Coming home through loss

I think about death lately more and more. Not in a morbid way, but in a way that asks: if I died tomorrow, would I have regrets?

And I think I wouldn't.

What's most important to me is that I've made known to the family I have that I care about them. I've tried to show up, even when I didn't know how. I've stayed when I could. When I couldn't, I've learned to forgive myself for being human.

But it took losing people to learn that. It took letting people down to understand what matters.

The people who occupy space

There are people who didn't spend that much time with me but who occupy a huge space in how my psyche evolved, in my perceptions about love and life.

My friend who died of cancer when I was 17 is one of them.

When the cancer got bad, he pushed his friends away. I knew he wanted support. I could feel it. But I also let him change plans. Let follow ups fall through. I didn't know how to hold someone who was dying. I was 17.

There are people I know I let down, people I couldn't hold at the time. There are many people I'm sure I've disappointed in my short time on this earth. I think about them. Not with the goal of closure, but with something else, gratitude, maybe. Recognition that they shaped who I am today.

What growing older teaches

Here's what I've learned about getting older: letting people down is part of living. Disappointing people is inevitable. You can't hold everyone, be everything, show up perfectly. You can't always know how to show up, or have the capacity to show up the way someone needs.

This isn't failure. It's what happens when you're alive long enough to matter to people.

When you're 17, you don't know how to sit with someone who's dying. You're scared. You're overwhelmed. You let plans fall through because you don't know what else to do.

When you're older, you look back and see all the ways you were imperfect. All the people you wish you'd shown up for differently. All the moments you can't take back.

And you have a choice: spend your life chasing closure for those moments, or let them teach you something.

The wound that brought me home

My friend's death taught me something I carry with me now—I will never prioritise work ahead of being with the people I care about in their time of need.

That wound doesn't close. There's no conversation that would make it okay that I didn't show up the way I wish I had.

But the wound taught me who I am, what I value, how I want to live.

It brought me home to myself—not through closure, but through the lesson. Not through resolution, but through change.

The loss didn't need to be tied up neatly. It needed to shape me into someone who lives differently now.

What "coming home" actually means

Coming home to yourself isn't about having all the answers. It's not about resolving everything that's happened to you, understanding why things went the way they did, or getting closure on every loss.

It's about knowing who you are because of what you've lost.

In my practice, I work with professionals and entrepreneurs who are carrying losses—careers that ended messily, projects they poured everything into that failed, partnerships that dissolved, relationships sacrificed for work that didn't pan out, the anger at giving so much to things that let them down.

What I've noticed is that the ones who are stuck aren't the ones carrying the most pain. They're the ones still searching for closure. They're waiting for the conversation that will make it make sense. The apology that will make it okay. The explanation that will let them finally move on.

But the people who've come home to themselves? They've stopped waiting. Not because the pain went away, but because they let the loss teach them something about who they are.

It's carrying the lessons, the regrets, the gratitude. It's living in alignment with what the losses taught you about what matters.

Pauline Boss, who researches grief and loss, says: "You don't get over it. You learn to live with it. Your story of love and loss doesn't need to end, to be tidied up and put away. It simply needs to be carried."

But what we carry isn't just the pain. It's what the pain taught us about who we are.

The friend I lost at 17—I carry the lesson that people matter more than productivity, that deadlines can always wait, that showing up matters more than being comfortable. That's not a closed chapter. It's who I've become.

The ambiguity we live with

I think ambiguity in life is the most difficult thing for human beings. We're wired to make sense of things, to find patterns, to create coherent narratives. Our brains literally can't tolerate too much uncertainty—it's why we see faces in clouds and meaning in coincidence.

Maybe that's why closure feels so essential. It promises to resolve the ambiguity. To turn the question mark into a full stop.

But some things don't get full stops. Some relationships end mid-sentence. Some people leave without explanation. Some losses never make sense.

My friend died, and I never got to tell him I was sorry. That's a fact I can't change. But I can change what I do with that fact. I can let it teach me. I can carry what it showed me about how I want to live.

Learning to hold that ambiguity; the unresolved loss, the unanswered questions, the goodbyes that never happened; that's part of coming home to yourself. Not because you've made peace with it, but because you've learned to live as someone who carries it.

Living without closure, living with yourself

Here's what I know now that I didn't know at 17:

You don't need closure to come home to yourself.

You don't need the final conversation, the perfect apology, the explanation that makes it all make sense.

You don't need to tie everything up neatly. You don't need every relationship to have a clear ending. You don't need to understand why everything happened the way it did.

What you need is to let the losses teach you. To carry what they showed you about what matters. To live differently because of what you've learned.

My friend died without me being there the way I wish I had. And because of that, I show up differently now. I prioritise differently. I love more intentionally.

I think about all the people I've let down, all the ways I've been imperfect, all the losses I carry. And instead of seeking closure, I ask: what did this teach me about who I am? What did this show me about how I want to live?

That's how you come home to yourself. Not through resolution, but through integration. Not through closure, but through becoming someone who lives according to what the losses taught you.

The wounds don't close. But they've made me more of who I want to be.

It's proof that loss can be a teacher. That wounds can show you who you are. That carrying what you've lost, and what it taught you, is how you become yourself.

You don't need to close the door on your losses. You just need to keep walking forward, carrying what you've learned, showing up the way you wish you had, becoming the person the loss is teaching you to be.

It's not about healing the wound. It's about letting the wound bring you home.