He could not shame me; I had already stood alone between three caskets in front of an empty church, and there is no public humiliation left to fear once you have survived that.

He could not appeal to my hope for his love; that hope had died with a text message months before.

There was, quite simply, nothing left in me for him to grip.

Everything a person could be threatened with, I had already lost or already surrendered, and what remained was a woman made entirely of the one thing that cannot be taken or bought or frightened: the determination to honor her dead.

That is what nothing-left-to-lose actually means.