Between Love and Letting Go: The Quiet Work of Grieving
People often ask me, “How do you find the strength to do grief therapy? It must be so heavy, hearing about death all the time.”
What they don’t see is that grief work, when done gently and honestly, isn’t only about death. It’s about life — the life that remains, and the courage it takes to keep choosing it.
Not all of my grieving clients have lost someone to death. Some have lost relationships, roles, health, or a sense of identity. But those who have lost a loved one, a child, a parent, a partner, a friend, even a beloved pet, share one truth: grief can feel like being suspended between worlds. The world before, and the one after.
The world after loss
Grief doesn’t arrive all at once. It seeps in quietly, filling the spaces between what was and what remains.
For a long time, many people feel trapped, unable to imagine that joy could coexist with loss.
I often hear, “If I allow myself to be happy again, it means I’ve stopped loving them.”
That belief, that love demands suffering, can hold someone in pain long after the moment of loss has passed.
But love doesn’t need our suffering to stay alive. It needs our presence.
The paradox of love
I sometimes invite my grieving clients to imagine reversing the roles.
“If your loved one were here, and you were gone,” I ask, “what would you want for them?”
Would you tell them, ‘Be depressed if you love me’?
Or would you whisper, ‘Live fully. Laugh loudly. Love again.’
Almost every person answers without hesitation: I would want them to be happy.
And in that moment, something inside them softens, as if permission has finally been given to live again.
The transformation of grief
Grief is not something we get over; it’s something we integrate.
When we allow it to move through us, it becomes a source of vitality rather than paralysis.
I’ve seen clients who once felt broken begin to draw from their loss a strength they didn’t know they possessed.
Their love doesn’t fade, it expands. It begins to express itself in how they live, how they give, how they notice beauty again.
Ten years later, they might say,
“What gives me strength today is knowing that every step I take honors the one I lost. Each time I do something for myself, I do it for both of us.”
This is the quiet miracle of grief: that it transforms absence into presence, pain into purpose, and memory into motion.
Living between worlds
To grieve is to live between two worlds: the one that ended and the one still unfolding.
You learn to hold conversations with silence, to love what is invisible, to find belonging even in the spaces that ache.
Grief doesn’t disappear; it evolves. It becomes the bridge between who we were and who we are becoming.
f you’re moving through grief — whether fresh or years old — you don’t have to do it alone.
At Horizon Online Therapy, we help people honor what they’ve lost while gently finding their way back to life.
Therapy can help you live between what was and what’s becoming, with gentleness and truth. Schedule a free consultation.
