Love changes us irrevocably

There is a sadness that exists in loss that is deeper than any well.

It is not merely an emotional space. It transcends emotion, changes our physicality, and moves through the very fabric of our being. We cannot talk about loss without talking about love. Love changes us long before loss claims its piece. And love changes us twice: first when we open our heart, mind, and soul to the touch of another, and then again when we learn to carry the fingerprints they leave upon us with grace and tenderness.

Love changes us irrevocably.

We are creatures of a temporary world and a temporary nature, yet we love as though permanence exists. I like to think permanence does exist, just not in this form. I am not a spiritual guru or master of anything, but I know in my bones that love is never truly lost. It may seek and find no home, but it continues to exist all the same.

A friend asked me some time ago what I thought love was. It is a difficult question to answer, and I do not have a particularly sexy response. But there is something profound about being witnessed in your entirety and apologetically accepted by another. However long that lasts—an hour, a decade, a lifetime.

Love is not merely a physical drive or an emotional connection. It is also a twining of souls. A bond formed, rightly or wrongly, that shapes the architecture of connection throughout our lives. We are relational creatures, carrying years, sometimes decades, of experiences that influence how we connect. Love exists in family, friendships, lovers, animals, places, and communities. It is a powerful force that deserves reverence and care.

But oh, how careless we can be with it.

There is always a balance in life, the yin and the yang. Where love can be pure, blinding, kind, and expansive, so too can grief, pain, suffering, and despair consume us. We cannot have one without the other.

So how do we learn to walk through the dark night of the soul?

How is it that some people continue forward carrying hearts that have been broken open, love suddenly homeless, searching endlessly for somewhere to claim solace?

I do not think we truly learn how, at least not in the way we learn from a course or a book.

I think we survive it one breath at a time.

In the beginning, grief is a tidal wave. It consumes everything in its path. It alters the landscape of who we are. The things that once felt important suddenly seem trivial. Time becomes distorted. The future we imagined fractures before our eyes. We find ourselves standing in the ruins of a life that no longer exists, trying to make sense of the pieces like a broken puzzle that somehow arrived missing some of the parts.

This is the first truth of grief: It asks us to let go of who we were.

Not because we want to. Not because we are ready. But because love has changed our shape and we can no longer return to the person we once were. A part of us dies alongside our loss. It leaves behind a scar, a story, and a choice.

For a ridiculously long time, I thought healing meant finding a way back. Back to happiness. Back to certainty. Back to the version of me that existed before my heart was broken open.

But grief is not a bridge backwards. It is a path forward. A path our human selves never consciously agreed to walk. A path that often feels impossible. And somehow, we continue.

I have often wondered what level of self-preservation exists within us. Why do we cling to life with such ferocity when it can hurt so much? Is it biology? A nervous system wired for survival? Consciousness claiming its place in our journey? Some spiritual traditions speak of an innate drive towards growth and expression. Others might call it purpose. Or it is love? A quiet force within us that insists we remain, even after everything has changed.

I do not know the answer and have too many questions about fate, destiny, and freewill.

What I do know is that the tension between self-preservation and surrender can be brutal. Part of us knows we must let go of our former selves. Another part desperately wants to keep them alive. We cling to old identities, old stories, old versions of who we were because they are familiar. Because they feel safe. Becoming someone new requires us to step into unfamiliar territory.

At some point, grief presents us with a choice.

Instead of preserving the person we used to be, we begin preserving the life that still wants to emerge from the ashes. What I have come to understand is that grief is not asking us to stop loving or erase what was. It is asking us to develop a new relationship with love. To carry the story, the scars, and the memories. The love remains where person may not. The relationship may not or the place may not. But the love itself remains, seeking expression.

What if this is what it means to metabolise grief?

Not to get over it, not to leave it behind, but to allow it to move through us. Allowing pain to become wisdom, longing to become tenderness, surrendering to heartbreak until it softens into compassion.

The love that once was, now homeless, becomes part of who we are. Seeking and forever changed.

Grief that cannot move becomes suffering. Grief that is witnessed becomes healing. Grief that is honoured becomes devotion. And grief that is metabolised becomes love in a different form.

The dark night of the soul is not a punishment. It is an initiation. An invitation into deeper humanity. Into greater compassion. Into a more profound understanding of what it means to be alive.

None of us escape loss. Every one of us will love. Every one of us will lose. Every one of us will one day find ourselves standing in the wreckage of something precious. And when that day comes, the task is not to search endlessly for the missing pieces. The task is to become someone capable of carrying what remains. To carry the love. To carry the memories. To carry the fingerprints left upon our soul. Not as a burden, but as evidence that we were here.

That we loved.

And that, for however brief a moment in this temporary world, we allowed ourselves to be changed.