Letters for grief
Grief comes in many shapes, and the letters in this theme reflect that. The death of a parent or a partner. The end of a long relationship. A miscarriage. A friend, a sibling, a pet who was your closest company. A body that no longer works the way it used to. A future you had quietly assumed you would have. The slow grief of watching someone disappear into illness or addiction. All of it counts, and all of it is welcome here. Letters in this theme are written by people who have moved through their own version of it and remember exactly what it asked of them — the supermarket cry, the anniversary ambush, the unbearable lightness of a Sunday afternoon. They do not try to soothe the loss. They sit beside it.
Their shoes are still by the door.
You haven't been able to move them. Two months, six months, a year — they are still where they were left, and every time you walk past you feel three things at once: the small shock of seeing them, the small comfort of seeing them, and the small guilt of the comfort.
Leave them. Move them. Both are okay. There is no correct timeline for the shoes by the door, the shirt in the wardrobe, the toothbrush in the bathroom cup. People will tell you that letting go is healthy. People will also tell you that holding on too long is unhealthy. The people telling you these things are not standing where you are standing, and they don't get to decide.
The objects are not your grief. They are the grief's furniture. You are allowed to keep them as long as you keep them.
— from a stranger