It took almost two years of soul searching, counseling, questioning new behaviors, and deep introspection (and no, introspection isn’t the same as soul searching, though I used to think it was) to arrive at a conclusion that changed everything I thought I knew about loss.

When my dad died, I lost more than a parent. I lost my buddy, my quiet hero, and the steady anchor who made me feel safe in a world that often felt unpredictable. Even as an adult, he was still showing up for me in ways that mattered. Just a couple of months before he passed, he was offering to step in and help with something that would have made a colossal difference in my life. That’s who he was… solid, dependable, ready to catch me if I fell. The help still happened because of him, but the piece that was him was missing from it.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was also carrying something intangible for me: my sense of security. When he was gone, that security went with him, leaving me scrambling in ways I couldn’t even name.

There’s actual psychology behind this phenomenon, and with all my background in every possible form of psychology, you’d think I would have connected these dots a lot faster than I did. But grief has a way of clouding even the clearest clinical understanding. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to name this particular loss for what it was.

The death of a parent doesn’t just leave us grieving the person, it can shake the very ground we’ve been standing on our entire lives. Psychologists talk about how parents often serve as our “attachment figures,” a source of safety and stability that allows us to explore the world knowing someone has our back. When that figure is gone, even in adulthood, our nervous system can respond as though the world itself has become fundamentally unsafe.

For me, this manifested as being stuck in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight. My body was on high alert, always braced for the next blow, the next loss, the next thing that would shatter what little stability I had left. And layered on top of that emotional chaos was a new, crushing responsibility: helping to care for my mother, who lives with dementia. I was grieving one parent while slowly losing another, and the ground under my feet felt like it had completely crumbled away.

Living in that hypervigilant state for months has fundamentally reshaped me. It’s altered not just my sense of safety, but also my beliefs about life, love, and human connection. I began to realize that when one source of security disappears, we instinctively look for new ones, sometimes in places we never expected to find them.

For me, that meant weaving security back into my life in unexpected ways. Part of it comes from my marriage, where my husband’s support has been a steady force through the chaos. But part of it has also come from other relationships… love that doesn’t always fit neat societal definitions, but still provides genuine strength and belonging. What I’ve learned is that love doesn’t have to follow a single script or traditional template to be real, meaningful, or profoundly healing. 

The hardest truth I’ve had to swallow is realizing that no one person can give me exactly what my dad gave me. That particular kind of security, the kind that feels unshakable, unconditional, and eternal, was unique to him and our relationship. It was built over decades of him consistently showing up, not once judging me or my choices (especially the bad ones), and of him being the person I could count on when everything else fell apart.

But losing him has pushed me to rebuild my sense of safety in entirely new ways, and the process has been both heartbreaking and surprisingly revelatory.

Security now comes from community rather than a single person. It comes from love in all its unexpected shapes and forms. It comes from learning how to trust myself in ways I never had to before, when I knew he was there as my ultimate backup plan. It’s not the same as what I lost, it’s messier, a heck of a lot more complex, requiring more conscious effort to maintain. But maybe that’s exactly the point.

Grief doesn’t just take things away from us, though that’s the part we feel most acutely. It also reshapes us, pushing us to grow in directions we never imagined we’d need to explore. Sometimes it even gives back something we didn’t even know we had lost along the way… a deeper capacity for empathy, a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be human, a recognition of our own resilience.

I’ve discovered that security can be found in unexpected places: in the friend who texts to check on you without being asked, in the way your body learns to breathe deeply again after months of shallow panic, in moments of laughter that surprise you by breaking through the grief like sunlight through storm clouds. It’s in the relationships that deepened because loss taught you what really matters, and in the new connections that formed because vulnerability opened doors you didn’t even know existed.

Losing a parent isn’t just about saying goodbye to someone you love. It’s about learning to live without the safety net you didn’t even realize was holding you up until it was gone. For me, it’s been about finding new ways to stand on my own, new ways to love without the desperate grip of someone terrified of losing again, and new ways to feel safe in a world that will always be really, devastatingly uncertain.

The person I am now loves differently than the person I was before. I love with more awareness of how precious and fragile connection is. I love with less assumption that someone will always be there tomorrow. I love without a damn care of what anyone else might think about it. But I also love with more gratitude for what exists right now, in this moment, and with a deeper appreciation for all the different forms love can take.

If you’ve lost someone who carried your sense of security, you’re not alone in feeling like the world has become fundamentally different. It may take time, longer than you expect, longer than feels fair, but security can be rebuilt. Sometimes in ways that surprise you, sometimes in ways that change you entirely, and sometimes in ways that end up being stronger and more intentional than what came before.

The love we build after loss isn’t a replacement for what we’ve lost. It’s something entirely new, informed by grief but not defined by it, shaped by our need to feel safe again but not limited by fear. It’s love that acknowledges the reality of impermanence while still choosing to invest fully in the connections that matter.

If I’m being honest, it feels rather hippie-dippy… that carefree and open kind of living and loving that comes without any fear.  Grief taught me that love is both more fragile and more resilient than I had ever imagined, and if any good came trudging through it, it’s that.