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.
Some griefs don't come with a funeral.
The life you thought you were building is not happening, and there is no ritual for that. No one brings a casserole when a future dies. People don't always recognise it as grief — they tell you to be grateful for what you have, or to pivot, or to look on the bright side, and the words slide off you because none of them are about what you actually lost.
You lost a person. The person was you, in a future that won't happen now. That is a real loss, and you are allowed to mourn her. You don't have to justify her to anyone.
The new version of your life, when she comes, will come slowly. You don't have to build her tonight. Tonight you can just be the person who lost the other one. That is enough work for one day.
— from a stranger who has buried a future or two