I’m excited to share my new book Too Much with everyone. Not because I think it has answers, and not because I think it’s going to fix anything for anyone, but because it came from a place that I know isn’t unique to me. It came from something a lot of people go through, but don’t always know how to talk about.
You don’t expect to grieve someone who’s still alive. That’s what makes it so confusing. When someone dies, the world understands. There’s a process, there’s language for it, and people at least try to show up in a way that makes sense. There’s a beginning to that kind of grief, even if there’s never really an end. But when someone is still here, still living their life, just not with you anymore, it doesn’t work like that.
There’s no clean break. No moment where everything stops and you can clearly say, this is where it ended. It just slowly becomes something else. Conversations get shorter, silence gets longer, and things that used to feel easy start to feel forced. Sometimes you don’t even notice it right away. You’re still trying while the other person has already checked out. You’re holding onto something that’s already gone.
And that’s the hardest part. There’s no single moment to point to, no clear event you can blame. Just a slow realization that what you had isn’t what you have anymore. That kind of loss doesn’t come with closure. It doesn’t wrap itself up in a way that makes sense. It lingers. It shows up in small things, in places, in songs, in habits, in random moments where you catch yourself thinking about them without meaning to.
Because they’re still alive, there’s always that part of your mind that keeps asking questions. What changed? When did it change? Could it have been different? Most of the time, those questions don’t have answers. And even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily make it easier. That’s something I had to learn the hard way.
Some things don’t end with clarity. They just stop being what they were, and you’re left trying to figure out what to do with everything you’re still holding.
That’s where this book came from. Not from having it all figured out, and not from being on the other side of it, but from being right in the middle of it and trying to make sense of something that didn’t make sense. Trying to put words to something that didn’t have clear language.
If you’ve ever gone through something like that, if you’ve ever had to let go of someone who didn’t disappear, just changed, then you already understand more than you probably want to. And if you haven’t, I hope you never have to.
Either way, this is what it looked like for me. And maybe, in some way, parts of it will feel familiar to you too.