Grief Not Only Takes, But Gives

For anyone who's ever had to learn how to breathe again after everything changed. It's for you.

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The silence between us has grown long, like vines in an abandoned garden. Tender, tangled, quietly alive. I’ve sat with the distance. I’ve felt the quiet. I’ve carried the weight of not showing up here and everywhere else.

But today, I’m writing to you because I had a thought in the shower. I thought about grief and what it leaves behind—beside its enormous vacuum and hollowness and the harder I thought, the more I realized that it not only takes, it gives too.

It took me a long time to understand this. Maybe too long. For a while, I thought grief was just a thief that snuck in through the back door, barefoot and silent, until I woke up one day and realized everything precious had been stolen. People, time, laughter, ease. I thought grief was a wrecking ball swinging through my ribcage with no intention of rebuilding. And maybe at first it is. But the truth is more complicated than that, as truths often are. Grief gives. It gives strangely. Roughly. In pieces. And often, far too late.

When we speak about grief, it’s always with hushed tones, as if it's an unwanted guest who might hear us and decide to linger. But grief is already in the room. It doesn’t knock. It doesn’t wait. And when it comes, it doesn’t just tap at the corners of your eyes or sit gently at the back of your throat. No. It moves in. Fully. Rearranges your furniture. Unpacks its own belongings. Sleeps in your bed. Eats at your table.

At first, it is intolerable. It shrinks the world. Food tastes like dust. Mornings arrive like punishment. People move around you like they’re part of a different story, speaking a language you used to know but can’t quite recall. You forget how to laugh without guilt, how to move without weight. Your body becomes a home with the lights off. You forget where you keep things: joy, ambition, ease.

But somewhere deep, very deep—grief is doing something. Beneath the ache and the silence, there’s motion. Like roots splitting soil. It is not healing, not yet. But it is preparation. It is a turning over. And though it feels like devastation, it is also foundation.

I used to think grief was just pain. A shadow. A wound with no scab. But it’s also a form of love, flipped inside out. A continuation. We grieve because we dared to love, and we grieve deeply because that love had weight. Grief proves something was here. Something mattered.

And it leaves things behind, that sly grief. You won’t notice at first. It’s not generous in the way you’d want. It doesn't give back what it took. Not the voice you loved, or the smell of a favorite shirt. Not the spontaneous laugh that spilled from their mouth like music. It doesn’t return any of that. What it gives is harder to name, harder to place.

But you begin to find them. Little things.

One day, you wake up and remember how they stirred their tea, and you smile. That smile is a gift. That memory—a piece returned.

Another day, someone else is crying, lost in their own grief, and you know exactly what to say, or what not to say. You sit with them without fixing anything. That patience, that empathy—that’s a gift too.

Grief makes your heart porous. That hurts, yes. But it also means more can enter. You begin to love more bravely, more tenderly. You hold people longer when you hug them. You listen harder. You pay attention to the temperature of a room, the sound of your name in another’s mouth, the weight someone carries even when they say they’re fine.

You notice the details. The way light filters through curtains at dusk. The way someone fiddles with their ring when they’re nervous. How the air smells just before rain. You start to realize life is made up entirely of these tiny, shimmering moments that you missed before.

Grief sharpens your senses. It tears the film from your eyes. You feel more. You feel everything. That can be unbearable. But it also means you feel deeply. Richly. Profoundly. Grief gives you back your depth.

It also makes you brave in ways you never asked for. You show up to things knowing loss could be around any corner. You love again, knowing the price. You say “I love you” more often, more urgently. You ask for forgiveness, and offer it too. You stop letting little things go unsaid. Because now you know what it costs.

There is a certain clarity that comes with grief. A reordering. You start to know what matters. The noise fades. The ambition that once had you chasing things that never loved you back begins to quiet. You start choosing what feeds your soul. You say no to things that dim your light. You start to protect your joy. You build boundaries, not walls.

And then there’s gratitude. The surprise guest.

Not at first. At first, gratitude is a cruel word. An insult. What is there to be thankful for when everything hurts? But over time, grief hands you back your memories in new wrapping. You find yourself grateful you ever had something so good it hurt to lose. Grateful for the laughter, for the arguments, for the ordinary days. You become grateful for time. For having had it at all.

Eventually, you find yourself telling stories again. Stories that once made you cry now make you laugh. That laughter, though choked and tremulous, is a kind of resurrection.

You become a vessel. You carry them with you. In your mannerisms. In your values. In your decisions. You don’t stop missing them. But you start recognizing the ways they never fully left. You hear their voice in your thoughts. You quote them without realizing. You make the dish they used to cook. You keep them alive in a million small ways.

And perhaps the most bittersweet part—grief changes your shape. You will never be who you were before. But that doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’ve expanded. You’ve grown around the absence. You’ve made space for sorrow and joy to cohabitate. You’ve become someone who knows the full spectrum of love.

There’s an ache that never quite goes away. A ghost-limb kind of hurt. But that too becomes familiar. Not friendly, necessarily, but known. You learn to live beside it. To stretch around it. To make it part of your story.

And you become a little softer. A little slower. A little wiser. You love with more risk. You give without expectation. You know that moments are fleeting, and so you treasure them more fiercely. You hold eye contact longer. You kiss like it might be the last time. You celebrate birthdays not just with cake, but with reverence.

Grief makes you more human. Strips you down. Shows you what you’re made of. It introduces you to your own depths. To strength you didn’t know you had. To gentleness you didn’t know you needed. To resilience that blooms in the darkest soil.

And when someone else loses something precious, you show up differently. You don’t offer platitudes. You don’t rush their process. You sit with them in the silence. You bring cake. You send a song. You say, “Me too,” and mean it. Because grief gave you that knowing. That solidarity. That tenderness.

Of course, none of this makes the loss itself any easier. The person, the thing, the dream—that’s still gone. And grief doesn’t replace them. It doesn’t fix the hole. But it teaches you how to live beside it. How to plant flowers at its edge. How to make art from the ache.

You might write poems at midnight. You might start painting. You might learn to cook their favorite meal. You might begin to live more fully, knowing how easily it can all be taken away.

And maybe one day, you’ll find yourself laughing on a beach, sunlight hitting your face just right, and you’ll think, I never thought I’d feel joy again. But there it is. Quiet. Soft. Real. A little flicker of light. A reminder that you’re still here. That somehow, after all of it, you’ve survived.

That is the final gift of grief. Survival. Not the kind where you're merely existing, but the kind where you’re living with intention. With courage. With reverence.

Grief not only takes but gives. It gives you the truth of impermanence, the urgency to live while you’re alive.

It gives you back yourself, altered but awake. And so, here is my gift :Was It Worth It?

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With all the softness I have right now,
Lydia