DTH-XI-0018
“I just lost a friendship that mattered deeply to me.”
The loss of a friendship can be as significant as any other loss, and it is often underacknowledged. There is no funeral, no ritual, no social permission to grieve it openly. Give yourself that permission. What you had was real. The grief reflects the value of what was there.
Your Practice
Write about the friendship honestly — what it gave you, what you valued most about it, and what you will carry forward. If there is anything unresolved on your end — something unsaid, something you wish you'd done differently — name it. Not to reopen the situation, but to close it honestly for yourself. Then decide what kind of friendship you want to build next.
The Architects
“Seek not the good in external things; seek it in yourself.”
— Epictetus, Epictetus, Discourses III.22 (On the Calling of a Cynic), Matheson translation