When someone dies, a part of you needs to die with them.

Estimated reading time: 10 min

It's an early morning in September. I'm in the US again, for the first time in two years. When I woke up this morning I could feel that my body was reactive: anxiety, restlessness. I tried to shake it off but quickly realized it was about something deeper.

After a cup of coffee and a look out over a cloudy Minneapolis, I realized there was only one solution: start writing.

I've been wanting to start a blog for a long time, mostly because I find it so hard to keep my social media posts short. There is too much in my field of work that needs to be said, and the algorithms don't reward deep dives into information. I guess that's also why I wrote an entire book. But for some reason I haven't started writing here. Maybe it's been old fears, or maybe it's simply the truth of trusting the process of things.. it was today, this very morning, that I was meant to begin, because it's this very morning that I feel very alone again as the memories of everything that happened two years ago start knocking on the door. They knock in a way they only can when you return to the same places and the same people who were there when it all went down.

So welcome to my blog.
This is a place where I will share my own thoughts, feelings and experiences in life. Sometimes straight and unfiltered from my perspective, sometimes with insights from research and the latest in the field of nervous system and emotional regulation, neuroscience, and emotional trauma and its impact on our lives.

But right now, today, this is about my experience. The experience of the grief that arises when you have to grieve a version of yourself that no longer exists, one you never got to say goodbye to and still miss, because she was your best friend for so long.

Almost two years ago, the last time I was here in the US, my dad died suddenly. From one day to the next my whole world was turned upside down, and I fell into an existential crisis that, on some levels, is still going on today. And I actually never spoke about it. No real deep dives with friends an no words shared within my family system since no one wants to talk about it, which is interesting because grief is a state we cannot deal with alone to heal it. So I guess this is a way for me to deal with that grief with whom ever is reading these words. Thank you for doing it - you are helping me to heal.

In my life, I had been a woman who spent every waking minute of her life trying to make her dad proud, and suddenly when he died there was no drive pushing me forward anymore. In one second my strongest driving force moved from unconscious processes to conscious ones, and I fell, hard. Since then I have tried to get a grip on myself through all the methods I have learned and teach in self regulation, but none of them have worked. That's how it often is. Sometimes we have an entire toolbox of methods, but nothing works because you have never faced what you are facing right now. So nothing works. The solution? You need to do something new, while your brain is telling you that nothing will work and that you're better off lying down on the couch and pulling the blanket over your head.

Life has taught me, though, that the solution is not to give up. Above all, I haven't yet had the honor of meeting that other half in life who can hold me when I fall, so I need to be strong and brave for myself and keep searching for exactly what will carry me through the pain.

The pain I felt when my dad died has brought me here again, back to Minnesota, back to the people who took care of me when both my physical and my inner world began to be swallowed up in October 2024. I have devoted every day since then to grieving and healing from the inexplicable pain that comes when you lose a person who has been the main character of your life, for better and for worse. And I have healed, moved on and started falling in love with life again, maybe for the first time, because this time I have learned to live life for me. I've made myself proud, made decisions for my own sake and learned to live according to my own needs, in a way that was never possible while my dad was alive, because so much of my own dysfunction was intertwined with him. But there is one part I haven't been able to resolve, where I've had a feeling that the only solution would be found by coming back to the places and the people who were there when he died.

So here I sit writing, because I feel like I finally understand what those last pieces of grief, worry, anxiety and lostness are about. They are about the version of myself I lost when my dad died, the version who had the driving force in life.

A few weeks ago I was at a Trauma Conference at Oxford where they talked about exactly this: drive, and the difference between drive and purpose. Drive often draws its fuel from a need for validation, while purpose comes from a deeper force, your purpose on this planet, rooted within yourself, independent of anyone or anything else. There's something to that. Because that is exactly how it felt two years ago: from one second to the next, all my drive forward died, because the need for validation from my dad died along with him. But I wasn't prepared for that. The drive within me has been my strongest survival strategy. She has helped me get through everything that has happened, and I have loved her for the strength and courage she showed in everything she helped me take on. Suddenly she was gone, together with my dad, and all I had left was myself. It felt like I had been ghosted by myself and by the only person I wanted to be seen by, in a single second. It has made me angry, but above all it has made me sad, without me even knowing it.

I shared exactly this with my ACA sponsor on a call yesterday. "But have you really said goodbye to her?" he asked. No, I hadn't. I had spent all my time being angry that I couldn't find my way back to the drive I had lost, completely unaware that it wasn't about that at all. He asked me to think of a way I could say goodbye to her, and suddenly I made contact with something deeper, a spiritual sensation I hadn't felt since my dad died: a vision. And tears started running down my cheek. What happened was a shift in perspective, from chasing a part of myself I had lost and needed to find again, to understanding why she had to leave without saying goodbye.

It's a pretty absurd story, what happened when my dad died, as my life journey often is. It's as if, for some reason, my soul has chosen the craziest path through life in order to gather all the experience needed to hold a big space for the people I work with. I was in New York City when I got the call, after a five day trauma conference in Massachusetts. It was October 24th, and the city was already celebrating Halloween. Between the skyscrapers and the flickering lights of the Manhattan night, I ran out of a restaurant onto the street and fell to my knees. My breath got short, I felt my heart pounding, and for a moment the world stood still as I saw my brother on the screen, together with my dad, who was dead. I don't know how long I sat there, but I remember what woke me from my shock: a group of friends dressed up as skeletons walking past me. I looked out at a world that had suddenly become something else, and I realized how far away I was from everything happening on my screen. The world around me was skyscrapers, lights, people in absurd costumes, and I was completely alone. Above all, I wasn't safe. It was as if I were living in a parallel universe where my whole world was collapsing while no one had any idea what was going on. I had people all around me, thousands, filling the streets of Manhattan, and yet I was more alone than I had ever been. So I started walking the streets with no idea where I was going.

Early in the morning I found myself on the Brooklyn Bridge as the sun began to rise over the East River. I sat on a bench, tired, worn out and lost. I watched the sun rise, and for the first time it had no color. The wind didn't caress my skin, and my gratitude for life was gone. On that bench it felt like I died, together with my dad, as I truly realized he would never come back.

..And it's true. I died on that bench on the Brooklyn Bridge too. That was where the version of me who had helped me survive chose to leave me, because her purpose had been served. In the haze of my dad having just died, I couldn't see or understand that a part of me died along with him. A part that had been created for him and had served only one purpose: to make him proud. A version that helped me through life, but that slowly strangled me and kept me from living fully for myself, my own dreams and longings. That is exactly why she needed to say goodbye to me there, so that I could begin living life for myself, for the first time in my life.

It's a tough thought to digest sometimes, that the person we loved the most and put on a pedestal is also the person who needs to die for us to become truly free. But it's true in my case. I could never become my own person with my dad alive, because so many of my dysfunctional parts were attached to him. My codependency was too strong. Little Linda's longing to be loved, seen and held was too powerful. So this version of me did the most loving thing anyone has ever done for me: she left me.

Without fully understanding it, I have spent every day since building myself up from the ground and, for the first time in my life, starting to live for my own sake, to make myself proud. I have begun navigating from my purpose, to leave this world better than it was when I came into it, where decisions have had to happen a little more slowly, but completely in line with my values and beliefs. Today I am happier than I have ever been, and I understand who I am, regardless of what others think or feel. And I guess that is exactly why I'm back here in the US right now, because I'm ready to meet the last piece of my puzzle: the version of me who died.

That is exactly what I saw in the vision during my meeting with my sponsor: where she is waiting.
She is sitting on the bench on the Brooklyn Bridge with my dad, waiting. They have been waiting there since October 24th, 2024, for this version of me to come and meet them, to tell them that it's okay. That I have made the journey I needed to make, and I'm ready to say goodbye for real, because I understand that life couldn't go on with the two of them by my side. They disappeared so that I could become this very version of myself.

When I think about this, everything feels so logical somehow. It calms me, and I feel a clarity about my future. I hold the key to grieving why she had to die together with my dad, while also understanding why she is no longer here. I feel grateful about why she left and about the gift she gave me: to become truly free. That I was allowed to change direction, from drive to navigating completely from my purpose and learn how to make myself proud, so...

See you on Friday on the Brooklyn Bridge as the sun rises over the East River.
Thank you for waiting,
Thank you for leaving,
Thank you for letting me say goodbye.