Underneath all the difficult feelings, there is usually one true thing: I love this person, and watching this is unbearable.
The grief, the anger, the resentment, the guilt, the numbness — they are not the opposite of love. They are what love looks like when it has nowhere to go and nothing to fix. They are love, pressed up against something it cannot change.
If you did not love them, none of this would hurt this much. The pain is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign of how much is right.
This does not make the pain smaller. But it might, on the hardest days, make it make sense.
You are loving someone, fiercely, in the only way that is left. That counts. It counts more than you know.
If this sounds like you
Hearthly keeps a private space that's only yours — a place to set down what you're carrying, notice the heavy days, and breathe for a minute. See the caregiver space →