The Long Goodbye to Pain

For most of my life,
love and pain arrived holding hands.

I did not know
where one ended
and the other began.

Pain was familiar.
Pain stayed.

Then something shifted.

For the first time,
I felt God not as distant,
but as a quiet presence within me—
steady, intimate, alive.

I saw how often I had searched for safety
in other people,
while the love I longed for
had been waiting patiently inside me all along.

As this truth settled,
old memories rose to the surface.

My father hurt us.
My mother told us it was love.

And so a child learned
a dangerous lesson:

that pain and love belonged together.

The pattern followed me into adulthood.
Pain brought attention.
Pain brought comfort.
Pain brought connection.

My body remembered
what my mind could not yet see.

Then one day,
after a deep and honest grief,
the pain softened for a moment.

Just long enough
for me to listen.

What surfaced was truth.

Years of doubting myself.
Years of questioning my own reality.
Old wounds repeated in new forms.

And for the first time,
I chose differently.

I stopped explaining.
Stopped abandoning myself.
Stopped calling harm by gentler names.

In prayer,
I saw the little girl I once was—
frightened, tender, trying so hard to be good.

And I saw her held by God.

Not judged.
Not fixed.

Simply loved.

The pain remained,
but something deeper relaxed.

I could breathe again.

Not healed yet.

But awake.

And once the light enters,
the shadows can no longer pretend
to be the truth.

How Grief and Love Learned to Coexist

Life at the beach taught me
a quiet and unexpected truth:

grief and love
could live side by side.

I carried the ache
of my daughter’s absence
and the loss of my husband,
yet beside me
stood my son
and the steady love of my partner.

They became my anchors.

I walked the shoreline
with sorrow pressing close,
but slowly,
love found its way
into the spaces
I believed were empty forever.

Some days,
the waves held only tears
and anger.

Other days,
the light touched the water
just so,
and peace brushed softly
against my soul.

Joy returned carefully—
not as celebration,
but as small mercies.

The cry of a gull.
Morning coffee on the porch.
Salt carried on the wind.
My son’s laughter
arriving unexpectedly
like sunlight through clouds.

I began noticing life again—
the warmth of sun on my skin,
the wind lifting my hair,
the quiet beauty
of simply being here.

The beach taught me
that grief was not something
to outrun.

It was something
to carry gently
alongside love.

And so I learned
to let sorrow and tenderness
share the same shore inside me—
tears beside laughter,
memory beside hope.

Evenings grew softer.

Laughter returned to the house.
My son and I learned
how to live within the spaces
loss had left behind.

And little by little,
I understood:

living fully
did not mean forgetting.

It meant allowing love
to remain.

The Beach

After my daughter died,
I followed a decision
made long before grief arrived.

I sold the home
where my children had grown
and moved closer to the sea.

I needed water.
Space.
Silence.

A place where sorrow
could breathe.

I found a small condo
already holding everything I needed.
I packed lightly,
taking only what mattered,
and moved with the quiet hope
that life might still be lived
in the shadow of loss.

That first year,
the ocean became my companion.

Every day I walked the shoreline.

I wept.
I screamed into the wind.
Some mornings,
I fought simply to leave my bed—
to resist the pull of despair
and place my feet once more upon the sand.

I did not know
what healing looked like.

I only knew
I had to keep moving.

The waves held everything—
my grief,
my anger,
my disbelief—
and asked nothing of me
except honesty.

Each step became
an act of survival,
a prayer for the daughter
I loved
and would never hold again.

Joy did not return quickly.

For a long time,
I lived one surrendered day
at a time,
letting go of the life
I had imagined.

And then one day,
without warning,
something gentle stirred.

A small bubble of joy
rose quietly inside me.

I cannot tell you
how long it took to arrive there.
Time had become meaningless.

But I remember this:

in that small and tender moment,
I knew.

Happiness would return.

Not as it once was—
but in a new and honest form.

And somehow,
that would be enough.

Learning to Walk Again

Long before Jody died,
I had already made a quiet decision:

if something ever happened to her,
I would leave the home
where my children had grown
and move closer to the sea.

So when the unthinkable arrived,
the decision was already waiting.

Leaving was easier than I expected.

Perhaps I had been preparing all along—
loosening my grip on possessions,
letting go in ways
I did not yet understand.

I found a small condo near the beach,
already holding everything I needed.
I packed lightly
and moved with my partner,
whose story will come later.

That first year,
the ocean became my witness.

Each day I walked the shoreline—
weeping,
sometimes screaming into the wind,
learning how to carry
a grief too large for language.

Every morning
was its own battle.

Part of me wanted
to disappear beneath the covers
and surrender to sorrow.

But somehow,
I kept choosing movement.

I did not know
what healing looked like.
I only knew
I had to keep walking—

one broken, faithful step
at a time.