Don’t Let Life Harden You

Grief forces change.
Change is inevitable.
But losing—losing feels impossible.

And yet, we lose all the time.

People. Animals. Versions of ourselves.
Jobs, places, moments that slip through our fingers before we even realize they’re gone.
The only constant in life is change.
And yet, some change feels like we’ll never recover.

Grief isn’t just death.
It’s the mourning of everything we thought would last forever.

The identities we wore like armor just to survive.
The relationships we thought had more time.
The late nights with our best friends before life got louder—before the men, the kids, the careers.
The last look over the shoulder at a place you called home.

My wish for you is this: Catch yourself in those moments.
Because so many of them, you won’t ever get back.

We don’t always feel grief as heavy.
Sometimes, we welcome the change.
But then, there are moments—where out of nowhere, you miss a version of yourself so deeply it takes your breath away.

Maybe it happens when the world slows down for a second.
When the sky turns pink just right.
When a song you forgot existed plays in the background, and suddenly, you’re 18 again—just for a moment.

And it makes me wonder—
How does the body relearn how to love, laugh, and feel full again after so much loss?

Because somehow, we do.
Somehow, we always do.

We aren’t meant to stay the same.
Every version of us—every chapter we grieve—was never meant to last forever.

But that doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier.

No one will have the right words to make grief easier.
No one can give you those moments back.

But I promise—you will survive.
You have to. Because this isn’t the end of your story.

Don’t let life make you unrecognizable.
Let it shape you. Let it deepen you. But never let it harden you.

Sincerely,