Earlier this year, my father passed away. As a therapist who has worked extensively with grief, and a person who has experienced many loses in recent years, in ways this was familiar terrain. Yet, each process of grieving is unique. In the wake of his death, I began writing letters processing my grief. While the early letters focused on my father, increasingly the letters explored adjacent topics—how my place in the world changed without him, other losses that I have experienced, and various other existential reflections from the lessons I was learning or deepening in the grieving process. Though not planned at the outset, these letters for my father eventually transitioned into a book, Letters for My Father: Grief, Love, and Self-Reflection.

In writing this book, it would have been inauthentic to write with the intention of teaching lessons about grieving; it needed to be focused on the grieving journey. As the book took shape and lessons were pondered, I elected to invite Olivia Michael and Edbury Enegren (2025) to write a section on lessons on grieving from the book. One of the most salient factors they identified, which resonated with my own experience, was the contingencies of grief.

Contingent refers to something that is dependent upon, conditioned by, or connected with a prior condition or event (Mirriam-Webster, n.d.). The grieving process can throw us into facing our existence in profound ways. Yet, it is common to resist many of these contingencies out of fear that we are dishonoring the deceased, avoiding the grief, or being........

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