Holding On While Letting Go

It’s a new year but when you’re in grief that doesn’t usually bring excitement, it brings more grief. Another year of distance from your person who died. Another year of being without their physical presence. More memories that seem to fade to the background.

The new year can be so much about new resolutions. How to lose weight. How to eat healthier. How to be more financially responsible. And while many are making new year’s resolutions, perhaps you are thinking about how you will make it through the new year…again.

Unfortunately, our society as a whole is grief-illiterate (although we are getting better). You may find this article helpful about becoming grief literate. After a few months, others can think you should be over the death. But how can you put a lifetime of love into a date on the calendar?

Holding On

The truth is you don’t get over someone who has died. You carry them with you in your heart and your mind. You don’t have to let go because healing doesn’t mean forgetting. Healing happens when the death no longer controls you and you lean into resilience as you come to accept all of the secondary losses that go with it. Death cannot take away a relationship, love, or hope. You don’t have to allow death to take more than it already has.

So, how to do you hold onto your person? You start by allowing whatever comes up to be there without fighting against it. Feeling your feelings is what allows you to heal. You’ve probably heard the saying, “You can’t heal what you can’t feel.” But we can’t be in our grief feelings 24/7. You feel the feelings, and then you do some ‘lifing’ like washing the dishes or running an errand and then you repeat the process over and over and over and over until you begin to remember your loved one with more love than pain.

The space your loved one holds in your heart can never be taken away. It holds a permanent space that cannot be replaced by another. However, you can grow your heart around that space as you begin to love new people and invite them into your heart.

Another way you hold onto your person is to talk about them and put their love into everything you do.

As the new year begins, I want to encourage you to hold onto the love, the memories, and the hope that belongs to you. And at the same time, there are some things you can let go of.

Letting Go

Consider letting go of the need to please others, the need to explain your grief, the judgment of your feelings, guilt, and chasing after what once was. As you hold onto the love, think about how you can build a new life that honors you and your loved one. No, life will never be the same as that would be impossible without them, but life can still be good. As Sigmund Freud once stated, “No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely it nevertheless remains something else.”¹

Writing A New Ending

When someone you love dies, it feels like the ending of a book. However, it’s the ending of a chapter and now you have a choice to make. What do you want your life to look like moving forward? You will not get to choose all of the events that happen, but you will get to choose how you respond to those events.

Think about who you were before you entered the relationship with your loved one. What are some things you enjoyed doing that they did not? Would you like to try to add those things into your life now? Or perhaps, you want to think outside of the box and try something completely different. If you’ve never volunteered with something you’re passionate about, perhaps, you might want to give it a try.

I know all of this can be so easy to say but when you lose someone you love, it becomes very difficult to put into action. This is completely normal, and it is not my intention to minimize any of the pain. It’s more about honoring the love and at the same time adding in something new. Take it one day at a time and do what you can as you can. Again, this is the year to leave judgment behind and focus on writing the rest of your story which will always include your loved one because each relationship shapes who we are.

Friend, may this be the year you hold on and let go.

¹ Freud EL, ed: Letters of Sigmund Freud. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1961:386.