The Grace of Goodbye

How Grief Opened the Door

There’s a grief in me I didn’t know how to name until now, and losing my childhood friend to terminal illness a few weeks ago—after reconnecting just last year—opened the floodgates.

It’s not just a grief that comes with losing someone you care about—though that has been plentiful. And it’s not just a grief that comes from saying goodbye to someone who lit up the world without even trying—someone who embodied joy and love and who was unapologetically herself, who impacted people just by her presence, if the over a hundred people who came to her Celebration of Life today was any indication.

No, this grief is layered. It’s multi-faceted. It’s catalyzed by loss and punctuated by self-actualization.

My friend, Gretchen, made me see myself more clearly than almost anyone ever has.

Because she reflected the parts of me I had hidden away.

For most of my life, I subdued my own joy and happiness because I believed—through experience—that whatever I had, energetically or tangibly, it meant I was taking away from someone else. My worth was measured and compared, and I learned to sacrifice to make others happy.

Since I was a child, I suppressed my weird, goofy, silly side because it was safer to hide than to be seen when I witnessed abuse in a kindergarten classroom.

(See? There she is. The girl who used to love to dance and giggle and play. God, I love her.

Where had she gone?

Buried beneath pain and fear and growing up too fast. Bearing crosses that weren’t hers to carry, responsibilities that weren’t hers to shoulder.

And I did that. I own it. I took that on because I thought that was my role to play, and I thought that was love.)

My high school years opened me back up again, thanks to first love. But first love came with first heartbreak, and it would be nearly two decades before I understood what love really is.

I spent most of my twenties and thirties lost to illness. Intense. Serious. That’s who I became because that’s what this experience was. Still, I found hope and healing and so many pockets of joy in between.

I don’t regret my life. Not one bit, not one single second of it.

Despite all of the hurt, there was so much happiness. Despite the pain, there was perseverance. Despite the struggle, there was the spark of life that always pushed me forward.

I had great adventures in foreign towns, built a legacy with my businesses, forged memories with my family that aren’t captured in photographs but forever etched in the heart, and nurtured friendships with dinners and game nights and deep conversations on long car rides. I cared for my furbabies—my soulmate dogs and cats—and helped to raise a little girl who I love like my own.

I created art. I wrote and published books. I constantly sought to learn and discover something new. I advocated for others, helped to guide and heal.

But through it all I forgot one thing…

How to live for myself.

When I fell in love a few years ago with a man I’ve known since childhood, he helped me see myself in my darkness and my light. He helped me come alive after feeling like a ghost of myself for so long, so burdened by Lyme and all the other hidden experiences of my life.

And through the ups and downs and precious moments of that sacred connection, and through our eventual separation, I grew and grew and grew. I untangled the web of lifelong beliefs keeping me stuck in trauma, the patterns locking me in pain.

I found myself again. I found that little girl who only wanted to love and be loved.

And I awoke in me the woman who is worthy of it all.

It really has always been as simple as that—to love and be loved.

Thinking of my friend and her Celebration of Life this week shifted this within me. She had a partner who was so beautifully devoted and expressively affectionate towards her. She had family, friends, and a community of people who wanted nothing but to honor her. She lived a wonderful, messy life, and she was loved for everything that she was.

It turned me towards my own life—my family, my friends, and my many little communities—and reminded me just how loved I truly am.

Because I’ve been held through some of the hardest seasons of my life, too. I’ve had people show up for me in quiet and powerful ways. I’ve been witnessed, supported, and championed, even when I didn’t know how to ask for it.

And I’m so deeply grateful for that.

But even in all of that love, I had to ask myself…

Have I ever truly let myself feel it?

Have I let myself be seen like that—fully, openly, without reservation?

Have I allowed myself to be loved not for what I offer… but simply for who I am?

The truth is, I don’t know.

I think I have… but maybe I wasn’t able to receive it in a way that was embodied, in a way that I could hold myself.

Because there was always a lingering part of me that didn’t believe I deserved it.

(Until now.)

I’ve always been me—the intense, deep, serious version of me. I’ve always been real. I just hid so much of myself away that it felt like I was living a half-life.

But these past ten years, I’ve been discovering myself more and more. All aspects, all sides, in my wholeness. Spiritual and silly. Giving and goofy. Wise and a wise-ass.

I never had to be one thing or the other.

I could be all of it.

Something cracked open inside of me this week. I realized that I don’t want to carry it all anymore—not the weight of other people’s pain. Not the burden of other people’s journeys.

It’s not something anyone ever asked me to… But I did. Because that’s who I believed I needed to be.

Now I know I can hold space without holding on. I can love while letting go.

And that’s what I’m doing. Because I want to live now.

I’m not waiting for the mirror. I’m welcoming the match—those who reflect the sum of all my parts. Not seeking perfection, but seeing that I’m perfectly, imperfectly me.

I’m reigniting dreams I once thought were impossible, reimagining a life I once thought was too much.

And I’m ready to meet the one who will meet me where I am, ready to love me outloud as I wish to live out loud.

Fully. Bravely. Not as potential but as living connection, an honest reflection of the love I am now.

The love I found inside myself.

I don’t connect to my spiritual journey through pain anymore, but through peace. Not through the wound but wisdom—the kind that comes from living it all, from crawling through the darkness until I came home to my own light.

This was the impact my friend had on me. This was the light she offered the world.

In her passing, she reminded me to live.

(Rest in the peace and joy you’ve always been, my friend. I love you.)