For the Ones Who Love Them

As a relational therapist, I see every day how we exist in relationship—to our partners, our parents, our clients, our friends, our communities, and even to the parts of ourselves we’re still learning to understand. No one is truly an island, even when pain convinces us otherwise.  When someone is struggling—whether with trauma, an eating disorder, depression, or any deep hurt—the impact ripples outward. Those who love them are touched by the tremors too. They worry, adapt, hold their breath. They learn the landscape of fear and hope, sometimes in the same moment.

I never want to minimize what it’s like to live inside the experience of trauma, or to navigate the mental minefields of a disordered brain. But I also don’t want to overlook the experience of those nearby—the ones who quietly hold, wait, adjust, and ache. The ones who love deeply and often invisibly.  Because when one person suffers, the system suffers. When one begins to heal, the system shifts, too. It’s all relationship. Always has been.

There are so many kinds of suffering that ripple through relationships.  Sometimes it’s a partner who becomes quieter, lost in the fog of depression.  Sometimes it’s a friend walking through cancer treatments, a sibling navigating addiction, a child tangled in an eating disorder.  Each of these stories is different, yet what they have in common is this: no one walks through them alone. Even when it looks like they do.

I never want to minimize what it’s like to live inside the experience of trauma, or to navigate the mental minefields of a disordered brain. But I also don’t want to overlook the experience of those nearby—the ones who quietly hold, wait, adjust, and ache. The ones who love deeply and often invisibly.  Because when one person suffers, the system suffers. When one begins to heal, the system shifts, too. It’s all relationship. Always has been.

There are so many kinds of suffering that ripple through relationships.  Sometimes it’s a partner who becomes quieter, lost in the fog of depression.  Sometimes it’s a friend walking through cancer treatments, a sibling navigating addiction, a child tangled in an eating disorder.  Each of these stories is different, yet what they have in common is this: no one walks through them alone. Even when it looks like they do.

The people who love them often learn new ways of being—how to hover without smothering, how to hope without demanding, how to love without expecting anything in return.  It can be exhausting. It can be something close to holy. Sometimes it’s both in the same breath.  And sometimes the ones who love are asked to hold their own pain quietly.  They know it’s not about them, but their hearts ache anyway.  Because it’s f—ing hard to watch someone you love go through something you can’t fix.  There aren’t many things harder. That kind of helplessness gets into your bones.

You keep showing up, trying to make things softer around the edges — to keep a little light, a little normalcy, a little hope.  And even when you do, something stays with you: the worry that hums in the background, the tenderness that won’t turn off, the imprint of what you’ve witnessed.  Naming that doesn’t take away from the person who is sick or struggling.  It simply tells the truth that love changes shape under pressure.  Love leaves its mark.  What stays isn’t the suffering, but the proof that we were there — still loving, still trying, still human.