All The People I Know

That I've Never Met

While talking with a fellow therapist about what it’s like to support grieving clients, she asked if I’d ever had the sense of knowing someone - deeply - even though I’d never met them, just from the way their person spoke of them.

I was so grateful for this question because I have felt it, and it invited me to reflect on all the people I know who I’ve never met.

One thing about grief is that it invites us to evaluate and collect memories as best as we can. And we, as meaning makers and legacy leavers, desire so deeply to keep memory alive.

The soul-level depth that sits across from me is palpable. And even more so when I prompt a new client: “It’s important for me to know who you’re grieving, can you tell me about them?” What comes next, is often a vivid and surprising description of someone. What I’m meeting is the echo of the person no longer here - the essence they left behind. And we are all, always leaving that on one another.

It’s fascinating to me that I can hardly recall a single client who has ever led their description with what their lost person did for a living. No matter how complicated the relationship was, or is, my clients tell me about the relationships. How their loved one made them feel, helped them, harmed them, burdened them, freed them, loved them.

I have been introduced to mothers who’ve championed their daughters until their dying breath - and beyond, just in new ways.

I’ve shaken soul hands with husbands who knew just the right thing to say at just the right moment, or that the very right thing was to say nothing at all.

I’ve gotten to know incredible fathers, who wanted the best for their families.

I’ve befriended children with bright futures, kind hearts, brave souls, and wisdom they spilled all over the world - even in their short time with us.

I’ve spent time with sisters and brothers, and best friends, all gone before their work was done, but whose fingerprints are undeniably all over the world, and the lives they touched.

In those initial sessions of learning about the person, I get a glimpse of them - but I really meet them, feel them, understand who they are in the work that continues. It’s in further sessions where little quirks emerge, or where the daughter tells me how her mother would have handled the rude employee. How the father would have stepped in, or exactly how the best friend would have celebrated the long awaited pregnancy.

I speak their names with my clients. I speak them often, we keep their names alive and vibrant. We smile and laugh together at their complexity and beauty.

I’ve shared about the idea of Sacred Collection before, and this is the evidence I often see. For we are loving each other and spilling all over each other in each moment, there is big, broad love happening, yes, but there are also these tiny moments, a life observed - treasures of a person collected.

I wonder if other grief workers feel this way, they must. My friend, a fellow therapist felt it. Maybe this is how we keep our ancestors impact salient. We pass them on, the echo of them.

To my clients, and to the grievers who’ve allowed me to know their lost loves, I want you to know:

I think of your people - in and outside of my office.

I thank them for how they formed you.

I offer up gratitude for all their best efforts in your life.

I promise them they’ve made a good investment in leading you and I to one another.

I assure them I will hold you, my loves, with tender hands.

I promise them I will walk with you - slowly, quietly, with humor and steadiness - until their echo becomes something you can carry with more ease.

For this is the holy work of knowing those I’ve never met.

This space is open to memory. Who would you like us to know? Share their name - or something they used to say, something you still carry. Tell us what you loved about them. What was their fingerprint in your life?