Sometimes we don't want to heal because the pain is the last connection to what we have lost.

Grief can become a form of fidelity. Releasing the pain can feel like releasing the person, the relationship, the version of yourself that existed before the loss. If the suffering is the last remaining thread, ending it feels like a betrayal. But the pain was never the connection. It is what was left after the connection changed form. Healing does not require forgetting. It requires distinguishing between honoring what was lost and being imprisoned by the losing of it.