When Loss Becomes a Doorway to Meaning
This time of year invites us to remember — those we’ve loved and lost, and all who walked before us.
Across cultures, this season holds the same pulse: connection with our ancestors and the unseen.
Halloween, Día de Muertos, Památka zesnulých, Samhain — each reminds us that the veil between life and death softens, and love doesn’t end with form.
The many faces of grief
Grieving takes time — and no one can tell you how long it should take.
You might know the five stages of grief, but in reality, they loop, repeat, overlap.
We circle back to sadness after peace, to anger after acceptance.
Grief isn’t something to finish; it’s something we learn to live alongside.
We never stop missing the people we love.
The pain changes shape — less sharp, maybe — but the absence still breathes quietly in the background.
We grieve not only who we lost, but also the version of life that could have been if they were still here. There’s no right way to grieve.
Cry if you need to cry.
Scream if you need to scream.
Just don’t stay alone in it so long that you forget you’re still alive — and still loved.
When grief starts to consume the living, that’s when another heart beside you can help carry the weight until you can again.
When my dad passed
Last August, my dad died.
It’s not long — though some days, it feels like a lifetime ago.
This week, as I light candles for him and for all who came before, I feel both pain and deep gratitude.
The more I walk this healing path, the more I sense the echoes of my ancestors — their struggles, resilience, and the will that allowed me to be here.
So I grieve not only my father, but the generations behind him.
And I grieve the versions of myself that had to fall away since that day.
Grief, I’ve learned, doesn’t just visit when someone dies.
It also comes when an old identity fades, when a dream dissolves, or when healing asks us to release what we once needed to survive.
The body remembers
Even knowing how to process emotion, I still find grief stored inside me.
It shows up as a heaviness in my chest, an ache in my arm, a knot in my stomach.
Grief moves slowly through the body — like water seeking its way through stone.
The paradox is that my father’s death, while breaking me open, also became a doorway.
In the midst of loss, I found the path that now feels like my soul’s work.
I hold both truths at once: the deep pain of his absence and the quiet blessing his passing revealed.
Love doesn’t end
Sometimes I still feel his hands, his hug, the warmth of his presence.
He came in dreams to tell me he was safe — that love doesn’t die, it only changes form.
Now, I talk with him often.
And when I see a feather, a butterfly, or a certain bird, I smile — small reminders that connection continues.
As Kyle Gray writes in Angels Are With You Now, our loved ones and guides speak through signs that soften the boundary between worlds.
Maybe that’s what this season is really about — not ghosts or fear, but remembering that love, in its purest energy, never leaves.
Reflection
As the days shorten and the world turns inward,
take a moment to ask yourself:
- What or who are you grieving this year?
- What version of yourself is ready to be honored — or released?
- Where do you feel that in your body?
Grief is not the end of love.
It’s the way love transforms.