The Quiet Goodbyes: A Reflection on Loss, Love, and Growth

This blog is mine. It’s my diary, my lighthouse, my living thing, not a marketing robot. I can post as much or as little as I want. I can cry here. I can celebrate here. I can fall apart and rebuild here. It’s a home for my thoughts. It’s where the right people will come to find not just my books, but my heart.

This entry isn’t a cry for pity. It’s a moment of telling the truth about what it feels like to let go of what you thought would love you back. Thank you for reading it with a tender heart.

There are goodbyes we say out loud, and then there are the quiet ones, the ones we never wanted, never spoke, but felt all the same.

This week, my heart has held both the weight of grief and the warmth of joy, creativity, and deep love. The quiet ache of loss still creeps in, but so does the pulse of everything beautiful that is still growing.

When you create something from your heart, a book, a dream, a future you can almost see, you naturally hope the people around you will be there. You picture them showing up, not just with words, but with presence, with the kind of steady loyalty that says, "I see you. I'm proud of you."

But the hardest part isn’t when people say hurtful things. It’s when they don’t say anything at all. They’ll share a meme, but not the most meaningful thing you’ve ever done. The absence echoes.

It’s not about being dramatic, it’s about acknowledging the truth of what’s happening without making excuses for people. I don’t have to sugarcoat the reality of how their absence feels. I’m learning I can be real about being hurt without explaining it away.

I used to think my love could fix the silence. I believed that by being the one who always shows up, I could somehow make up for the quiet. But there’s only so much love I can pour into a place that never echoes back.

Sometimes the support you crave doesn’t come from the places you thought you needed it most. Sometimes the loudest absence is from the very people you held closest. It hurts. It will always hurt. There is no pretending otherwise. Some heartbreaks are not loud. They happen in the quiet places where you once sowed your deepest love.

I spent years trying to nurture something that was broken long before I arrived. I loved as hard as I knew how. For a little while, the band-aid held. For a little while, I believed love could fix it all. But brokenness has a way of surfacing. Ugly truths claw their way out, no matter how much hope you pour over them.

Even knowing that, a part of me still held on. I wanted so badly to believe love could be enough. That the people I showed up for would show up for me in return. Sometimes, they don't. And the hardest part isn’t the shouting or the leaving. It’s the quiet. The absence. The way they pretend you never mattered at all.

And that's the real heartbreak. It's not really about "them," they were just the trigger. It’s about realizing how deeply I wanted to be loved. How fiercely I tried to make a family out of broken pieces. How hard I fought to matter.

I feel sick even posting this, because some old part of me still worries that telling the truth will make people roll their eyes or think, "boohoo, poor baby." Some part of me thinks if I’m not grateful enough, everything good will be ripped away. But I’m learning that gratitude and grief are not enemies. Grief doesn’t cancel gratitude. Grief doesn’t mean I’m not thankful for the friends who do show up, or for the beautiful things still growing. It just means I’m human.

I am learning, painfully, that stepping into your future sometimes means leaving behind the people you gave your whole heart to. Not in bitterness. Not in anger. In mourning. And then, in freedom.

And in the middle of it all, I miss my mom. I miss her steady love, the way she could make even the hardest days feel survivable. I miss the way she would have seen all of this, and seen me, and wrapped her arms around my breaking heart.

Still, in the quiet spaces where old expectations fall away, something beautiful has happened. I’ve been so surprised by the kindness of my friends. Friends I can go months without talking to, who are still my biggest cheerleaders. Friends I’ve met on the internet, friends I’ve never seen face-to-face, who have become an invisible marketing force, lifting and encouraging me in ways that take my breath away.

This season has taught me to lessen my expectations of others, not in sadness, but in freedom. To be grateful for every morsel of love, every unexpected kindness, every whispered “I see you” from near and far.

So today, I honor the heartbreak. I let it exist without shame. I let it teach me without hardening me. I choose to keep going. I choose to keep creating. I choose to believe that somewhere out there, the love I have given to the world will find its way back to me — not always from the places I expected, but always from the places I needed.

Quiet goodbyes make room for louder hellos. And for that, I am trying to be grateful.