Why Are You Leaving Me Now?
by Mindy Yanish, Grief and Loss Support Specialist & Life Coach
For weeks I sat at my mother's bedside, and those weeks felt like an eternity. I could feel myself dying with her, which I later learned is called anticipatory grief. Hospice had already said she wouldn't be here much longer, but I'd learned by then that no one can actually know when someone is going to die.
So I told her, "I'm going to fly back to New York now."
Her final words to me were, "Why are you leaving me now?"
Walking out to my car, the guilt was unbearable. I flew home, and in less than a week, she was gone.
I carried that guilt for years.
Even though I knew I was doing nothing wrong, I still felt the sting of her words, and I felt guilt. I knew I had to leave that day. I was feeling physically ill, getting sick, and it would have been impossible to stay with her any longer.
A few days after she died, I was on the couch at a dear friend's house, waiting for her to come home from work. It was my home away from home, yet I felt desolate and empty. Both of her parents had already passed, so I hoped she could offer some comfort. But I knew it wouldn't be enough.
Sitting there, I knew I needed help, still feeling like I was dying as I had been for the months before her passing. I couldn't talk myself out of it. So I Googled "help with grief."
Up came a video: a round table conversation with several well-known people who had each lost someone dear. They were honest. They understood, from real experience, the anguish of losing a mother, especially when the relationship was as complicated as mine. For the first time since she died, I felt comfort.
I signed up for an online grief support group and attended a couple of the live sessions. It was enough that I felt I wasn't drowning anymore. Soon after, I began studying to become a grief educator, and that's when my life really changed. The training taught me how to move through my own grief in a way no one had ever mentioned before: facing a lifetime of unacknowledged grief, naming it correctly, and learning how to hold it.
That's where the guilt began to shift. It didn't come from simply being told that guilt is a normal part of grief. That felt like a platitude and did little to help me move through it. What helped was letting myself feel it. I had to stay with it. I had to understand that leaving her was an action that hurt her, and that I could hold the guilt while simultaneously knowing I was blameless, or had nothing to be ashamed of. Both of those things can and do coexist.
Once I stopped turning away from it, the guilt diminished over time.
There are still moments when I feel sad, thinking about leaving her bedside right after she asked me that question. But it no longer feels like an arrow in my heart. It has softened into something I can hold, and because I can hold it, I can sit with others in theirs.
There Is No "Right Way" to Grieve
by Mindy Yanish, Certified Grief Educator & Life Coach
Life's great challenges can be devastating right now. Or they can lay dormant for years, even decades, quietly waiting — but they are still seismic changes. Loss comes in so many forms. The death of a parent, a child, a spouse, a sibling, a beloved pet. The end of a career you built with your own two hands. The closing of a business, a marriage, a chapter you thought would last forever.
And here is what I want you to know before anything else: there is no "right way" to grieve. Each of us carries our own experience, our own timeline, our own way of feeling our way through the dark. Whatever way grief is showing up in you — that's the right way, because it's yours.
What I Didn't Know Until I Knew It
I didn't understand just how much grief and loss had impacted my ability to live fully until my mom passed away. She was ninety-nine. I told myself I'd be fine — she'd lived a long, full life. I wasn't fine.
A few years earlier, I made the choice to close a business I'd built over thirty years. I told myself I'd be fine with that too. I wasn't fine with that either.
It took me a long time to recognize that staying busy, staying active, staying involved in my community — these weren't just things I loved doing. They were protective shields. Ways I unconsciously kept myself from feeling a lifetime of grief I had never fully acknowledged, let alone resolved.
Grief doesn't always announce itself the moment loss happens. Sometimes it waits. Sometimes it hides behind productivity, behind "staying strong," behind all the ways we've learned to keep moving so we don't have to feel.
Asking for Help Was the Gift I Gave Myself
The turning point for me wasn't willpower. It wasn't "getting over it." It was asking for help.
That single act — reaching out instead of pushing through alone — was the best gift I ever gave myself. No longer running from my feelings, no longer numbing them with busyness, I slowly emerged from the shadows of buried loss and back into my own life.
I say this not to compare your story to mine, but because I know how easy it is to believe you should be handling this better, faster, more quietly than you are. You don't have to carry it alone, and you don't have to have it figured out before you ask for support.
If Loss Is Holding You Back
Maybe you're asking yourself some version of these questions right now:
Is loss holding you back from living a full life?
Are you struggling with a transition — retirement, a career change, an identity shift — that feels bigger than anyone around you seems to understand?
Does your daily life actually fulfill you, or are you simply going through the motions?
Is a sense of obligation keeping you from even letting yourself dream again?
If any of these land close to home, please hear this: joy will return. Not by forgetting, not by "moving on," but by finding clarity amidst the turning point you're in — and by allowing yourself the space to grieve, to heal, and eventually, to reconnect with what matters most to you.
You Don't Have to Open the Door All the Way — Just a Step
Healing from grief isn't about erasing the loss. It's about learning to carry it differently — with support, with self-compassion, and with the understanding that your story is uniquely your own.
It only takes a step to open the door and let in some light.