We are taught to think of grief and strength as opposites — that a grieving person is a weakened person, diminished, incapable, to be handled gently and expected to accomplish nothing.

And there is a truth in that, in the raw early days, when grief is pure and shapeless and simply flattens you.

But it is not the whole truth, and the part it leaves out is the part that saved my life.

Grief, I discovered, is not the opposite of strength.

Grief is love that has been cut off from its object and has nowhere left to go — and love is the most powerful force a human being contains.

When your child is alive, that love flows outward, into care, into worry, into the ten thousand small daily acts of tending.