Love is both the reason for grief and the salve to soothe grief. What a smart design! When we open to love, we can’t avoid grief, but we also can’t avoid healing and transformation and the gentle softening of our grief into more love.

Grief isn’t a toxin that needs to be purged out of our hearts and bodies. It’s just love in another form. When we try to purge or shrink grief, we shrink our ability to love and be loved.

Learning to grieve is like learning to love… and nobody would ever expect you to “be finished” learning to love! Both loving and grieving are a life-long learning journey and there are always new places to go and new perspectives to find.

It’s time we stopped treating our love like it’s a finite resource. People who are grieving don’t have to “get closure,” “dis-invest our love” or end the connection when their loved ones die in order to be able to let new love in. The truth of what it takes to create a wholehearted life after loss was beautifully articulated by Mother Teresa when she said: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

Do you want to soothe the pain of grief? Don’t try to protect your heart or claim your invested love back. Instead, love more.