When your sadness gurgles up out of your throat, let it.

Make the ugly sounds that match the quaking in your core. Let it spill from you, that never ending stream will flow freely- or violently, make way for it. Ebb and flow, but never cease.

When you feel like you’re stuck standing in the puddle of grief you’ve expelled, please keep letting it bleed out until it meets the edge of mine. And everyone’s. We are moving through it and making ripples that will interrupt your stagnation.

Someday you’ll make ripples for me, or for someone new. Then waves. We won’t let each other remain stuck longer than it serves us.

Someday it will be comfortable. Normal, almost.

Some days it will be shocking again like the very moment we had to reconcile losing.

Someday you’ll be able to find joy in memories without the jolt of pain.

Some days you won’t. Some days you will have fleeting moments of freedom through simple forgetfulness, don’t feel guilty about those.

Some days you’ll lament what’s being missed.

Please be gentle with yourself, patient.

When you can’t, we will. We will give you space and time or immediacy and intimacy. We will meet your needs, we will help you identify them. We are here to protect your stillness and to guide your steps when you’re ready to take them.

Loss negates the value that power and knowledge normally hold which is devastatingly disorienting. In bereavement there is the gift of realizing impermanence. After being leveled by loss we get to choose what to let back into our hearts and minds- to care about things for fun, for love, for whatever reason we have.

Start from scratch.

We can’t replace but we can nurture a love in one another that’s our privilege to experience as the utmost contrast to our immense sadness.

You got this. We got you.

Abigail Benson

Abigail is an inventor and freelance writer based in Los Angeles. She is a surviving sibling of a pediatric cancer causality. She currently devotes most of her time to her husband and two young daughters. She finds balance in precious friendships, travel and her yoga practice.