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Losing a loved one by suicide is a grief that carries not just sorrow, but torturous questions. Why didn't I see it? Could I have done something differently? And with these questions comes a narrative that writes itself insidiously, one in which you become the person who failed, who should have known. This post offers no answers. But it offers recognition of what you are carrying, and some sense that what you feel makes complete sense.

This morning I picked wild jonquilles growing through the cracks in a Sydney footpath. Small, stubborn, improbably beautiful. I thought about the cabin I once lived in Colorado, the wildflowers you could lose yourself in. And yet the jonquilles were real. The morning was real. Online therapy is a little like this. It is not the wilderness. But with the right presence, it can be profoundly real.

Most people don't talk about their fear of death. They hide it in the background of ordinary days or in the 3am jolts. The fear of death is one of the most universal human experiences there is. This post is an invitation to look at it more directly, not to resolve it, but to understand what it might be carrying, and what it might, surprisingly, have to offer.

There is a particular kind of grief that doesn't wait for the loss to happen. It arrives early, while you are still holding someone's hand, still hearing their voice, still smelling their skin. This is anticipatory grief, the grief of knowing what is coming, of loving someone you are already, slowly, beginning to lose. If you are carrying this, you do not have to carry it alone.

One of the things I hear most often, sitting with people in grief, is a sentence that arrives almost like a confession, imprinted with shame. "I know it's just a pet, but I can't seem to stop crying." Every time I hear those words, I feel something break. Not because the person is wrong to feel what they feel. But because somewhere along the way, they have absorbed the idea that their grief needs to be justified. Made smaller before it can be spoken aloud.

Vous avez tout planifié. Ce que vous n'aviez pas prévu, c'est ce vide étrange qui s'est installé — difficile à nommer, difficile à expliquer. Partir, c'est aussi une perte. Celle d'une version de vous-même. Le deuil de l'expatriation est réel, et vous n'avez pas à le traverser seul·e.

That morning I was thinking about my mother. She passed some years ago now, and the grief is still here, it has not gone away. But something has shifted with time. It has lost some of its power over me. Not because I have moved on, but because I have moved through and in doing so, I found something I wasn't looking for. I found meaning. And purpose. She was “ just my mum ” When my mother was alive, she was simply my mum. Not someone I would have described as powerful or wor