Personal Reflection
There are days when the ache of loss doesn’t scream — it just sits quietly beside you. It’s not always sharp or loud. Sometimes it’s a stillness. A weight. A familiar presence in an empty room.
Jamie Anderson’s quote doesn’t try to fix grief — it doesn’t even try to explain it. It simply reframes it. It tells us: that thing you’re carrying? That’s love. It’s not failure. It’s not weakness. It’s all the tenderness you had to give, and no place to set it down.
That reframe has helped me breathe through the silence.
Because grief doesn’t end when someone leaves. It lingers in songs, in scents, in the shape of a hand. It’s the conversation that never got to finish. The birthday that still circles the calendar.
And understanding grief as displaced love — not brokenness — has helped me stop trying to “get over it.”
Instead, I’ve started learning how to honor it.
How to let it bloom.
How to let it sit beside me without shame.
How to write from it, speak through it, live beyond it — but never deny it.
Reflective Prompt
What memory do you carry that still aches with unspent love?
How might you give that love somewhere to go — in words, in ritual, in living fully?
Memoirs of Madness 