Editor’s Note
It has been some time since we last shared a From the Circle reflection. This one arrived recently and seemed important to share.
A Reader’s Reflection
There are moments when a reader’s words arrive with a certain weight—especially when they speak to the work of finding strength after loss. Not because they are polished, but because they have been lived.
This reflection comes from a reader who asked to remain anonymous. She shared it after reading this week’s piece on descent, which you can find here: Spiritual Signals — On Descent.
Twenty years into her marriage, after the birth of two sons, her husband left. What followed were ten difficult years of raising her children on her own—years marked by grief, uncertainty, and the steady work of holding life together.
In the beginning, she wrote, she was devastated.
But over time, something began to shift.
Through the support of a small circle of spiritual friends, and through the practice of meditation, she came to a realization that would stay with her: love could not be taken away from her.
“Love exists,” she wrote, “with or without another person’s participation. Love just is. It is the fabric of the universe.”
That understanding did not remove the difficulty of those years. But it changed the way she carried them.
At first, this was not something she could hold onto easily. It was more like a thought she returned to, again and again, especially on the harder days. The absence was still there. The questions were still there. But slowly, almost without noticing, the center of things began to shift.
What had once felt like something taken from her began to feel different. Not restored in the way she might have imagined, and not resolved in any quick or satisfying sense. But no longer entirely dependent on another person’s presence or decision.
Love, she began to see, was not something that could be removed. It was something she carried. Something that remained available to her—in the care she gave her sons, in the friendships that sustained her, and in the steadiness she was learning to trust.
That realization did not arrive all at once. It took time. It took patience. And it took a willingness to live with the question rather than force an answer.
She chose not to divorce, believing it would deepen the hurt for everyone involved, especially her sons. And after those ten years, something unexpected happened. They reconciled.
Today, they have shared more than twenty-five additional years together. They are now grandparents, surrounded by the life that continued to grow even through a season that once felt like loss.
She does not describe those years as something she would have chosen. But she recognizes them as a time in which something essential was revealed.
For many, finding strength after loss does not happen all at once. It unfolds slowly, often in ways we only recognize later.
Not all descents announce what they are giving us.
Sometimes, only later, do we see what remained.
If this reflection speaks to you, you may also want to read our recent piece The Spiritual Instinct, which explores the sense many people carry that there is more to life than what can be measured or explained.
Question for Reflection
Have you ever discovered, in a difficult season, something that could not be taken from you?
Related spiritual themes: acceptance, belonging, community, compassion, emotional wisdom, wisdom
Reader submissions may be lightly edited for clarity and length, while preserving the writer’s original voice.
