Grief Goes Where My Love Goes Which Is Everywhere

By Kathie Powell

They say "grief is just love with nowhere to go". It’s meant to be comforting, I suppose. And in the early days, when I felt shattered and silenced, I nodded along. Because yes grief is love. But the idea that it has nowhere to go? That never sat right with me.

Because my love goes places. Even now. Especially now.

It goes into the way I speak your name when no one else does. It goes into the stories I tell, the ones that start with, "Remember when…?" It lives in the way I still cook your favourite meal (no veggies) even though I eat it alone. It pulses through my chest when I hear one of our songs in a grocery store aisle and suddenly forget what I came for.

Love doesn’t die. And it doesn’t get lost unless we hide it. Unless we bury our grief beneath shame, or behind closed doors because the world has grown tired of our sorrow. When we’re told to move on, to be strong, to stop bringing them up, that’s when grief is love with no where to go. We feel stuck.

That’s when love is silenced, when our grief is silenced.

But if we let it breathe, if we let it rise up like a wave and crash through our bones. If we cry, scream, remember, laugh, whisper then grief becomes a current. Grief is something powerful, present and real, its always moving even when it slows down or changes direction. You see there is a way forward with love and grief they flow into stories, relationships, rituals and connection. Because grief is not a dead end. It’s a continuation. A bridge between what was and what still is. It’s the love that lives on in a heart that dares to stay open. It’s love, flowing differently now, through tears, through photos, through memories and through everyday moments when I feel you near.

So no, I don’t believe that grief is love with nowhere to go. Not when I’m still carrying you. Not when your love still shapes the way I live, and love, and show up for others.

My grief has many places to go. Grief goes where my love goes which is everywhere. Grief is our last expression of love so let it flow.

Love always,

Kath