07/29/2026
If you’ve been holding onto pain over the passing of a loved for so long that it is now ingrained into your life and you couldn’t imagine living without it … well, this is for you ❤️🩹
Read this and go sit with it for a while to process it all. Re-read it everyday, if you have to ❤️🩹
The pain is the only thing left that proves it was real. That's the part nobody talks about when they tell you to heal. They say "let go" the way they say "have a good day" and the saying is automatic and the automatic misses the thing the saying is asking you to do, which is to release the last remaining evidence that the person existed in your life at the level they existed at. The pain is the evidence. The pain is the artifact. The pain is the museum that your body has been maintaining since the loss because the body knows that closing the museum means the last exhibit goes dark and the dark means the connection goes fully quiet and the fully quiet is the thing you're not ready for.
You've been holding the pain the way a person holds a photograph of someone who is gone. Carefully. With both hands. The holding hurts because the photograph is sharp-edged and the sharp edges cut the fingers that grip it and the cutting produces a wound that you accept because the wound is proof of the holding and the holding is proof of the love and the love is the thing you're terrified of losing access to when you lose the pain.
The fear is that healing will erase them. The fear is that the reduction of the pain will produce a corresponding reduction in the memory and the memory is the only address where they still live and the living-at-the-address requires the pain to keep the lights on. Turn off the pain and the lights go out and the lights going out means the address goes dark and the dark address feels like a second loss and the second loss is the one you can't survive because the first loss almost took everything and the almost is the reason you're holding the pain instead of releasing it because releasing it feels like losing them again.
You won't lose them. The sentence sounds like the kind of sentence that people say at funerals and the funeral-sentence quality makes it easy to dismiss. But the sentence is mechanically accurate. The memory doesn't live in the pain. The memory lives in the neural pathways that were formed during the experience and the pathways are permanent and the permanent means the memory survives the healing the way a foundation survives the demolition of the building above it. The foundation is underground. The building is above ground. The pain is the building. The memory is the foundation. Demolishing the building doesn't touch the foundation because the foundation was laid first and the first-laying means the foundation is deeper than anything built on top of it.
The pain was built on top of the memory. The pain arrived after the loss and the after-arriving means the pain is the newer construction not the original. The original is the love. The love was there before the pain and the love will be there after the pain is processed because the love doesn't require the pain to exist the way the pain requires the love to exist. The dependency runs one direction. The pain needs the love. The love doesn't need the pain. The love was complete before the loss occurred and the occurring didn't erase the love. The occurring added the pain on top of it and the on-top-of is the layer you're afraid to remove because the layer has been there so long that the layer feels like the thing underneath it.
The layer is not the thing underneath it. The layer is the response to the loss. The thing underneath is the response to the person. The two responses are different constructions built on the same foundation and the different-constructions can be separated by a person who understands that removing the pain doesn't remove the person. Removing the pain removes the pain. The person stays. In the foundation. In the memory that was formed before the pain arrived and will remain after the pain is processed.
You can heal and still remember. You can reduce the sharpness of the photograph's edges without blurring the image on the photograph. The image stays clear. The edges stop cutting. And the stopping is not a betrayal of the love. The stopping is the acknowledgment that the love was always stronger than the pain and the always-stronger means the love doesn't need the pain to protect it because the love protects itself the way foundations protect themselves, by being deeper than anything that tries to reach them.
Heal. The person you lost would want the healing more than they would want the holding of the pain. And somewhere underneath the pain, in the foundation where the memory lives, you already know that.
