Today is my sister Angie’s birthday. She was the oldest of four girls, I’m the youngest. It’s been over 30 years since she passed, but every year on this day, something stirs in me. I’m learning how love shifted my grief.
This morning, a new thought came. A shift in perspective. And while it didn’t erase the ache, it offered me a surprising kind of peace. I want to share that story with you, not because I have it all figured out, but because I know what it’s like to carry grief and still try to live.
And maybe, just maybe, these words will give you permission to feel and breathe a little more freely today too.
Love Shifted My Grief
I watched my daughters playing Mario Kart last night…laughing, teasing, bumping each other’s karts off the track, and I couldn’t help but think of me and my sisters: Angie, Sharon, and Charlotte.
My daughters are 9 and 19, ten years apart. Bookends to our family. And yet, their bond is one of the sweetest things I’ve witnessed.
There were ten years and more between me and my sisters, too.
Angie was the oldest.
I was the youngest of the four of us.
We spend more time with our siblings than almost anyone else in life.
They’re often our first friends, our first best friends.
Angie died first.
Then Sharon.
Then my dad.
Each loss carved out a deeper ache.
Each one reshaping who I was and how I saw the world.
I share the story of Angie’s death in my first book Can You Just Sit With Me?
I was a sophomore in college. Everyone except me knew she’d been given a short time to live.
It gutted me, not being told, not having the chance to say goodbye, not being there when it mattered most. I didn’t get time. And for a long time, I was angry about that.
Angry at her.
Angry at my family.
Angry at the silence.
But this morning, something shifted. I was reading Proverbs and these words came to me:
What if it wasn’t cruelty?
What if it was a last act of love?
It hit me so differently than it ever had before.
I’ve always seen that silence as something that stole from me—time, presence, goodbye.
But maybe, just maybe… it was protection.
If I’d known she was dying, I would’ve left school. I would’ve come home.
I still believe that should’ve been my choice to make.
But I no longer believe the decision was made out of malice.
I think it was made out of love.
A last act of love.
And this new thought, this shift in how I see it, lets me know I’m healing.
Sometimes, just a small shift in perspective can change everything.
But I don’t think that shift just happens on its own.
It’s because of the work I’ve done, processing my grief, honoring it, and making space for it.
That space has allowed something else to grow, too: understanding, compassion, even peace.
Grief has a way of stirring up sharp memories on the hard days.
Her birthday. Her death day.
They hit different.
I often find myself wishing there was a part two to Job’s story in the Bible.
One that told us how he actually lived day by day after loss.
How he navigated the empty spaces.
Sometimes I imagine if I had only one loss to grieve, maybe it’d be easier.
But the truth is, one loss is already too many.
We will all lose someone or something.
That is the reality.
But so is this:
It’s not time that heals.
It’s what we do with the time.
Over these 30+ years of carrying grief, I’ve learned this:
When we make space for our grief,
grief makes space for us to live.
Even just a little bit more.
When it still hurts.
Even when we wish we had more time.
Happy birthday, Angie.
You are still loved.
Always missed.
Forever remembered.
4 Takeaways From This Reflection:
- Sometimes healing doesn’t come as a breakthrough, it comes as a slight shift in perspective. Don’t underestimate those moments.
- The work we do to make space for grief, journaling, therapy, prayer, stillness, creates space for peace to enter.
- Not all grief gets tied up with answers. But even hard decisions made around death may have come from a place of love.
- We are always in process. And recognizing our growth, especially on the hard days, is part of honoring our grief story.
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