Healing the Loss

22/12/2025

22/12/2025

For your consideration:

Let’s be real, the holidays have a way of asking too much of us even in the best of circumstances, but when we are already carrying so much..? It’s overboard.

They ask us to be festive, while we’re absolutely exhausted and emotionally spent.
They as us to be present, while we’re missing someone and thinking of the past.
They ask us to be grateful, while our nervous systems are still bracing for all that’s happened, and the other shoes to drop, for our next huge loss, for some hard news.

If this week feels like something to endure rather than enjoy, just let it be that… just getting through.
We don’t need to wrap our grief in meaning before the year turns.
We don’t need a lesson, a silver lining, bright siding, or a version of ourselves that feels “better.”

Getting through the next week can look small.
Fewer plans. More pauses.
Stepping outside when it gets loud.
Leaving early without explaining.
Having a back up plan.
Letting the tears come without asking them to teach us anything.

As the new year approaches, remember this:
There is no deadline on healing.
No pressure to carry our loss more gracefully.
No requirement to enter January with clarity or strength.

There are times when the work is about staying alive inside a life that no longer looks the way it did.

Not every season offers renewal.
Some only ask that we remain.

Let’s remain, together. 🤍

21/12/2025

healingthelost.com

21/12/2025

When the world was right...

As Christmas Eve approaches, my heart turns toward all who are carrying the ache of missing someone they deeply deeply love. May you be held in the tenderness of this season, even as your heart has been irrevocably changed. And may the one you miss be remembered out loud, their names spoken, as love continues to find its way back to each of you.

19/12/2025

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Reinhold Ljunggren - Spring Fishermen on their Way Home, 1977.

19/12/2025

Yesterday is a place we return to when today feels unbearable.

It is where things still make sense. Where voices still sound familiar. Where routines exist and love feels intact. Yesterday holds what once was, and because of that, it often becomes a refuge when the present feels too sharp, too empty, too demanding.

In grief, yesterday has weight.

It carries phone calls that used to come easily. Ordinary moments that didn’t announce their importance while they were happening. Shared laughter. Predictable rhythms. The comfort of knowing someone existed just beyond reach. Yesterday is where they still feel real. And today, today is learning how to live with their absence.

We cannot go back to yesterday. That is the ache of it. But we look there anyway, not because we are stuck, but because yesterday holds proof. Proof that love existed. That life was shared. That something meaningful happened here.

Grief pulls us backward not to punish us, but to remind us.

It reminds us of who we were when love was present in a different form. It reminds us that the pain we feel now is directly tied to the depth of what we were given then. Grief is yesterday all over again, not as it was, but as it lives inside us now.

Yesterday is not only about loss. It is also about memory. And memory is a living thing. It shapes how we carry love forward when the person we love can no longer walk beside us. Yesterday becomes the place we visit when tomorrow feels too large to imagine.

There were so many yesterdays. So many moments that felt endless while they were happening. Only later do we understand how precious they were. Only later do we realize how much meaning lived in the ordinary.

Yesterday teaches us that nothing simple is ever insignificant.

In end-of-life care, yesterday often arrives quietly. It shows up in stories told again and again. In memories repeated, not because they are forgotten, but because they matter. Yesterday becomes a way of saying, This life was full. This love was real.

To sit with yesterday is not to move backward. It is to honor what shaped us. It is to allow ourselves to remember without rushing to resolve the pain that comes with it. Remembering is not a failure to move on. It is an act of love.

Yesterday holds unfinished sentences. Things that were not said. Moments that did not get their proper ending. And still, yesterday offers us something gentle: connection. Meaning. A place where love remains intact, even when presence does not.

Today asks us to keep going. Tomorrow asks us to imagine life unfolding without what we have lost. Yesterday asks nothing of us at all. It simply opens its door and lets us sit.

And sometimes, that is exactly what we need.

Yesterday reminds us that we lived fully enough to grieve deeply. That we loved in a way that left a mark. That our ache is not emptiness, but evidence.

We will never get yesterday back. But we carry it with us, woven into who we are becoming. It informs how we love, how we remember, how we show up for others in their own moments of loss.

Yesterday is not a place to stay forever. But it is a place worth visiting.

Because in yesterday, love is still whole.

And remembering is its own kind of grace.

xo
Gabby

You can find this blog here:
https://www.thehospiceheart.net/post/yesterday

17/12/2025

"If the holidays make you feel broken, lonely, forgotten, lost, or shattered, remember: There is nothing wrong with you. You are not alone." Words from Tim Lawrence to remember at this time of year.

17/12/2025

"I Didn't Love You"

16/12/2025

Healingtheloss.com

16/12/2025

15/12/2025