They’re for you, no matter what loss you’re dealing with. Maybe you lost a job you expected to rely on. Perhaps it was a friendship that soured, a move to a different city and the sudden absence of comforting coffee shops where you feel at home. We don’t only lose through death.

Heck, even distancing ourselves from something toxic feels like loss, because that thing became a part of us. I’m getting a growth removed later this week, and even though I want it gone more than you know, growth-free Marianne will be a different person. No longer a someone living with a something. I’m losing a fragment of myself, even if it’s a scary, horrible fragment. It’s still loss.

Loss comes in waves, and that’s okay.

It’s all right to deal with it as you have to.

Sometimes you need to forget about it all and carry on with life as normal, to remind yourself that normal still exists, that you don’t move only in a twilight of memories and dusty boxes and empty drawers.

That’s okay.

Sometimes you need to surround yourself with signs of new life, with seedlings, kittens, babies, to see the force of hope, and that’s just fine.

Loss creeps up behind you again anyway,

tangles around your ankles. Slows you to a stop.

It doesn’t feel okay, but it is.

We heal by hurting.

It’s okay to look at the morning sun and cry.

This is where we find ourselves.

This is how.

In the middle of the mess of losing, there is a green twig that pushes out a new leaf and says this is me.

Hold on through the waves, my friend.

You are in there, finding new wings.

It’s okay.