When the Why Never Comes

This week someone said to me, “I just want to know why.” Why something happened. Why someone hurt them. Why life unfolded the way it did.

And it stuck with me, because I’ve asked those same questions. Why did this happen? Why wasn’t I enough? Why was I pushed away? Why, why, why.

The truth is, we don’t always get the answer to the “why.” And sometimes we do get an answer—and it’s so absolutely ridiculous, so shallow, so wrong—that we almost wish we never asked in the first place.

But here’s something I hope lands where it needs to:

Love didn’t hurt you. Someone who didn’t know how to love you hurt you. Don’t confuse the two.

Their “why” may have nothing to do with you. Their choices—their capacity, their wounds, their avoidance—might be the entire explanation. And you can’t fix or rewrite someone else’s story just because yours intersected with it.

So what do we do? What do we do with a heartache that won’t stop aching? With memories we beg our brain to lock away—yet they still show up at 3am, or halfway through Thanksgiving dinner, or when you’re just trying to change the damn remote batteries?

What do we do when closure doesn’t come?

We become the very best version of ourselves that we can be.

Because lack of consideration? It sits way too close to disrespect to be part of our vocabulary. We are not replaceable, even if someone treated us like we were a placeholder in their own confusion.

We say things like, “It’s their loss,” but we’re the ones sitting in the grief. We’re the ones holding the loneliness, the shaking hands, the memories that won’t stay put.

So if it’s truly their loss…what do we do with what’s left in our hands? What do we do with this handful of grief, this heaviness in our chest, this ache that feels like it has its own pulse?

We feel it. We let it breathe. We stop trying to make it pretty or understandable. Heartache isn’t logical—it’s human.

And then—slowly—we build. We gather the pieces of ourselves, not because someone deserves a better version of us someday, but because we deserve to become someone we’re proud to live with today.

The “why” may never come. But that doesn’t mean the healing won’t.

You’re not weak for hurting. You’re not foolish for caring. You’re not broken because someone else couldn’t meet you with the love you were offering.

If anything, you’re becoming.

And that is the most sacred kind of strength there is.