Episode 10 - Learning to Live Again (Without Leaving Them Behind)

One of the hardest parts of grief is learning how to keep living when someone you love is no longer physically here.

For many grieving people, moving forward can feel like a betrayal. We worry that healing means forgetting. We fear that laughter, joy, new experiences, or future plans somehow mean we are leaving our loved one behind.

But what if moving forward isn't about letting go at all?

In this episode, I share my own journey of learning to live after the loss of my son Harry and the powerful realisation that healing doesn't require us to leave our loved ones behind. Instead, we can carry them with us in the way we love, the choices we make, the memories we honour, and the people we become.

In this episode we explore:
 • Why moving forward can feel frightening after loss
 • The guilt many people experience when life begins to feel lighter
 • Continuing bonds and staying connected to those we love
 • How grief changes our relationship with the person who died rather than ending it
 • Ways to carry their memory forward while still embracing life

If you've ever worried that healing means forgetting, this episode is for you.

Because love doesn't end when someone dies. It simply changes form.

Harrys Helping Hands Grief & Loss Counselling

Jen Connors 0431212575

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

There can come a moment in grief where you notice life pulling at you again. A laugh, a moment of peace, a tiny part of you wanting to live. And instead of relief, it can feel like betrayal. Hi and welcome back to Grieving Greatly. Over the last few episodes, we've talked about the many layers of loss. The waves, the guilt, the changes, and the way we continue carrying the people we love. Today I want to talk about something that can feel deeply complicated. Learning to live again. There can be that quiet fear that comes in after loss. That if you start to feel okay, if you laugh, if you begin reconnecting with life, it somehow means you're leaving them behind. And for many grieving people, that can feel unbearable. Because after loss, sometimes pain becomes the only thing that still feels connecting them to you. Sometimes loss does something strange. You finally laugh, really laugh for the first time in a long, long time. And almost immediately the guilt comes in. How could I laugh when they're gone? How could I enjoy this moment? I remember moments where life briefly felt normal again. Sitting quietly somewhere with a hot chocolate, watching my children laugh, feeling calm for just a few seconds, and then suddenly panic. Because part of me thought if I can still live, what does that mean about losing Harry? There were even moments where I almost pulled myself backwards emotionally. Moments where life felt okay for a second, and my mind would suddenly go No, this isn't right. Because part of me still felt safer staying close to the pain. After losing Harry, there were moments where life slowly started to come back in very quietly, very gently, not in big dramatic ways, but just in tiny ordinary moments. Hearing myself laugh unexpectedly, singing in the car, watching a sunset, making plans without immediately feeling sick, and feeling connected to people again. I remember one day laughing at something completely stupid, and then crying ten minutes later in the supermarket car park. Because loss is strange like that. You can miss someone desperately and still have moments where life slips back in unexpectedly. Harry had this mischievous little energy about him that filled a room. And his love for ladybugs and turtles was so pure and wholehearted that even now I still can't see one without thinking of him. And sometimes even now, I still expect to hear him running through the house. At first, after loss, you were just trying to survive. Get through the hour, get through the night, get through the next breath. But eventually life starts asking a different question. Not how do I survive this? But how do I keep living now? And honestly, that transition can feel frightening too. Because surviving becomes familiar. Pain becomes familiar. After a while pain almost becomes the place your body expects to live. So peace can feel unfamiliar. Even happiness can feel uncomfortable at first. Because your body has spent so long bracing for pain. I remember always waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Always braced, always ready. Because once the worst thing imaginable has already happened, your body stops trusting life. I remember thinking well nothing could hurt more than losing Harry. But honestly, living like that hurt too. It hurt every single day. Sometimes I think grieving people become scared to fully love life again, because we know now how much there is to lose. It can feel like two completely different parts of you are existing at once a part of you still deeply grieving and another part of you slowly trying to step back into life. I remember immersing myself in my psychology studies almost as a survival strategy, and in some ways it helped. Because I held on to this tiny hope that maybe one day I could sit beside someone else in pain and help them feel less alone. But at the exact same time another part of me was thinking what even is the point of life? Because loss can hold hope and hopelessness together at the exact same time. And those two parts can feel like they don't belong together. But they do that is grief. Learning how to carry love and pain and life at the same time. Loss changes you, and sometimes when life starts returning, you realize you are not returning the same person you were before. There is a version of you that existed before loss, and there is a version of you now. And learning to live again sometimes means slowly getting to know this new version of yourself too. Because experiences like this reshape things, your priorities, your nervous system, your relationships, and your perspective on life. And that can really feel disorienting. A lot of people quietly wait for you to become who you were before. But loss changes you. And sometimes people struggle with the version of you that came back because you are softer now, or sadder, or more anxious, or less tolerant of meaningless things. And sometimes you lose people who only knew how to love the old version of you. One of the hardest parts of loss is realizing the world slowly expects you to return to normal. People stop checking in as much. Life keeps moving, conversations move on, but inside you are still carrying someone who mattered enormously. And sometimes learning to live again feels lonely. Because the world sees you functioning again while pain is still sitting quietly inside you every single day. Sometimes people become more comfortable once you start functioning again, because your pain becomes less visible. They get used to the mask, and eventually you become the person still carrying the full weight of what has happened every single day. But what people don't often realize is that grief does not disappear when life starts moving again. It simply becomes quieter. Sometimes it can even feel confronting watching other people become comfortable again. Like the world slowly adjusts to their absence while you never fully do. And that also can feel incredibly lonely. Sometimes we stay connected to pain because it feels like staying connected to them. Almost like if I stop hurting this much, am I still loving them enough? But suffering is not the measurement of love. Your pain does not need to stay unbearable for your love to remain real. Love continues even when the pain slowly softens. Moving forward does not mean leaving them behind. It doesn't mean forgetting, and it doesn't mean loving them any less. I think a lot of grieving people fear that healing means letting go. But loss has taught me something very different. Healing is not letting go of love. It's learning how to carry love differently. Acceptance to me was never this is okay because losing Harry will never feel okay. Acceptance became this is real this happened. This is now part of my life. And somehow realizing I could survive that really changed something inside me. Living again usually doesn't happen all at once. It happens quietly. You do notice yourself singing in the car. You do notice laughing at something unexpectedly. Maybe you enjoy food again. Maybe you buy things for the future. And making plans that allows you to feel connected to someone. And sometimes pain arrives immediately afterwards. But slowly those moments stop feeling so frightening. The love you have for them doesn't stay trapped in the past, it comes with you. Into your life, into your relationships, into your parenting, into the way you love people, into the person you are becoming. I used to think moving forward meant moving away from Harry. And honestly, sometimes the only comfort I could find was knowing that every day passing was one day closer to seeing him again. Because when you lose someone you love that deeply, sometimes the only thing that feels survivable is believing you'll somehow find them again one day. But eventually I realized I was never actually moving away from Harry. I was moving forward carrying someone I loved so deeply that he had become part of me. And now I think moving forward means bringing him with me into everything. Love like this doesn't end. It just changes form. Harry is not just part of my grief. He is part of who I am. Sometimes healing itself feels unsafe because pain becomes familiar. And hope can feel frightening after loss. But allowing small moments of life back in is not betrayal. It's part of being human. And I truly believe the people we love would not want us frozen forever in the worst moment of our lives. They would want us to keep laughing, keep loving, keep living, not because they mattered less, but because they mattered so much. You are allowed to laugh again. Experience peace. Reconnect with people. Enjoy moments. Build a future. Feel love. Have ambitions. Have hope. Keep living. Not all at once, not perfectly, but slowly, gently in your own time. Harry will always be part of my life, not only in the grief, but in the way I live, in the work I do, in the people I help, in the way I love, in the mother I continue to be. He is woven into everything, and maybe your person is too. You do not have to choose between grieving them and living your life. You can do both. You can miss them deeply and still slowly let life back in. Maybe healing is not learning how to live without them. Maybe it's learning how to live while loving them forever. Maybe healing is not learning how to leave them behind. Maybe it's learning how to let love continue changing shape, to carry them into your future instead of staying trapped only in the moment you lost them. Because grief changes us, but so does love. And maybe the people we lose continue living quietly. In the way we love others, in the way we see the world, and in the parts of us they help to create. And honestly, sometimes I still don't know how I do this, how any parent survives this. But somehow we keep breathing, we keep carrying them, we keep loving them, and slowly we keep living too. Maybe that is what grief becomes not moving on, but learning how to carry impossible love. Inside a life that keeps continuing. Harry will always be part of my life, not behind me, with me. You are enough and you will never be too much. This episode is for Harry and for anyone learning how to live again while still carrying love and grief together. I'm here with you, and I'll be here with you in the next episode. For Harry and for every life deeply loved. Reach out anytime for support on 0431 212575. Thank you.