I see you

Photo by Sebastian Unrau

I write folklore in the woods.

That’s how I’ve survived what 2013 opened in my life—and everything that followed.

Because it hasn’t stopped there. There has been so much loss since then. So many moments where life has taken another piece of what I thought I understood. People. Time. Versions of myself. Things I didn’t even have language for until they were already gone.

It’s deep in a way that doesn’t flatten out with time. It doesn’t become “something I went through.” It becomes something I continue to move through. Again and again. In different forms. In different seasons. With different weights.

And I’ve learned there’s no clean way to carry that.

Some days you can write through it. Some days you can only sit beside it. And some days it feels like it’s writing you instead.

So I want to say this, to anyone who understands this kind of ongoing loss:

You are not meant to force yourself into distance from it.

You don’t have to make it smaller to make it bearable.

Let it be what it is. Let it be as deep as it actually is.

There is no failure in feeling it fully. There is no weakness in still being affected by what has never stopped changing you.

If anything, there is truth in it.

So I stay here. In the woods. In the writing. In the remembering. In the ongoingness of it all.

And I let it be real.

What do you want to say to people who understand the ongoingness of loss?