Salt Water
@findyourharbor.bsky.social
28 followers 23 following 460 posts
Have you lost someone you can't live without? Salt Water is a blog, online community & resource for those who are grieving. https://www.findyourharbor.org
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findyourharbor.bsky.social
"They started as they always did, by each saying a name. These names represented a loved one who died—the reason why each person joined E-Motion, a Boston-based running group for people grieving the death of a loved one."
www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/a683...
This Mother’s Loss Sparked A Running Movement. Now, Her Club Is Helping Others Heal Together.
Grief run clubs are popping up all over the U.S.—and for good reason.
www.womenshealthmag.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"Life is as much awful as it is beautiful, and the worst can and will happen, even to those who least deserve it. It’s an honor to sit at the jagged edge of someone’s pain. To witness how much they love the person who was taken from them."
findyourharbor.com/be-still/
Be Still | Salt Water
How would I live if I were exactly what's needed to heal the world? Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"When Jimmy died, I thought there would be a sameness, an unrelentingness to my grief that would persist year after year. But to my surprise, I have found every year to be different. Instead of a well-worn path, I am finding my way as I go."
findyourharbor.com/all-i-can-no...
All I Can No Longer Hold | Salt Water
... so much I cannot think of today, a team of white birds lifting off a shoreline and disappearing into the sun. Billy Collins
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
“I was put in the role of doing whatever I could to make the experience easier for Jimmy & my parents…the transition from when he was alive & when he died w/him being my only sibling, suddenly the attention was all on me & that transition was so jarring.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnuL...
Molly Fowkes: Sibling Loss Sudden Versus Long Term Illness
YouTube video by Open to Hope
www.youtube.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"Unlike the first stages of grief I experienced, which cling to the past, this new stage occupies the present. I say 'occupies' because it seizes the present with both arms, bringing with it a strange, surprising joy."
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/o...
Opinion | After Years of Living With Grief, Joy Has Moved In
www.nytimes.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"When I get to Flinders Island, I will begin my own memorial days. I am taking something that our culture has stopped freely giving: the right to grieve. To shut out the world and its demands. To remember my love and to feel the immensity of his loss."
www.amazon.com/Memorial-Day...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"So here I am. Still here more than a decade after Jimmy’s death, celebrating the age he should have lived to see. Wondering what he would be doing, who he would have become. Remembering how he lived and the way we who love him carry him with us still."

findyourharbor.com/age-old/
Age-Old | Salt Water
Wasn’t it death that taught me to stop measuring my lifespan by length, but by width? Andrea Gibson
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"Start with loss. Lose everything. Then lose it all again.
Lose a good woman on a bad day. Find a better woman,
then lose five friends chasing her. Learn to lose as if
your life depended on it. Learn that your life depends on it."
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/155104...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"Grief changes the air around it. It thickens it, slows it down ... I looked at your second backpack then and saw it for what it was: not just extra weight, but the embodiment of something much heavier. Memory, carried not out of obligation, but love."
www.offassignment.com/articles/mag...
To the Hiker Carrying Two Backpacks — Off Assignment
“I noticed you on the first day of the Inca Trail. Machu Picchu was still a distant promise, and I was already bartering with my lungs. The altitude had found me, as it always does, with the precisio...
www.offassignment.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"But that day in August, Robert walked by my house and sang to me (“sail on, silver girl, sail on by”) as I was missing a person I loved, one I had never expected to meet, much less turn out to be a woman who loved me ferociously and gave me so much."

~ Jan Haag

findyourharbor.com/moonstruck/
Moonstruck | Salt Water
I was out watering the plants in my front yard a couple months ago, trying to give them a good drink before the heat of a Sacramento August day, when Robert Gordon walked by. He was moving at his usua...
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"Observing the tree's acceptance of her loss,
the release that makes way for growth and rebirth.
The strength to stand tall when stripped of everything and only her essence remains.

Like the cherry tree,
I am built to birth my own joy ..."
findyourharbor.com/the-cherry-t...
The Cherry Tree | Salt Water
Only love is big enough to hold all the pain of this world. Sharon Salzberg
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"I will never know how Buster hears the unseen, but I think it begins with his willingness to sit motionless and peer into the darkness. To listen intently, patiently, until he can decipher what he's hearing, the need to know greater than the fear of what he might uncover."
findyourharbor.com/still/
Still | Salt Water
...the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. T.S. Eliot
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"I started to wonder if I was just in denial or actually losing my grip on reality and which one was worse. Part of me didn't care. There were so many days when it felt as if my very survival hinged on Jimmy not be fully gone, so I'd lean into the feeling."
findyourharbor.com/dark-surprise/
Dark Surprise | Salt Water
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is al...
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
It found a reason to keep going ...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"I am the product of a childhood with a sibling and an adulthood without one ... My life was shaped as much by my brother’s absence as by his presence—and that, too, is a kind of relationship."
www.yahoo.com/news/article...
My Brother and the Relationship That Could Have Been
Ever since he died, I wonder how we would have gotten along as adults.
www.yahoo.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"I sometimes overlook how his interactions with us are shaped by regret over things he wishes he had done differently, and his sorrow over things he wishes he still could do. But they are also shaped by the realization that today he has another chance."
www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/s...
‘I Would Give Anything to Hold Their Hands Again’ (Published 2021)
www.nytimes.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
Losing a parent is like driving through a plate glass window ...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"For the nights can be long
and filled with shadows,
and sometimes terrible
unexpected waters will rise.

Somewhere someone needs help.
Send love.
It matters."

Carrie Newcomer

grateful.org/resource/sen...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"My first teachers in the aftermath of Jimmy’s death were the parents whose children took their own lives. They helped me understand the way circumstances & context influence everything from other people’s reactions to whether the casseroles showed up."
findyourharbor.com/context-is-e...
Context is Everything | Salt Water
There are losses that rearrange the world. Deaths that change the way you see everything, grief that tears everything down. Megan Devine
findyourharbor.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"The❓of 'why' punches me in the gut every time. Because there is an accusation hidden in the 3 letter word. If there is a reason why, then there is something a friend, a mother, a father, a sister could have done to prevent Julia from ending her life.”
www.wow-womenonwriting.com/downloads/pr...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"There is a beautiful flow when you let go of caring about what he remembers or arguing about what’s real. When someone is traveling to a different land, why not join him? I also love ... knowing he’ll forget most of what you say. There are endless second chances."
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/o...
Opinion | Alzheimer’s Can Be a World of Endless Second Chances
www.nytimes.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
You are not the darkness you endured ...
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"I recently lost my closest childhood friend.

She was an important part of my life for 50 years, and her death left me reeling. I feel as if I’ve lost much more than a good friend. I’ve lost a large chunk of my past, and my future, as well ..."

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re...
The Lonely Grief of Losing a Childhood Friend
Counselors call it “disenfranchised grief.” Readers tell us how they coped with the loss of an old friend.
www.wsj.com
findyourharbor.bsky.social
"If you have drowned in sorrow
and still have somehow found
a way to breathe, please, lead us.
You are the one with the crumbs
we need, the ones we will use to find
our way back to the home of our hearts."

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
ahundredfallingveils.com/2025/06/13/p...