There’s a particular kind of grief that doesn’t come with a funeral. No flowers. No casseroles. Just quiet absence. It’s the loss of someone who’s still out there, living, breathing, carrying on, but not in your life anymore.
Maybe it was a slow fade. Maybe it was a sharp goodbye. Or maybe there was no goodbye at all, just distance wrapped in silence and unanswered questions.
And yet… you still hold space for them.
Because when you love someone deeply, family, friend, soul companion that love doesn’t disappear just because they do. It finds a soft corner of your heart and stays there. Not clinging. Just resting. Wishing them peace, hoping they’re okay, even as you miss them from afar.
I’ve come to learn that we all walk our paths shaped by what we know, what we fear, and what we carry. But perspective, how we choose to see, is a deeply personal thing. It can guide us toward healing, or it can harden into something else. Used with grace, perspective becomes understanding. Used as a weapon, it becomes distance.
It’s easy to rewrite a story when you don’t want to face its truth. To call it growth when it’s really escape. To protect yourself by pretending the other person was never real, never good, never enough. But that kind of story leaves wreckage. And it always leaks into the soul.
So here I am, still standing in the same light I always offered. Not bitter. Just changed.
I still hold a space for you, wherever you are. And I hope you find what you need, even if I wasn’t part of it. That doesn’t make our time together meaningless. It means we’re both human, trying to make sense of the world with the tools we have.
But I’ve chosen not to let your absence harden me. My heart is still open, just wiser now. Quieter. More careful with the hands I reach for.
Because I know now: some people walk with you for a lifetime, and others… just long enough to leave a mark.
And even when they leave, love doesn’t have to.
until next time, be kind to each other,
xoxo
Cindy
Proverb 3:5