Learning to Grieve What I Loved

 My first experience of unconditional love came on four legs.

As a little girl, I did not feel safe in my home, but I felt safe with my dog. She was my companion, my comfort, my refuge from a world that often felt frightening.

When I left home after high school, I was told she could not come with me.

I had to let her go.

I don’t know that I ever truly grieved that loss.

Years later, life brought me another beloved dog. By then, I had spent years caring for my grandmother with Alzheimer’s and walking beside my daughter through her addiction. I was exhausted in ways I didn’t yet understand.

When it came time to move, I made the painful decision to rehome my beloved friend.

At the time, I had many reasons.

I told myself I was doing what was practical.

What was necessary.

But years later, a deeper truth surfaced.

I had done to myself what had been done to me as a child.

I had taken away something I loved.

Something that brought me comfort.

Something that made me feel safe.

Not out of cruelty, but out of a lifetime of believing that love was something to be sacrificed.

The grief of that decision still lives in me.

Not because I made the best decision I could with what I knew then, but because I never allowed myself to mourn what was lost.

Perhaps that is what is asking for my attention now.

Not judgment.

Not guilt.

Grief.

A grief that has been waiting patiently for many years to finally be felt.

And maybe healing begins by letting my heart break for what it loved.

The Vortex

 About eleven years ago, while talking to God as I often did, words came out of my mouth that surprised me.

“God, if this is all there is to life, I’m ready to come home.”

The moment I said it, I stopped.

At that time, my life was full. I had recovery, friendships, creativity, women I sponsored, and a partner I loved deeply.

There was nothing wrong.

And yet, beneath the life I had built, I felt a longing I could not name.

Not for something different.

For something deeper.

So I opened my hands.

And surrendered.

Not knowing that everything was about to change.

What followed was not a dramatic event.

It was a slow unraveling.

The life that had once felt solid began to shift beneath my feet. Relationships changed. Certainties dissolved. Doors I expected to remain open quietly closed.

Again and again, I found myself standing in unfamiliar territory.

At first, I resisted.

I searched for answers, explanations, and certainty.

But the deeper invitation was not to understand.

It was to trust.

Looking back, I can see that I had entered what I now call the vortex.

A space between what was and what would be.

A place where old identities fall away before new ones are formed.

A place that feels like loss while something sacred is quietly being born.

I did not know it then.

I only knew that God had answered the prayer I never meant to pray.

The years that followed carried me deeper into that unknown space.

Things I once depended on no longer held the same meaning.

Roles I had identified with began to loosen their grip.

Even my understanding of God was being transformed.

There were seasons when I felt suspended between worlds—

no longer who I had been,

not yet who I was becoming.

It was uncomfortable.

Sometimes lonely.

Often confusing.

Yet beneath it all, something steady remained.

A quiet presence.

A gentle knowing that even when I could not see the path, I was not walking it alone.

Over time, I began to understand that the vortex was not a punishment.

It was an invitation.

An invitation to release what could no longer carry me.

An invitation to trust what could not yet be seen.

An invitation to come home to a deeper relationship with God, with myself, and with life itself.

The transformation was not happening around me.

It was happening within me.

And perhaps that was the answer to my prayer all along.

The Greatest Gift

 When I look back at the woman who first walked into recovery thirty years ago, I barely recognize her.

So much has changed.

Some of those changes fill me with gratitude. Others carry a touch of sadness. Parts of me have been lost along the way, and sometimes I miss who I used to be.

The early years of recovery were not easy.

I walked beside my daughter through her illness. I buried her. Later, I lost my brother, my husband, and eventually my mother.

Grief became a familiar companion.

Yet alongside the losses, something else was happening.

I was changing.

With the help of recovery and therapy, I began untangling old patterns. I learned healthier ways of living, loving, and relating. Some people welcomed those changes. Others drifted away.

Recovery gave me  a new life back, but it also cost me some relationships.

Still, there was so much joy.

There was Jack—my soulmate, my companion through so much of life’s journey.

There was creativity, laughter, friendship, and the simple pleasure of making beautiful things with my hands.

And slowly, over time, something I never thought possible happened.

I learned to love myself.

Not perfectly.

Not all at once.

But enough to look in the mirror and say,

“I love you.”

Those years held some of the deepest sorrows of my life and some of the greatest joys.

And when I look back now, I see that recovery gave me many gifts.

But perhaps the greatest gift was this:

I found God and I found myself.