I got used to the low hum of loss.
I got used to the missing.
I got used to the new version of myself.
I was talking with my partner the other day, and he named something important for me as I was going through those consecutive losses.
He said, “You had to grow up pretty quick.” I was 34. Yes, I was grown, but not grown enough to go through the tragic loss of my friend, the death of my father and my beloved grandmother during the pandemic so close together.
When I went to a therapist back in 2020, I was worried that the anxious and exhausted feeling that was coursing through my veins was my new normal. I had two ECG’s, was underweight and had a ferritin level of 22. I think the optimal range is around 80-100 ng/mL. It scared the crap out of me, more like, scared the ferritin out of me. I felt like an exposed nerve. Broken sleep did not help. So much of what people said and did when I was in deep grief cut like a knife. My version of coping was shutting some people out who felt unsafe and writing the pain I was feeling on the internet, which probably looked fairly unhinged to some.
Now…
I’m carrying my losses without the extra weight of anger, feeling misunderstood, needing to be heard. I think my writing at that time was a battle cry of how I wished the world to be. How I wished people would act. That’s not where I am now. I’m no longer on the fiery path to try to change the landscape of grief in our culture. It started to feel like an echo chamber online. To educate people about the impacts of grief on people, society, and the collective when the only ones that are listening are the other people selling the same ideas or the people already being rocked by the reality of loss.
Maybe that is cynical, or maybe it’s my way of signalling to myself that I am ready to write from the other side of the mountain, where it is less loud. Less windy. Less chaotic. People are doing a good job of that anyway. I don’t need to be there. There are facilitators I respect, grief counsellors and therapists, grief retreats, grief groups. I mean, grief has become a big industry, and as any growing industry comes its fair share of grifter energy, but I can critique a growing industry AND see the importance of it at the same time.
What I’ve come to, on a personal note, is that I’m a writer who wrote a book about grief. I’m not a grief expert. I will continue to write and am currently writing… a novel. Or trying to? Is there a theme of grief and loss? Of course.
I think part of why some of my writing on grief was compelling to some is that I could name the pain without the shame of how it was perceived by those not living it or living it differently. I named the cultural allergy to people’s pain and suffering. It’s easy to name those things, and if I’m honest, a lot of those reflections came from a place of anger. It’s harder to honour those feelings and move on from them than to live in that space and continue to recycle the same thoughts and ideas around it, and that’s what I was doing online when I decided to leave back in October. It wasn’t healthy for me. I do not want to stay in my personal story, to tell it over and over again. I want to build stories because of them, and bring characters to life. I’m not a teacher or community leader. I know all this now.
Do I still grieve? Yes, but learning to carry your losses in a way that the body can breathe, settle into itself again, or for the first time. That is where I am now.
I have about thirty minutes to get my thoughts out to you today. I have to head out to massage two amazing humans. After that, I am off to a cabin with a few friends for the evening.
So quickly
Here’s what I know about loss
The body needs time to metabolize a loss that changes your entire living landscape. It’s a lot more than what people may think. I know that because I had to do trauma therapy, shout out EMDR. I was not acting in a clear-headed way a lot of the time, the grief fog will come for you in the night and stay there for as long as it takes.
I know that the deep ache, the feeling of homesickness for a person, is something so profound that it can swallow people whole and never come back. When this happens to people, and it does, this is what scares people away from being anywhere near grief. I understand why, but most of us find our way back to ourselves, to building a life that has a foundation more solid than before you knew grief. I think it’s the people who keep everything inside who break, like really break. And of course, it depends on the loss.
I know that not everyone deals with loss the way I do. That annoys me, but fine.
When people see your pain and support you through it, grief is easier to hold.
Our Western culture grief and relational blueprint fails so many people. Not many have the time to slow down. To feel. To be. To be together, in it.
Our grief needs a witness. It needs to be named. It needs space to be felt and people to gather around, and some people may say the opposite. What worked for me may not for others.
Thanks so much for reading,
Would love to hear from you; just hit reply to this email, and it goes straight to ME!
Ange
