Letters I’ll Never Send

Today someone mentioned a solar eclipse and I immediately thought of you. The grief hit me so fast I didn’t even have time to process it. I remembered how much you loved weather and space, and every rare event that came with them. You had this passion for chasing eclipses, storms, meteor showers, anything that made you feel connected to something bigger. It was something I never really understood. Honestly, those things never interested me all that much until I got to experie

Today a memory from our very first session together flooded into my mind. There is grief that comes with the memory because I can recognize the care, the nurturance, and the compassion you offered me. Not only in that session, but in every session. The grief comes from a few different places. I genuinely just miss you and many things about you. It also comes from recognizing, not for the first time but with more embodiment than I’ve ever felt before, how much you offered me t

I wish we could be a part of each other’s lives. Missing you is painful. Wanting to be able to talk to you is painful. Grieving your absence is painful. I wish we had met under different circumstances. I don’t regret you being my therapist, because you having that role in my life changed me in so many ways. But I wish it didn’t have to mean that talking was impossible. That having a friendship was impossible. That the connection had to stay locked inside the boundaries that k

Tonight’s one of those nights where I have to write letters like this. The kind that spill out of missing someone I can’t reach. I wish I could tell you how much I miss you. How much I wish I could have been in your office today, sitting across from you, the air holding that quiet safety that always felt like a soft landing. I wish I could have heard your familiar voice filling the space between us. I miss your therapeutic silence, the way it could hold the weight of my grief

Hey there, Did you know I actually got that greeting from you? That I found it so gentle and endearing that I adopted it for myself…for the people I want to show tenderness to. Did you know I keep plants in my house because my love for them started in your office? Because the safety I felt there made me want to recreate that feeling in my own space. I think of you when I water them. Did you know you were the first person outside of my wife who heard my story? That because of