Staying

On tenderness, grief, and the long shaping of the heart

I haven’t written since early December, not because there was nothing to say, but because there was so much to hold. The holidays brought a convergence of grief, both visible and quiet, rearranging my inner landscape. Words did not disappear. They simply needed time.

In that hush, something within me slowed. I noticed how the days moved through me, without asking for answers or explanations. Grief did not feel like an interruption so much as a deepening. It asked for presence, not productivity. Attention, not articulation. It asked me not to act, resolve, or turn meaning into momentum, but to stay. To let what had opened remain open a little longer.

At the beginning of the year, I adopted a gentler way of editing my life, not to fix or improve, but to pay attention. Winter’s slower rhythm revealed what adds meaning, what drains it, and where I would like to be more intentional. In that receptive space, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane found me. Early in the story, Pellegrina, the wise grandmother, offers two lines that stopped me:

“How can a story have a happy ending if there is no love?”
“Every good story has its share of suffering.”

The simplicity of those words carried a familiar weight. Love and ache are not opposites. They travel together, shaping us in ways we often understand only in hindsight. As the story unfolded, my attention shifted from what Edward might become to the subtle ways he was being changed. He did not grow through effort or resolve, but through encounter and surrender. Through being carried, lost, found, and loved beyond his own choosing.

The story also reminded me that after loss, there is often an impulse to move quickly, to make meaning productive, to turn insight into action. I am learning that another invitation waits there as well. One that asks not for more doing, but for more patience and presence. Love and grief live this way, bound together. When love is deep and genuine, grief carries that same depth and asks for the same kind of care. It does not want to be rushed or resolved. Like love, it asks for our attention over time, shaping us quietly as we learn to carry it.

There is a tenderness that comes with living long enough to know that not everything needs fixing. A kind of softness that has been earned. Even so, the pull to strive can linger. Staying open asks something gentler of us. Something less visible and more vulnerable. Lately, for me, it has looked like letting questions linger, allowing grief and gratitude to share the same space, and trusting that meaning does not need to be managed in order to grow.

Edward does not learn how to love by doing. He learns by being held, carried, and remembered. Perhaps that is how we grow, too. Near the end of the story, he grows weary. Weary of hoping. Weary of risking his heart again. Those moments slowed me down because they felt familiar. Grief has its own fatigue. So does love. Still, love finds him. Not because he is ready or deserving, but because healing so often comes through the hands and hearts of others. I am coming to understand that after the softening, there is nothing to force or protect against, only the invitation to stay attentive and trust the slow, faithful work of what has been opened. And that alone is enough.