Life is beautiful but it’s also hard. Tough stuff happens every single day and losing the very things we come to know and love crushes the soul in ways that are hard to comprehend.

I had always believed every loss made me stronger. I believed I was “good at grief” and nothing could cause me to bend and break.

But, I was wrong.

Grief isn’t something you master or get good at. Every loss is different and every time I’ve had to say goodbye to someone I love, my heart broke.

And, I don’t want to be good at grief. I want to experience it and feel every bit of it. Because it’s one of the only things that makes sense after loss. Because it means I have loved.

Perhaps loss and the many times I’ve come to intimately know grief has made me stronger.

But what if I don’t want to be stronger?

I don’t want to become so strong I can’t give myself permission to feel weak. I don’t want my heart to become so hard I can’t allow myself to feel vulnerable or cry. I don’t want to put up so many walls that nothing can touch me in the ways that make us all human or remind us we are alive.

Instead, I want all of the heartbreaking things in life to soften the edges around my heart. I want to open my mind to all of the possibilities both good and bad. To live with the knowing of just how fragile this life is. To take nothing for granted and embrace the ordinary because sometimes it’s the simplest of moments that are the most exquisite and extraordinary.

I don’t want to put on a brave face every single day and have to smile because that’s what everyone else needs me to do.

Perhaps I don’t want to hold it all together but would rather allow myself to break and fall apart once in awhile. Because there’s wisdom and growth when we are forced to put ourselves back together again.

Why is it so wrong to want to feel the burn of loss and to actually feel the pain of a thousand little paper cuts in my heart?

I don’t want to be strong or hardened by loss. I want to feel the soft side of grief and become more compassionate and empathetic because of it. And, in the process, I’m hoping my soft heart can somehow help you when your heart breaks and you are forced to try and put it back together again.

Sometimes, becoming a softer version of ourselves makes us better human beings and to give our hearts with love and the act of service to others is what helps us to survive. I wish no one had to know the pain of loss, but that’s not possible. Everyone will grieve.

There will always be pieces of me that are missing and my heart may never look the same but I know that every time I grieve, I’m becoming a softer version of me.

And I’m okay with that.

With love -

Michele