Life After Loss

The floodgates behind my writer’s block have finally opened.

Anticipating losing someone while loving as deeply as I could was one of the hardest lessons I learned. But we must learn to pivot our pain into purpose.

Age 23: The First Shattering

This was when life handed me my first experience with unexpected loss. Suddenly tragedy wasn’t theoretical anymore. Death wasn’t just something that happened in movies. It happened to someone I loved.

Life is fragile.

Nothing is guaranteed.

Tomorrow is not promised.

Those are painful lessons to learn that young.

I had to learn how to coexist with loss. And that’s a skill. A brutal skill…But a skill nonetheless.

The Great Love

Then came my late fiancé. This feels like a redemption chapter. He showed me that my heart could open again.

For the first time in a long time, I felt the generosity of life.

I loved. I loved fully. I loved deeply. I imagined the life we could build together.

The Caregiver

Then came the C Word: Cancer. The hardest chapter. Not because death came knocking at our door.

Because I watched it happening.

Day by day.

Month by month.

Caregiving changes people—especially when you know where the road is heading. There is a unique kind of grief in loving someone while simultaneously preparing to lose them.

The Profound Loss

Then comes the chapter nobody wants: the shattering crash of reality.

Grief.

Caregiving.

Loss.

More grief.

The collapse of a future I expected to have.

But we must not keep believing that grief has the final word: WE DO. Death does not have the last laugh.

At 23: I learned life can take everything from me.

At 32: I learned life can take everything from me, and I can still rebuild.

Love in itself is a fleeting venture, but one worth risking uncertainty for.

Certainty Is an Illusion

Your fiancé could be here one day and gone in the next chapter.

Your boyfriend at 23 could leave on a motorcycle and never come back.

Life taught me that.

At 23, I learned that life can break my heart.

At 32, I learned that life can break my heart, and I can still keep living.

The younger version of me was brave because I believed things would work out.

The current version of me is brave because I know they might not.

And I choose to love, dream, and create anyway. I choose rebirth after death. The phoenix is not born despite the fire; it is born because of it.

The Phoenix

The moon is uncertainty at rest,

Only the stars know how to contest.

Life’s heart beats at a rapid pace

Aching to break from time’s fleeting race.

Death is nature’s double-edged sword.

As much as it wounds, it can reward.

A glance through the lens of fate

Distills the love from the bitter hate.

The duality of the soul walks a fine line

Between space, dimension and time.

From the embers of renewal, the phoenix arises

Through plumes of smoke, mirrors, and disguises.

Though flames burn, to truth they are bound,

The light etched clear into the ground.

A purpose unknown to anyone but time,

No matter how tangled, only fate can unwind.

Out from the shadows, rebirth at last,

When the phoenix emerges from the ash.

And while the pain will always dwell here…I am now free…free from the fear.