Watching the Hurt

When love wants to act, but healing calls for patience

This piece is a momentary departure from my usual; a little less advice and a lot more of me. In some ways it is a reflection, in others it's self-serving therapy, regardless and as always, I hope you find value in it. I don’t want to go into detail about what prompted this piece, that story is not mine to share.

Someone I care about is carrying the weight of tragic and unexpected loss right now, and being close to that kind of grief brings a particular kind of helplessness with it. I’m finding it hard to watch up close. I can see it in their face, hear it in the pauses, feel it in the moments where conversation just runs out. Something has shifted, and I can’t reach in and make it better and that helplessness is my story.

Despite knowing I simply can't fix the situation, my instinct is to try regardless.

I’ve always been someone whose love language is action. If I care about someone, I do something. I step in, take something off their plate, try to make things easier in a practical way. That’s how I show up. So when someone I care about is grieving, that instinct doesn’t fade, in fact it sharpens. I find myself looking for something to fix, something to carry, some way to ease the load.

But there’s nothing to pick up, no load I can carry, I must simply be.

I can’t organise grief. I can’t solve it. I can’t take it off them, no matter how much I want to. And that runs straight into how I’m wired. I’m used to being useful through action and in this moment, absent of action, I am useless.

I try to find the right words, but they don’t quite land. I try to help, but nothing really fits. And it leaves me sitting in that uncomfortable space where I care deeply, but I can’t do the thing I usually rely on.

What I’m learning is that my role has to change and I must adapt to a new love language, if only for now. Less action, more presence. Staying close without trying to direct anything. Listening without trying to fix it. Showing up in a steady, consistent way, even when it feels like I’m not making anything better.

That doesn’t come naturally to me. But it matters right now.

I can’t take the pain away. I can’t speed up the healing; grief must complete its cycle. I can’t solve it. What I can do is stay, care, and make sure they’re not carrying it alone.

And I have to accept the part that’s hardest to accept. I cannot fix grief. Time is, in the end, the only thing that softens it.

If you find yourself in this space, on either side of it, I hope you give yourself permission to let it be what it is.