Continuing Bonds: Love, Loss, and the Spaces Where Connection Endures

It’s been one month since my brother died.
Even as I write those words, they still don’t feel real.

Grief has changed me, personally, profoundly, and permanently. Yet amidst its ache, something quietly beautiful has emerged: the realisation that love doesn’t end when life does. It simply changes form.

When the Therapist Becomes the Bereaved

As a counsellor, I’ve often sat beside people in the depths of grief, spaces filled with silence, sadness, and the ache of absence. But this time, I found myself in that same space: raw, disoriented, and learning how to breathe differently in a world that suddenly felt unfamiliar.

I’ve realised that grief doesn’t just take something from us; it reshapes us. It alters how we see the world, how we move through it, and how we see ourselves.

Through this experience, I’ve come to understand something I’ve often said to clients but now know more deeply:
death ends a life, but not a relationship (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996).

Finding Space for Both Sorrow and Joy

There are many taboos surrounding grief, ideas about what we should or shouldn’t do. People sometimes feel they must remain solemn, that laughter or moments of joy somehow betray the depth of their love or loss.

But joy has a place in grief. In fact, it’s essential.
Our bodies and nervous systems are under immense strain after loss. Chronic stress can manifest as physical pain, exhaustion, and disrupted sleep (Worden, 2018).

When we allow moments of happiness, even fleeting ones , we give our nervous system a chance to rest and recover. In this way, joy becomes a form of self-compassion, not avoidance. It offers the space we need to keep moving forward while honouring what has been lost.

Continuing Bonds

The Continuing Bonds theory (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996) challenges the traditional idea that healing means “letting go.” Instead, it recognises that we can maintain meaningful, evolving connections with those who have died.

I still talk to my brother, sometimes in the car, sometimes during meditation, sometimes in the quiet of the night. Journalling has also become a sanctuary; I write to him about my day, the small moments, and the things I wish I could still say aloud.

Writing letters helps me feel close, giving shape to the connection that continues even in his physical absence.
Meditation offers another form of closeness, when I sit in stillness, I picture him not as he was at the end, but as he lived: full of humour, mischief, and warmth.

And then there’s laughter, stories shared as a family, old jokes that still make us smile. In those moments, I feel his presence not as something lost, but as something gently woven into the fabric of my life.

The Dual Process of Grief

The Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut, 1999) has also felt deeply relevant during this time. It describes how we naturally oscillate between two modes of coping:

• Loss-oriented: when we face the reality of the loss, allowing ourselves to feel, remember, and mourn.
• Restoration-oriented: when we re-engage with life, working, connecting, finding meaning, or even laughing again.

This movement isn’t avoidance; it’s the rhythm of healing.

Some days, I feel the sharp ache of my brother’s absence; other days, I find myself smiling at the memory of his laughter. Both belong. Both are part of what it means to live with loss.

Love Reimagined

Grief has taught me that healing isn’t about forgetting, it’s about love taking on a new form, one that exists beyond physical presence.

The ache remains, but so does the love. Over time, they begin to coexist more gently, each softening the other.

To grieve, I’ve learned, is to love in a new way, through memory, through stories, and through the quiet spaces where connection endures.

An Invitation to Reflect

If you’ve lost someone, I wonder how you continue your bond with them.
What helps you feel close, even now?

Perhaps it’s talking to them, journalling, spending time in a place they loved, or smiling at a shared memory.

However you do it, know that healing isn’t about letting go,  it’s about carrying forward.
Because love doesn’t leave; it transforms.

References

• Klass, D., Silverman, P.R., & Nickman, S.L. (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Taylor & Francis.
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and Description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
• Worden, J.W. (2018). Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner (5th ed.). Routledge.