Losing Them, Losing Me

Tuesday Pause™

Recently, someone close to me was battling a health condition. At first, I didn’t understand its severity until I did. I guess that’s why when my mother was dealing with a similar situation before her death, I took it kind of lightly. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had been mature enough to handle her differently, but I wasn’t.

That’s the double-edged dilemma surrounding her death—there are certain lessons I only learned once she passed.

I don’t really know if there’s a word for the pain you're left with once someone you love dies. I do know hard doesn’t suffice, and the emotions are nearly impossible to find the words to articulate.

Grief can be defined as what happens when something meaningful is taken away, leaving your heart trying to make sense of the absence. Now, I grieve what I took for granted while longing for what I was never able to experience.

Over time, the thing about grief I've realized is, we focus so much on the “someone” that we often forget about the “something.”

I’ve shared that I’m in a season of transition. However, it should be known that this isn’t my first, and I don’t expect it to be my last. Before this current season of learning to focus my energy on what God has called me to personally, I came face-to-face with that same reality a few years ago, and it led to relationships ending. I didn’t know that would be the outcome, and to make matters worse, because I was the one carrying the conviction, I was also the one who carried the blame.

Old habits do die hard and partial obedience is very much disobedience, thus I found myself in a very familiar pattern, just in a different location and I never allowed myself the time to process the loss until life gave me no choice. Once I really took a look at my “new” reality, I was overcome with emotions, many of which I've struggled to manage. I couldn’t understand how I was so easily let go after giving so much of myself. I was committed, and just like that, everything changed.

I guess I took that first transition so hard because I had to face a sobering reality—more often than not, I chose those relationships over my relationship with my mother. And when they were given the choice… they didn’t choose me. The pain hit me in a way I didn’t expect. That’s when I realized I was grieving, but it wasn’t just grief in the way I had always understood it. It wasn’t just about what I had lost externally. It was about what I could no longer find internally. Honestly, somewhere in the process of losing them, I started losing me.

The version of me that existed in those relationships.

The version of me that felt secure in being chosen.

The version of me that knew where I belonged.

And when those things shifted, I didn’t just feel the absence of people. I felt the absence of myself. That’s the part of grief we don’t talk about enough—the identity crisis that follows loss and the quiet questions that surface when everything familiar changes:

Who am I without this?

Where do I fit now?

What parts of me were tied to who/what I lost?

Honestly, we don’t just grieve what’s gone—we grieve who we were when it was still here.

Fast forward, and I feel a semblance of those same emotions again, but this time, I’m more prepared.

There are so many versions of ourselves that we grieve. Relationships that we grieve. Dreams that we grieve. And yes, the death of loved ones that we grieve.

My truth is this: I absolutely grieve the physical loss of my mother, while simultaneously grieving for the little girl in me who never got to feel what it feels like to have a healthy mother-daughter relationship. I know what it feels like to be belittled by my mother. I can’t honestly say I know what being affirmed by her felt like, at least not in the way I longed for.

On the flip side, can we take a moment to acknowledge how impossible it sometimes feels to have to grieve something or someone that is still physically alive? Versions of yourself that you may or may not have had a chance to get to know… that’s a hard pill to swallow.

But here's another way to look at it... maybe grief isn’t just about what we’ve lost. Maybe it’s also about what we’re learning to live without, and who we’re becoming in the process. Maybe, it’s the space where regret meets growth and where longing meets acceptance. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t meant to be rushed or resolved, but honored. Because in every form of grief, there’s proof that something mattered. And if it mattered, it was meaningful. If it was meaningful, then even in its absence, it still carries value.

Sadly, my heart has been mishandled more than once, and while I understand there’s a lesson in it, and I am open to learning what that lesson is, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that the mishandling has been exhausting.

Still, instead of running from the grief attached to my exhaustion, I’m learning to sit with it. To let it teach me. To let it soften me. To let it remind me not only of what I lost, but of my capacity to love, to give, and to grow. And that is something I refuse to take for granted again.

My challenge for you… take a moment today and ask yourself:

What am I grieving that I haven’t acknowledged? Not just who, but what.

What version of myself. What relationship. What expectation. What season of my life.

Sit with it. Name it.

And instead of rushing to move past it, allow yourself to honor it, because healing doesn’t begin when grief disappears. Healing begins when you finally permit it to be seen.