I honor your journey as you experience these posts, knowing how much courage it takes to pause, reflect, and acknowledge the ways loss has touched your life.

Closure, if ever a real thing, is elusive in a situation that is capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways, or when a situation is difficult to discern or categorize.

Compound grief is the accumulation of losses in a short period of time; when you do not have a chance to grieve one loss before another one shows up. It is a form of trauma that I think is not recognized enough. When events overwhelm our ability to cope, we can get stuck in flight, fight, freeze or fawn, hypervigilant or desensitized in ways we are not even aware of.

Yes, you were hurt there. Yes, that was scary and made you feel different from all the other girls. But yes, you were then, and you are now, so loveable and worthy of letting go of this pain. I acknowledge this for you.

Honor whatever it is you have lost by allowing for the bittersweet, and your brain will create new meaning for those anniversaries.