Your sense of security, safety, and life’s direction all need to be reconfigured with no road map. All you need to do is take one glance at people your age and you’re hit with the realization that you are now on an entirely different plane of existence.

Having lost your parent(s), your sights are no longer fixed upon the future because you are renegotiating your understanding of the world and your place in it. So many emotions arise from this impossible understanding — it’s not uncommon to feel anger, resentment, lack of motivation, self-sabotage, and hopelessness. There’s so much to work through.

It won’t be long until you begin to really understand what most people your age will remain blind to for decades:

The permanence of forever.

Your first exposure to real, true, tangible permanence is in retraining your brain not to predict a future with your parent(s) in it.

When you lose your parent(s) at a young age, you are forced, for the first time in your life, to try to wrap your head around the concept of “forever.”

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I don’t mean to oversimplify here, but… death is permanent. It is the most undoable event we will ever be exposed to.

And while the idea of this seems obvious, the lived experience of it is truly profound.

Parental loss has handed you an understanding that does not fit the world view you’ve developed. And you have no choice but to build a life inside this understanding — anything else would be pure delusion. It’s like being handed the keys to a manual transmission car before you’ve learned to drive at all. Maybe you were even handed the car keys before you could ride a bike without training wheels. What could go wrong?

Confused, lost, and disconnected, you now have to conceptualize the rest of your life without those who GAVE that life to you.

For most people, getting married or having children is the first time they imagine what “forever” feels like.

You choose your spouse with the intention to spend the rest of your life with them.

You have children knowing that you will be a parent for the rest of your life.

The main difference here is that getting married and having children is a choice. These are choices made by adults who have lived enough life to exercise their agency and choose to build a life for themselves that they love.

Your first exposure to the permanence of forever is marked by a much different experience. Because you were so young? Yes. But also because you had absolutely zero choice in the matter.

In fact, when you’re young and need guidance, safety, and a secure launchpad from which to build yourself — it’s gone.

Your roots have been severed underground and you’re expected to stand as tall as the rest of the trees around you, growing at the same exact rate, without showing any signs of distress. Life has proven to you that it keeps moving no matter how gigantic your loss is.

I’m here to tell you that looking at the growth of others around you, who have zero exposure to the permanence of forever, will never yield an accurate picture of who you are or how you’ve grown.

It’s like you’ve skipped ahead several decades, and you’ve grown branches that all of us WILL have to grow, but you’re doing it much earlier. We had no choice in the matter, and our growth is not linear… but maybe that’s the point.

What looks like growth to other people your age looks completely different for you.

You’re piecing together a mosaic of yourself — every experience, blissful and devastating, plays a role in who we become and the choices we make. We are all living, breathing examples of how different life circumstances produce different rates of growth.

The key ingredient here is grace.

Grace for yourself, grace for your parent(s), grace for how your life experiences have shaped you, and, most of all: grace for the fact that your life is unfolding in a way completely different than the ways you (or anyone you know) ever imagined.

Your growth is seen, heard, and recognized here.

You are not alone.

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They’re not just being pessimistic.

When you lose your parent at a young age, you realize how quickly the world just keeps spinning.

You learn just how replaceable we all are.

In the weeks following your parent’s death, they’ll be replaced at work.

In the months following your parent’s death, they’ll be replaced at their place of residence.

In the years following your parent’s death, the gap they leave in their social circles will be quietly filled in.

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We’ve all read posts online that talk about the importance of living your life while you have it.

They’ll say “you’re replaceable at work, so make sure you prioritize the beauty of the life you have now.” These are conceptual reminders of the importance of living a life that is truly meaningful and fulfilled.

You, on the other hand, don’t need a conceptual reminder. Every moment of your waking life is a reminder. You don’t need these gentle nudges to show you life’s fragility and preciousness. You’ve seen it.

Losing a parent at a young age shows you that no matter how important or central to your life somebody is, they could be gone in an instant. And you could be left to pick up the pieces.

When somebody as integral as your parent is gone, it leaves you seeing almost everything in life differently.

You might start to wonder, “if my parent could be ripped away at any moment, so could any relationship…” or “What about my intimate relationships? What about my closest friendships? What about the family I have left?” And you really start to internalize the ripple effect this loss has on every other connection in your life.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Part of grief is grappling with motivation to achieve, chase, or do anything. But given your understanding of how colossal parts of your life can just go away with no warning, the potential for loss is also felt in any desires and goals you may have set for yourself.

You might even start to wonder, “if the most important people can be taken from me at any moment, what’s to say the most important accomplishments and achievements can’t be ripped away?” Everything is tinged with a shade of “why even try?”

This feeling does not mean you are broken.

This feeling also unlocks a path toward freedom to live in the present moment.

Because what you ultimately learn from how replaceable life has shown you we all are…is the true uncertainty that life holds.

That uncertainty reveals one of the most freeing realizations you can possibly have: all we have is now. This isn’t a rose-colored-glasses moment, nor is this cope. This is truth. It will only ever be right now.

When you think about the past, you’re doing it right now. When you worry about the future, you’re worrying right now. When you plan anything for tomorrow, you’re doing it right now. When you’re reflecting, internalizing, processing events of your life that led you here, you guessed it— you’re doing it right now.

It will only ever be right now.

Read it again.

Practicing your acceptance of this reality is the greatest act of self-love you can muster. It honors your agency and freedom while also honoring the most intimate and highest truth of the human experience: impermanence.

Accepting this unavoidable reality also brings us one step closer to being truly present. And being truly present takes us one step closer to freedom.

We deserve freedom, right?

~

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~

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I can feel June coming in my bones. It’s a heavy time of year for me.

My mom’s birthday and the date of her death are within two weeks of each other.

On June 11th of this year, I was feeling so incredibly lonely.

I know I’m loved by those closest to me, but no matter how hard they try, most will never be able to understand the experience of losing your parent(s) at a young age.

So I propped up my phone on my kitchen table and just started talking about my experience. I told the world that I felt isolated and needed community where I didn’t see one. And after seeing the responses, I started creating the community I so desperately needed. Turns out I’m not the only one who needed it.

Less than two months later, there are over 38,000 of us.

I want to thank you for your presence and your willingness to find support in such a challenging experience.

You’re seeing this message because you’ve indicated you’d like to be part of a community of young people who have experienced parental loss.

My initial idea (in addition to the daily videos on TikTok and the articles on Substack) is to host two 1-hour live video support groups per week - but I’m committed to building this community in a way that works for us.

I’ve created a survey to better understand what our community wants and needs from a support group. Please click the link below so I can learn how to best serve our community.

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With so much love,

Al

The “normal” you unknowingly took for granted is gone.

The milestones you were excited about fade to a blur.

Your motivation to achieve your dreams (or literally anything) is colored with a hue of “why even bother?”

The holiday traditions, your family as you knew it, and the comfort of knowing you’ll be cheered on through all of life’s hardest and most beautiful moments… have all evaporated into thin air.

One of the hardest parts of parental loss at a young age is that you likely don’t have an example of somebody who has made it through the hardship that’s been handed to you. I mean, there are people many decades older than you who still have both parents. Even the wisest among us often can’t understand what it’s like to walk in your shoes.

You’re now tasked with the labor of being your own best example of how to navigate completely foreign territory.

You are your parent now.

You are your own protector and you are your own safe place.

You are responsible for being your own security.

You are the person you call before making every major life decision.

You are playing so many damn roles that should never be yours to take on at such a young age. Recognizing this burden puts us a step closer to freedom. We’ve been handed a life sentence completely against our will.

I like to think I know my parents well enough to know what they’d say in most situations. But I’ve still been completely robbed of their guidance. Maybe they’d say something entirely out of the ordinary that makes me think about my situation differently. Maybe they’d offer some observations that could mold my perspective into something I never would’ve arrived at on my own.

Reconstructing yourself while you still need guidance feels impossible. You don’t need to search to find evidence that you’re parent-less. The reminders are everywhere.

It stings to see a child being joyfully pushed on the swings by both of their parents, laughing and smiling, taking pictures and making memories. And if you consider the family structure portrayed in the media we consume, how most people spend the most important days of the year, and the assumption that you even have parents at all when meeting new people… you’re constantly being shown what you’re missing everywhere you turn. It feels inescapable.

At a certain point, you just start feeling so sick of your own tragedy. You’re sick of the stinging in your chest and the lack of motivation to do literally anything some days.

I’m here to tell you that the emotional and physical exhaustion you are feeling is valid. And it is real.

Experiencing burnout from grief, I’m learning, isn’t unique to me. After I started posting videos about my experience with parental loss, messages and stories have poured in by the thousands. Through this experience, I’ve been able to recognize that I’m not crazy for feeling numb, depleted, and sick of the true toll that losing a parent at a young age takes on you.

Feeling grief’s burnout is like a constant tap on your shoulder. Life is speaking to you. It’s saying, “you are carrying more than you ever thought imaginable.”

For carrying all of this and more, let me be among the first to say:

I am proud of you.

And you are not alone.

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After my mom passed in 2017, I was struck with so many questions.

What’s really going on here?

Where do we come from?

Where do we go once we die?

I felt like a child in school all over again, begging for simple answers to complex questions.

It felt genuinely impossible to wrap my head around how a person could inhabit a body one moment, and the next moment they’re just…gone? Surely, all of that energy must have somewhere to go — right?

Before my mom died, I never gave serious thought to what lies beyond this lifetime. I never had to. But trying to piece together a parent-less life ignited a hunger in me to dive inward. To get quiet enough to listen to life and what it was trying to tell me. To see, hear, and experience answers to my questions in my daily life.

After 9 years, it has become abundantly clear to me that when we die, the best parts of us live on through those we leave behind.

I hear my mother’s voice when my sister speaks. I see her mannerisms when my brother tells a story. I see her generosity and her stark desire to include those who are chronically excluded in myself.

Although our parents no longer have the ability to experience life through their own eyes, they still have ours. When our parents no longer have their own dreams, ambitions, visions of the future — we are the part of them that lives on.

So what can we actually DO?

We can get clear.

We can get clear on what kind of life we want to experience. The people, the routines, the growth, the adventures, the sense of fulfillment. The way it feels to wake up every morning knowing we are loved, seen, heard, and cared for.

This might take time and that’s okay. It might take experiencing people and situations we do NOT want in order to show us what we DO want. That is absolutely okay too. What we’re looking for is a settled, safe feeling in our chest.

Trying to run life like a race when you have an ailment that so few people your age share is fruitless. I’ve learned the hard way that trying to keep up and force yourself onto others’ timelines will put you even further behind.

It’s beyond reasonable to give yourself grace and patience as you learn about what you want. After all, you’re in an entirely new life now.

I understand that this could be perceived as a radical act. Embarking on a mission to “live a life beyond your wildest dreams” when you feel like a piece of you is missing, when all you want to do is get horizontal in the dark, is…a tall order.

But losing your parent(s) has taught you that this planet will continue spinning no matter what. Even with your parent(s) gone while you’re still here with your entire life ahead of you.

So if you start now by gently exploring the thought “what do I want?” you could arguably put yourself closer to happiness than the life you’re living now, even if by just an inch. Which, I don’t need to tell you, is exactly what your parent(s) would want.

Getting clear on what you want is vital. It’s what you need in order to embody the life you want. You can’t have your sights set on something you can’t see.

Your vision of your greatest life, paired with an openness to new experiences, people, and a willingness to take the scenic route, will shine a light on you brighter than the sun.

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It’s not as often that I hear grieving people talk about what grief does to their remaining relationships — and the prospect of entering new ones.

When you lose a parent at a young age, life is very clearly showing you that nothing and nobody is promised. Not a single person can be taken for granted. Nothing is permanent.

In your case, this particularly applies to the most central figures in your life. Your experience has taught you that even the most solid-looking ground can fall through at any moment. This realization can make the other relationships in your life feel more difficult to trust.

In your youngest years, you’re on a “track” of sorts. Grow up, go to school, graduate, educate, work, take steps in your career, blah blah blah. If you’re a young person who’s experienced parental loss, your track has been completely cut off at the edge of a cliff. In the moments you needed a track, a guide, the most… it completely disappeared.

Your severed track immediately sets you apart — not only from everyone your age, but from many people decades older than you. The fact that I know people many decades older than me who still have both parents blows my mind. You stick out like a sore thumb among everyone around you.

Feeling understood, then, is practically impossible. It’s like you’re returning to a life that you used to live as someone completely new. The people in your life try to relate to you in the same ways they did before, but the way you relate to everything and everyone is now completely different. They’re well-meaning, well-intentioned, and loving, but they don’t understand you. How could they? And why would you want anyone to understand this feeling?

Your existing relationships now carry the tension of how misunderstood you are.

…and initiating new relationships can feel just as empty.

The thought “why even bother?” may cross your mind. Why even bother putting energy into other relationships? Why even bother taking part in friendship, community, camaraderie, or even acquaintanceship? You don’t have to look far to understand why a person who’s experienced parental loss at a young age may be jaded or succumb to apathy. They know it can all go away instantly.

In the most difficult of moments, I do my very best to lean into the fact that, though it often feels like it, we really aren’t alone. In our close circles? Maybe. But out there in the world? Nope.

Since starting this community five weeks ago, my eyes have been opened to truly how many people have experienced parental loss at a young age.

You feel the shockwave of loss ripple through your relationships with the deceased, with those close to you, and with those you’ve yet to meet. You can’t unsee what losing a parent has shown you. But you can lean into the rare people and spaces where you are understood.

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The more you try to make sense of the unthinkable, the less sense it makes. You just wish you could talk to them, see them, feel close to them again. And maybe we can.

A realization hit me the other night when I caught my reflection in my hall mirror. I seriously had to do a double take.

The shape of my jaw and the tiny dimples next to the corners of my mouth, the shape of my teeth, the way my nose scrunches up when I laugh. “That’s mom,” I said out loud to myself.

In an instant, it struck me: the closest you’ll ever get to your parent again is…you.

You are their legacy. You are who they have left behind. You are the carrier of their DNA.

There’s no way of accurately depicting the experience of knowing you’ll never see your parent(s) again. The finality of it all, the ways in which you must completely rearrange your world view and the way you navigate each and every day, and the torture of watching everyone your age have experiences that are now impossible for you. It’s heavy.

But I try to hitch a ride on the high of seeing those we’ve lost through a new lens. Because that’s all we’ve got now. A new lens.

If you have siblings, you may find that you can now see your parent(s) in them, too.

My brother’s use of a silly, esoteric phrase that I only ever heard leave my mother’s mouth, the tone and timbre of my sister’s voice and the cadence with which she speaks. This is the closest I’ll ever get to my mom (short of when she visits me in dreams). That stings. It’s also beautiful.

When my mom passed in 2017, I was 23. I had no idea how to carry on or move forward with business as usual. And that’s because we’re not supposed to. The way I related to literally everything and everyone was shattered into fragments I’d spend the rest of my life trying to hold together with no glue.

I was left with so many questions about life after my first exposure to parental loss. Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where do we go?

It nearly broke my brain thinking about how somebody could inhabit this body for so long, that they could have a discernible presence you could feel when they entered a room even without seeing them, and then they can just be…gone. Yes, I know where their body is. But what about them? Their personality, their dreams, their presence, their energy. Where does all of that go?

Over the years, I’ve come up with many more questions and I’ve also found a few of my own answers. It’s an ever-evolving path, but I’ve arrived at an understanding that:

When we’re gone, the best parts of us live on through those we love the most.

The shape of my jaw, the cadence of my sister’s voice, the upbeat peppy way my brother says just about everything — that’s our mom. She’s here because we, even without knowing it, carry her forward into every moment as we continue to live.

And when my siblings and I pass away, those who love us will carry those parts of us, too. Maybe my nieces and nephews will carry on the phrases my mom used to use. Even without knowing it, maybe our parents will live on through future generations the same way they do through us.

So next time you’re struck by your reflection in the mirror, or you see a photo of yourself that stops you in your tracks, consider what parts of your lost loved one(s) you’re seeing. Maybe your person on the other side is saying hi.

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All it takes is seeing my mom’s favorite flower, hearing someone say a phrase she often used, or catching a glimpse of her favorite number on a license plate, and I’m struck with the devastation that she’s no longer here.

These triggers are often hard to avoid. You don’t know when they’re going to find you. I could be just about anywhere in the world and still be reminded of the loss I’ve endured. Emblems of this loss can penetrate my awareness by their very existence, and suddenly, my attention is fixated on the void that’s been left behind.

Grief does not allow you to negotiate with its presence or what sparked it — grief says, “Here I am, I am immovable. Now carry me with you everywhere you go. You have no choice.”

What nobody talks about, though, is the grief you battle when you receive good news.

Sharing your evolution, your milestones, and your accomplishments with the people who taught you how to be a person is a luxury that I do not think is acknowledged.

You don’t have to look far to find somebody your age who takes for granted the opportunity to pick up the phone and hear the person who gave them life on the other end. It’s one of the most common tendencies we have as human beings: to share with our village.

You have the same tendency as other people your age, except for you, the village you come from has been hit by a tornado. You do not have the option of picking up the phone and telling the person who gave you this human experience that you’ve achieved a significant benchmark in that human experience.

For you, every wonderful piece of news you’ll receive for the rest of your life will come with a sting, a burn, a heat signature. It’s like a hollow type of proud. Your achievement doesn’t quite feel real nor does it quite feel right. There’s a certain apathy and a fair amount of questioning what you’re even doing it for.

You’ll wonder, “what would mom or dad think of this?” — you’ll reach for the only person you want to share your pride with just to learn, all over again, that they cannot be reached. Sometimes it feels like forever without them, sometimes it feels like just yesterday. What’s important to acknowledge is that your loss will likely feel fresh for the rest of your life.

Why? Because we’re constantly evolving, growing, expanding. And so is our perspective. So really what we’re learning to do is relate to their absence from a different vantage point. We’re experiencing the same pain of feeling left behind by the only people that *should* unconditionally love us and be present, just from a new perspective, a new version of us.

We have to let this new version of us grieve, too. Which can feel so isolating, daunting, and absolutely exhausting because of the lifetime of stings and burns ahead of us. The version of me who was 23 and bewildered that I’d lost a parent deserves just as much grace as the 32 version of me who has to be reminded of it every time I accomplish something wonderful.

Grieving your loss when you receive good news, no matter how long it’s been, is one thing. But allowing this new version of you to grieve from your new shoes is essential.

You’re grieving your relationship with good news itself — not as something you get to share with your parents and receive their affection and accolades, but as another brick in the wall of the life you actually deserve to live.

Sometimes I wonder if the greatest service we can do to those we’ve lost is to live the life of our wildest dreams. And that includes working to accept all aspects of this new life, including how grief impacts the way we navigate receiving good news.

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That is, until 2023 when my dad was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. A quick skim of the literature on this disease would leave anybody speechless.

I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that over the next 5-8 years, my dad would most likely become a shell of himself, unable to communicate or control his body, bed bound, constantly hallucinating, unable to swallow, drink water, or eat food, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

As if this wasn’t enough, my father’s wife of over 20 years left him amidst his diagnosis. Having no other close family, my three siblings and I went into crisis mode.

I moved back to Pennsylvania from the life I’d spent 9 years building in California. I thought I’d rent an apartment close to my dad should he need support or assistance. After a couple months, it quickly became clear to me that my dad could not live alone. My dog and I moved into the small office in his two bedroom apartment and I took on the responsibility of being his primary caregiver.

In the beginning, I did what I could to keep things feeling “normal.” I tried my best to be what my dad had always been for us — a silver lining. After our mom died, on every holiday, milestone, and occasion that my mom would forever be absent for, my siblings and I often talked about how lucky we were to have our dad. After his diagnosis in 2023, it became clear that our luck was running out.

I took my dad to every doctor’s appointment, every care provider, advocated for him medically/administratively/financially, cooked every meal, and absorbed just about every responsibility you could imagine.

If you’ve never had to take your only living parent’s driver’s license away, you’re fortunate. Seeing the person who taught you how to be independent now become completely and entirely dependent on you when you’re still young enough to crave their guidance is… something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (if I had a worst enemy).

As the illness progressed, I could feel my grip on the silver lining loosening. My grip was loosening not because I couldn’t hold it, but because the silver lining was turning to sand, slipping through my fingers.

Before long, there was no silver lining — just the promise of a horrific death. I was starting to understand why people in the caregiver support group I’d joined on Facebook would type “my loved one is free” when they passed away.

Waking up every morning not knowing if I was going to find my father’s body in his bed would turn anybody into a distraught, shut down, panicked version of themselves. I, however, did not have that luxury. I had to keep it together.

I had to be my dad’s eyes, his ears, and his mouth. He couldn’t finish a coherent sentence, he’d cough during most meals due to his swallow reflex weakening, and he’d hallucinate the most grotesque and terrifying scenarios imaginable. As you may have guessed by now, I fell into the strangest, deepest depression.

I started zoning out when anybody would talk to me about pretty much anything. I couldn’t remember things like I used to (my memory has been my sharpest tool for as long as I could remember), and the palette of bricks on my chest felt like it was being stacked up by the minute.

When my dad started sleeping for much of the day, I’d take my dog out on walks. I’m not talking 20 minute walks. We’d be gone for hours at a time. These walks would help me think, process, breathe, and get what little distance I could from the office in this 2 bedroom apartment that had become my life.

As the seasons changed and it got colder, I could no longer take such long walks. So I went to the apartment complex gym. I’d walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes on a steep incline. The first few days, it sucked. I hated it. I could barely finish. I had to force myself to push through.

After a week, around minute 40 on the treadmill, I’d start to feel a bubbling inside me. It was like something was trying to express itself in my chest. A release, a relief, a euphoria of sorts. I began to chase that feeling because it was the only relief I had access to. My heart was breaking every day from watching my last living parent fade away and I’d be damned if I didn’t take any ounce of lightness I could access.

I started showing up to the treadmill day after day with an excitement of sorts. I stopped looking forward to just about anything, so now that I finally had something to look forward to that also brought me relief, I held onto it for dear life. My consistency was born from the relief I so desperately needed.

One afternoon, all four treadmills were occupied. So I almost walked out, when I got a quiet nudge, a light tug, toward the other side of the room. I feasted my eyes on the rack of dumbbells and thought, “okay, I’ll lift these for 5 minutes so nobody can say they saw me walk in and walk right out without exercising.”

I picked up some weights.

Silly as it sounds, those weights changed my life forever. In the dead of winter, as the sun began setting at 3:30pm, and everything in me wanted to fall into the pit of my bed, I forced myself to lift those weights.

The cycle is hard to break because depression manifests itself in many different ways — one of which is the inability to move or motivation to do just about anything. The social withdrawal, below zero energy levels, and mental fog go completely against what I’m telling you to do. And that is: move.

It didn’t take a long time of consistently lifting those dumbbells to I realize that the heaviness, the zoning out, and the bodily/mental fog I mentioned earlier were byproducts of grief. That’s how grief feels when it’s trapped in the body. The dumbbells gave those grief symptoms somewhere to go that wasn’t trapped in my body.

I didn’t have this realization logically — it’s something I understood somatically. I could actually feel in my body. All the proof I needed was there. Lifting those weights released some cocktail of chemicals in my body that gave me a fighting chance at moving the grief through my body and allowing it to be expressed physically.

I often joke that “they don’t make anything in a lab this strong” when talking about the medicinal effects I feel from doing 15-20 minutes of lifting those weights every day. But I know it to be true.

If you want to be strong, you have to lift heavy things. Emotionally, I’m already lifting well above what I ever thought I would. The physical exertion helps my emotional body feel expressed rather than repressed. I know it’s the last thing you want to do some days, it sure as hell is for me, but if you’d humor me and try it, you might never look back.

Whatever you do, do not let grief get stuck in your body.

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Hell, there are people three decades older than you that still haven’t experienced the bottomless pit that’s taken over your life.

For the first few months, people show up. People check in. People remind you they’re here “if you need” them. You’re often applauded for your resiliency and your effort. It won’t be long before somebody mutters the dreaded phrase:

“You are so strong.”

I’m not sure how to say this without coming off completely rude and dismissive, but… do you really think I had a choice?

This life-shattering loss was thrust upon me by life, actually. I was forced. No consent or warning. I had no say in the matter. I was at an age where everyone around me was pressing the gas pedal toward their dreams, their milestones, their potential. My life, on the other hand, slammed on the brakes.

I didn’t get to choose the weights I need to lift in order to get stronger. It’s as if somebody dropped the heaviest weight imaginable at my feet, chained me to that weight, and said, “okay, now lift it until you can carry it with you everywhere you go. And carry it forever.”

When you lose your parent(s) at a young age, everyone around you is looking towards the future. At the very least, they’re “young, dumb, and living in the moment.” You, on the other hand, are constantly yearning for the past.

I don’t say “yearning for the past” as if you’re chasing nostalgia — as if you’re longing for the days when you could stay home sick from school and watch Jerry Springer and Maury all day.

You want to return to the past because all you want is to feel normal for one damn second.

What would I look like now without this sign hanging from my neck that says “I will never again be normal”? How would I feel and what would I be looking forward to if I hadn’t experienced such a monumental loss at such an early age?

Not only were your younger years hijacked, but so is every future holiday, every milestone, and every birthday. There isn’t a celebration that goes by without your void on full display. And that’s an incredibly exhausting space to live in for the rest of your life.

The burnout is real, but you have no choice. This is the choice that life made for you and it’s yours to carry. That’s one of the most difficult parts of grieving your parent(s) at a young age — you’re forced to carry the weight of events so far out of your control that you never ever would’ve chosen.

You’re left desperate for normalcy, fishing for meaning, lost in the meaninglessness of it all. You’re watching your life like a movie that took an awful turn in the first 20 minutes but you have to keep watching the movie. That can feel like an out-of-body experience — like watching a montage of everyone else’s life, that will never look anything like yours, in slow motion, day in and day out.

Your inaccessibility to normalcy may have you wanting to disappear on holidays and times when you *should* be surrounded by your people.

I’m intent on creating a space we can occupy rather than shrink into. If you’re here, you are seen, you are understood, and you’re not alone.

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I scan their speech for signs that they’re about to wrap it up. “How much longer do you think this could really last?” I ask myself.

Hoping it’ll be over soon, I try to assist in getting us to the end of the conversation as soon as possible. I’ll finish their sentences, try to offer something uplifting and light, or shorten my responses so much that they think I’ve lost interest. Truthfully, I’m fighting for my life over here.

Why?

• Because my blood doesn’t boil at the thought of my co-worker taking on less work than they’re responsible for.

• I can’t feel the insurmountable impact of the restaurant staff making a mistake on my order.

• I don’t find community in the world-crumbling dilemma of last night’s Love Island drama.

• I’ll survive the devastation of getting home in 38 minutes instead of 24 minutes due to unforeseen traffic on my route.

I never thought I’d say this, but I wish my problems were more like everybody else’s.

If losing a parent wasn’t lonely enough, the way that I experience the world and my place in it is the most un-relatable experience imaginable at my age.

Everyone I know is preparing for the next milestone, achievement, or accomplishment. I, on the other hand, will always be… recovering.

Recovering from the emptiness I feel after experiencing parental loss. Recovering from the loss of a future I took for granted. Recovering from the idea that I could ever fit in with most people and the way they think, feel, and experience the world.

And while I struggle to find common ground with most people these days, I have found common ground with what’s *really* important:

• My chosen family who will hold my hand and dive with me under the wave of grief that’s about to crash over my head

• A safe bed where I sleep at night

• The ease of access to clean water and nutrition

• The loyal, innocent, all-encompassing love of my dog

• The stillness of nature and what it teaches me about abundance and the cyclical nature of life and death

• A healthy body that breathes, beats my heart, and digests my food without me even having to think about it

…just to name a few.

I know what’s actually important.

Ironically, I’m able to shrug off the inconveniences that coexist with the gift I receive every morning when I open my eyes to see another day. The inconveniences that most people my age have the luxury of making obstacles to their happiness don’t phase me. And I’m not mad at them for it. Things and people that used to bother me before no longer make the priority list in my heart or my mind.

I give grace to people and situations where it didn’t exist before. I’m patient, open, and understanding where I wasn’t when I had parents.

For all of the times I’ve walked into the grocery store, a dinner with friends, or a family celebration as if I’d just seen a ghost, I know what it’s like to exert every ounce of strength I have just to *exist* in the world.

Sure, I have to try harder than most people my age to present as “okay.” But maybe the person who cut me off in traffic does, too.

Experiencing parental loss at a young age has given new meaning to the ages-old saying “you never know what someone else is going through.”

After seeing the depths of how low this life can drag you out of nowhere, I choose patience. I choose grace. I choose honesty, understanding, and presence.

Why?

Because I know what’s actually important.

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But do I even have a choice now?

“What do your parents do?” and “what about your family?” are now questions I need to take a deep breath before answering because I know the look I’m about to get.

Everything I do is colored by the loss I’ve endured. Some people might read that sentence and think the loss is over. Those people haven’t lost a parent.

The truth is, we lose them every single day.

We lose them in the memories we grasp onto for dear life. I dread the day I’m unable to hear my mother’s voice in my head.

The memories of our lost loved ones are dried and immovable like children’s initials playfully carved into a freshly-poured sidewalk. These memories are unable to be recounted, relived, or shared among friends and family without feeling the open wound caused by the deep prick of their thorn. Our memories of them are all we have now, a snapshot of a person who just…ended.

Not only do we lose our parents daily in the memories we relive, but we lose them all over again in every vision of the future we have.

While our peers are celebrating their monumental milestones, surrounded by a wonderful circle of their closest people, our circles look nothing like theirs.

Our circles have colossal missing pieces, holes, gaps. And everyone around us can see the holes in our circle — the empty seats at holidays, the stranger on the other side of the phone who was randomly assigned your parent’s old phone number, the radio silence on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, your birthday… the list goes on.

Losing a parent isn’t something I just experience once. It’s a daily practice of trying to dive underneath the tidal wave of grief before it crashes over my head. Sometimes I just lie there and let the wave hit me. I can’t move nor do I want to. I want someone who understands me to sit next to me in silence on the ocean floor.

There’s a lot of difficulty in facing that there are so few people that will ever understand you, and even more difficulty in acknowledging that *you* understand so few people.

When anyone my age starts venting about their problems, I’m happy to listen. I’m even happier to lend love, support, and gentle encouragement backed by intentional insight. But no, I do not understand their problems. Very few of the workplace drama chronicles, relationship troubles, and complaints about traffic come even close to the problems I intimately know.

Without noticing it, my gaze veers off. My brain starts hearing their words as muffled melodies. Time slows down and I’m neither in this moment nor am I anywhere else on Earth. Maybe I’m dipping my toe into the other side. Maybe dissociating. Maybe all of the above.

All I know is I can no longer relate. Honestly, I wish my day could be ruined by the server getting my order wrong or the loser who cuts me off in traffic.

I’m forever on an island far from my peers, most of my friends, many of my loved ones. I’m subsisting on memories of the past that become less and less clear as time passes by.

If you’re on an island, I’m here too. I’m here to connect our islands to one another.

There are so many more people that understand this unfathomable experience than I thought. The stories and messages I’ve read from all of you over the past two weeks have brought me to a new sense of community that I truly didn’t think was out there. There are many things I want to do with this community and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to bring us together.

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“time will help you heal.”

I’m ashamed to say I used to believe this. Maybe it was wishful thinking or maybe it was pure naivety. After all, I was 23 when my mom died and I still had so much to learn about life (and death). But as the years fly by, I’ve learned that “time heals everything” couldn’t be a more flawed statement.

I used to think I would feel lighter about parental loss over time. I used to think time could actually heal this hole in my heart. The optimist in me hates to admit that nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that I’m feeling the same pain I felt on the day I got the more dreadful phone call I’ve ever received — I’m just feeling that pain from a different perspective. I’m feeling the same void left behind by such tragic loss as a more grown-up version of me. I’m learning that no amount of time nor plethora of experiences could possibly soften the edges of a shattered life I’ll never again have access to.

I’ll see lavender, drive by a sign with my mom’s favorite number on it, wake up on Mother’s Day, or come across a picture of her — and all of a sudden, I’m 23 again — abandoned, directionless, and hysterical. It’s been 9 years since she died.

People who have never experienced loss like this assume that the painful absence of your loved ones gets easier or more normalized with time, but you’re really just learning to relate to that pain from a new vantage point.

Sometimes I wake up and can’t believe this is my life. Again, it’s been 9 years. “Wait…I’m an orphan? Hold up — that happened to us?” The shock to the system as I wake up in the same nightmare over and over again. The finality of it all. Irreversible. Forever is a long frickin time without somebody who’s “supposed” to be here.

Life doesn’t need to do much to remind me of my parental loss. Life is constantly nudging me, poking and prodding me, showing me what an alien I am among people my age.

It feels like somewhere out there, in this universe or a parallel one, I still have parents. Life went on as it “should’ve” with my parents alive and well. I’m just not living in that reality. Maybe this is my brain trying to protect me from the constant shock of being a young parent-less person.

Time heals nothing. I’m just living in a different timeline now.

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A senior neurologist looked me in the eye and told me my father would likely choke to death due to his Lewy Body Dementia progressing and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

My mom died in 2017, my stepmom left my dad amidst his diagnosis, and if that wasn’t enough, I just had the most devastating realization imaginable:

I will never again be somebody’s child.

Using the word “child” here makes me sound immature and incapable. But that’s not what I mean. Like, I know we don’t “need” our parents for our basic material and emotional needs the older we get. But before, when you had a parent, you could always “look up.”

You had a horizon, beyond yourself, that you could look up to, knowing that the person who gave you life was still here living it. Knowing that no problem seemed too insurmountable, because, even if your family wasn’t all “butterflies and rainbows” (I know mine sure as hell wasn’t), your first steps into the real world as a young adult had bigger footsteps you could trace (or avoid). You had a “proof of concept.” The concept that everything was going to be okay.

And yeah, our parents grew up in a world completely different from this one. Information moved differently, society was structured in different ways, the job market, financial prospects, and dating were cut from a completely different cloth.

Despite these stark differences, despite all of the ways you may have differed or disagreed with your parents, there was a support system. Imperfect, flawed, and human? Yes. But a support system nonetheless.

The responsibility of having a support system is now on you. It’s up to you to create that support system. It’s up to you to maintain that support system. Parental loss taught you that not a damn thing about your support system is guaranteed not to be ripped out from under you.

Responsibility is a cornerstone of adulthood. Bills, duties, obligations. That can be a tough transition. But when you’re untethered from the structure that billions of people take for granted, a structure that is normalized and assumed in every book, tv show, movie, and surface-level conversation, you realize how much responsibility you really have now.

You’re now responsible for being your own best (or worst) example of how to live. You are now responsible for being your own biggest fan. You are now responsible for being your own safety and security in a world of over 8 billion people. Eventually, you will have lived longer without your parent than with them. You’ll make it to an age they never reached.

You are now responsible for the authorship of every single step you take forward. Sometimes it feels like walking a plank that only appears with each step you take. Because you are now responsible for assuring yourself that everything will be okay.

Will everything be okay? If you’re looking at our parents and how their lives turned out, the obvious answer is “no.” Nothing and nobody is permanent. And maybe that’s the point. We are the sole authors of our stories now. The story still needs an author after every plot twist and rug pull.

Will everything be okay? I think that’s up to us now.

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On a random weekday, it must’ve been about 2003, my mother was “making” her classic chicken cordon bleu. I put “making” in quotes because she really just pulled it straight out of a box she grabbed in the freezer aisle (iykyk). My mother was many things, but culinary legend wasn’t one of them.

My mom was chatty. She also watched the news any moment she could. I can still hear her voice filling the silence between news segments, gasping at the most shocking stories, and muting the commercials so she could ask me and my siblings a speed round of questions about our day at school.

Mom unmuted the TV after a commercial break and what we saw next elicited the strangest mixed bag of emotions I could’ve imagined at the ripe age of 10: a news segment where a parent forgives their child’s killer after a devastating drunk driving crash.

How could this be possible? Surely these parents didn’t mean that they actually forgave the person who murdered the light of their lives…?

I always thought forgiving the unforgivable was something people did to cope with the fact that they couldn’t wrap their minds around what’s happened — so they could turn a blind eye to the darkness that would envelop the rest of their lives, and try to dress it up in light. It’s gotta be just a way to cope.

Because how can you forgive someone for doing something undoable? How can you forgive someone for a permanent amputation to your world and the way you navigate it? How do you forgive the void that tries to swallow you whole every day for the rest of your life?

The answer is: for me.

Losing your parents at a young age is a rug pull.

Maybe you received a death certificate before a diploma. Maybe you planned a funeral before you were legally allowed to rent a car.

Losing your parents at a young age feels like you have been left behind. Like you were lost at the amusement park and they just drove off. “Here you go, now figure it out.”

Being left behind by the people you’ve been conditioned to need breeds some of the deepest resentment imaginable. Doesn’t matter why or how they left. Because no matter the circumstances of their passing, you needed them. We never stop needing our parents. Hell, I know people in their 50s who still have both parents. They will never understand me and I will never understand them. We’re living in different universes.

Forgiveness is the deepest we can go. Forgiveness is freedom. It is the fullest form of acceptance. Not agreement with what’s happened. But acceptance of what has come of it.

Why? Because I’m the one that’s going to have to live the rest of my life without parents. I’m the one that’s going to have to explain to every new person I meet who asks the innocent question, “what’s your family like?” that I’m essentially an orphan. I’m the one who’s going to have to look around at every holiday, every milestone, every moment at those empty seats. Wanting to call a phone number that now belongs to a complete and total stranger.

In the absence of forgiveness, anger and bitterness might step up to the plate. Throughout the years, anger has sunk its claws into my life with each familial tragedy I’ve been handed. There were many times I grew furious, jaded, short-fused, apathetic, closed off. Those tendencies are still alive and well in my body at times, but I know they are not me.

Those feelings are just love with nowhere to go now — that is, unless I can find a way to direct that love back toward myself. I turn that love into forgiveness.

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But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

Some days, I’m a stranger to myself and those who love me. I used to be so much more than “the parent-less person.”

Grief wears me like an ill-fitting suit. It’s trying to be presentable. It’s trying to compensate for the fact that it knows it doesn’t belong. The apathy, the social withdrawal, the lack of motivation are not me. Grief is masquerading as me and everyone believes it.

Even if I could explain this feeling, would anyone around me understand it? I think I already know the answer to that.

The truth is, only a brutal masochist would *want* anybody they love to understand this pain. I’m walking the tightrope between desperately wanting to be understood and not wanting anyone to be able to relate to my experience. I fall to the sharks each and every time I try to take a step forward.

I feel invisible. Invisible to myself. Invisible to a world that keeps spinning no matter who lives and who dies. A world that offered me life just to rip those who gave it to me away before I could truly live it.

I miss my life before this. I miss who I thought I had the potential to become. I miss the visions of the future that are now covered and stained in permanent ink.

I wasn’t always like this. I had dreams. I saw possibilities. But now I walk through the world with a heart-sized hole in my chest. Can everyone see right through?

I miss me too.

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After my mom died, I grew incredibly paranoid.

Not that I would die in the same way she did. But that anyone around me could die at any moment.

Before my mom died, I knew it was certainly possible that she could pass, but it wasn’t a reality I ever could’ve braced for emotionally. Then everything about life changed for me.

Parental loss at a young age fundamentally changes the way we see the world — and certainly changes the way we experience it. Losing your parents changes the way you see your past, your current reality, and your ~possibilities~ for the future.

And not all of those possibilities are bright.

Like, yes, it is possible for anyone on this planet to die at any moment. Anyone. Parents, friends, siblings, partners, colleagues. These are facts of life, realities of existence, but they’re theoretical — until, of course, you have the experience of grieving the people that brought you into this world.

So what did I do? I began constantly bracing for catastrophic impact. This wasn’t a choice. It felt automatic. Unexplainable yet certain. After all, I had evidence to substantiate my paranoia, right?

Every time someone close to me called, every time I’d get a text from family asking to talk, any time I’d say “goodbye” to someone I knew I wouldn’t see for even just a day, my mind would devise scenarios in which I’d soon receive devastating news. There were even times I’d just wake up with an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach like something was about to go terribly wrong.

My body and mind had been conditioned that they could not expect consistency, certainty, or security, no matter how close my relationship with someone is. Again… I had evidence to back this up.

Putting the pieces together looking back, I know that the paranoia was my grief talking. Desperate to be heard. It was my body and mind trying to adjust to a new reality where the unthinkable was made manifest in my life. My brain trying to predict the future. My worldview had been indefinitely colored by an undoable tragedy, forcing me to forever change the way I navigated my experience.

I won’t lie, the paranoia still talks. It’s just not as loud. I mean, sometimes it is. But by calling it what it is - a byproduct of grief - I have more access to that volume knob.

Writing this actually helped me to see this paranoia a little more clearly. Hoping it helped you too.

You might feel like an alien in the world. You are not alone.

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