It is said the only guarantees are "Death and Taxes", and while tax services are everywhere, we seemingly go out of our way to avoid talking about death and grief.

For better or worse, grief is a concept I'm all too familiar with. As a child we were encouraged to have pets, my mother being a big proponent of the thinking that pets are fundamental to good development. Whether she knew it or not, this also meant facing death at a particularly young age.

My first pet (of my own, that wasn't a goldfish) was a hamster named Ace. Ace was about as cordial as any other hamster, which was to say he was cute but not really much of a pet. I learned to keep his cage clean, feed him and top up his water. He did nip me occasionally, and as young child this was an upsetting event.

We had a family dog, Kodiak (a Siberian Husky), and an old cat named Pandora at this time, but Ace was mine. My responsibility, and perhaps inelegantly an extension of myself. So when I went to his cage one morning and found he had died, I was very upset. I ran into my parents room, tears flowing down my face and in between heaves and sobs I managed to communicate that Ace had died.

My parents put him in a shoebox, and later that day when I was ready we buried him in the backyard. The usual platitudes of "he had a good life" and "he's gone to a better place" were issued, but I remained shaken. Something that 'was', now, suddenly 'wasn't'. I couldn't sleep that night, and I crawled into my parents bed sobbing about how afraid I was that one morning they'd be gone too.

It would be sometime after that before I had to experience my first death of a family member. Other pets had come and gone, and the experience of loss only became marginally less painful, but never easy.

When my paternal grandmother, Gladys passed away I was more struck by my Father's grief than my own. We were never close, and in fact she was frequently unkind to me, but she was my Father's Mother and I could see he was wrestling with the loss. In her passing I saw a woman, probably dealing with Alzheimer's (it was never diagnosed), leaving this world confused and angry and, perhaps frightened.

In contrast when my maternal grandmother, Rita passed away it couldn't have been more different. She went to bed after breakfast for a nap, and never woke up. She was eventually surrounded by her family at the hospital when the decision was made to cease life support. She didn't suffer, she had a clear mind and went away peacefully in her sleep with her family around her. 

As far as death goes, I think that ranks near the top as far as "best case scenario".

Through this time I had more pets, and buried more pets and while I was becoming familiar with the loss of people I had spoken with, known, share meals with, given and received gifts I never became "good" at dealing with the loss of pets. It never felt like enough time, I never got the chance to explain to them what was going on, or why they had to go or be put down if they were terminally ill. It always felt unfair and wounding, both to me and them.

When my Mother passed away from a complicated case of cancer masked by dementia I was so numb, and also dealing with a very unhealthy marriage and lifestyle at the time, that it took me nearly four years later to actually grieve her passing. There wasn't a plan for when the grief came, I happened to be on a walk, and came across a garden of tiger lilies (Mom's favorite). I just had a long, emptying, angry, forgiving, laughing, crying conversation with the flowers. It would still take a few more years to really wrap my head around it, but it was a start.

But when my (then) wife and I had a miscarriage after a very expensive, one-shot, one-hope IVF treatment, there was nowhere for that grief. I had to be a caretaker for my partner. I felt I had to apologize to my family for getting their hopes up. I had to stuff it so far down just to move through the day. 

Even now it feels so hard to conjure up. In quick succession that grief was followed by separation and eventually divorce, the total cessation of contact with my step-children and two cats, and to top things off the death of my dog, Warwick. Even now, nearly a year and a half later I find I can't think of him without choking up.

I've never really known how to process grief, other than to feel it. There's no trick, no easy fix. It's sad, you cry. You run out of tears, and maybe you cry again later. Maybe this goes on for a few weeks, months, decades. Each death is different. 

Even now, I have moved to a place in life where the space around each grief has grown at different rates. I can talk openly about my Mother's passing.

I can't talk about Warwick's yet though.

I almost never talk about the miscarriage.

So some days I just allow myself to feel that grief, to cry those tears and make a little more space around each one. It's all I can do, and I think it's all anyone can do.

And yet I get new pets, I got remarried and I'm moving forward with life. Grief isn't an excuse to stop moving, but perhaps it softens us to the suffering of others. When we know how much it hurts to lose, we can watch the news, see the unhoused or even the child who's dropped their ice cream and is devastated and we can be tender to their pain. Without grief we stay hard and indifferent.

I guess what I'm saying is this; it always hurts, and it's always worth it.

Anxiety wears many faces. Sometimes it looks like a mind that will not stop rehearsing possible futures. Sometimes it is the tightness in your chest before you have identified what you are afraid of, the restless sleep, the irritability, or the strange exhaustion that comes from spending an entire day preparing for problems that never arrive.

At its core, anxiety is often an attempt to create safety through anticipation. Part of you believes this story: if I can think far enough ahead, plan carefully enough, monitor everyone’s reactions, or identify every possible thing that could go wrong...perhaps I can prevent uncertainty from becoming danger.

This strategy can sometimes be useful in situations that genuinely require preparation, clouding the real cost to your time, energy, and capacity. It works just often enough that the brain continues to rely on it long after it stops being beneficial.

This is one reason anxiety can be difficult to recognize. A person may appear organized, conscientious, successful, or remarkably capable while internally feeling as though they are perpetually bracing for impact.

Reducing anxiety, then, is not always about learning to worry less. Sometimes it involves learning that uncertainty can be tolerated, that other people’s emotions do not always require management, and that safety cannot be created entirely through control.

The goal is not to eliminate vigilance or become indifferent to risk; it is to develop enough trust in yourself that you no longer have to anticipate every possible threat in order to feel okay.

You can feel safe, even in the midst of uncertainty or incomplete goals.