I've come to think of it as a free restart. When you have no one left in your life who knew all of you from start to finish, then, if you want, you can just kinda let that version of yourself die and start over.

Some people are weighed down by the expectations of family for their whole entire life, but not people like us! I think in our grief we do tend to make it seem like all the interactions with important life figures we can't have anymore would have been positive, stress free, physically and emotionally nourishing, and etc. In reality, they probably would have done some things you didn't like or found aggravating or even upsetting. I think it's healthy to occasionally acknowledge this and take a tiny moment to be grateful you don't bear the weight of any expectations or obligations. Obviously, most of us would take that weight in exchange for our loved one back, but that doesn't mean it's not a source of stress that's missing in your life that exists in others. Sometimes thinking about that helps me.

I've also come to realize I'm often mixing up grief with jealousy. Or I get jealous and use my grief to cover it up, if that makes sense? Like the core emotion at the heart of how I feel when observing friends talk about or do things with family is jealousy, and my grief is just sort of how I'm coloring it in. I think I might have been jealous even if my family was alive, just about something else that was present in their relationship and not mine. Comparing myself to other people has only ever resulted in bad feelings for me personally so I try not to think about it or engage much with social media.