Practicing Self-Compassion

My eyes are wide open in disbelief.

Too open.

As if blinking would make this real.

A heavy wave of sadness fills my chest, sinking deep into my heart. I feel crushed under its weight.

My throat is tight.

We are standing in the driveway. The red car waits behind him, patient and indifferent, boot open like a mouth waiting to be fed. The morning is painfully bright.

A few steps away from me, he bends to lift the suitcase. He moves with calm precision as if this were any ordinary departure. The fabric of his white shirt catches the sunlight as he places the suitcase carefully into the boot.

I remain still.

Watching.

He looks impeccable — white shirt sharply pressed, charcoal suit smooth against his tall frame, red tie precise at his collar. His shoes catch the light. Everything about him is ordered.

Inside me, nothing is.

My mouth opens. No sound comes.

I swallow. Try again.

“Please… don’t go.”

The words fracture as they leave me.

He pauses and looks up. A sadness moves across his face, gentle but resolute.

“I don’t want you to go,” I say, my voice trembling.

He lifts the second suitcase and places it in the boot.

“I have to go,” he says softly. “It is time for me to rest."

Rest.

The word lands in me like a stone in still water.

"My children are scattered," he continues. "They are not together. It is hard for me to see this. I am powerless to change it. And watching it breaks my heart. I am tired."

Powerless.

Tired.

My body begins to tremble. Words escape from my mouth but it feels like my whole body is projecting them as I am sobbing and speaking at the same time.

“What about me?” I manage through sobs. “Dad... you can’t just leave me. I need you.”

He closes the boot.

The sound echoes — solid, irreversible. 

When he walks toward me, arms open, my feet feel rooted to the ground. He wraps his arms around me. His embrace is firm, steady. I feel the warmth of his chest, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my cheek.

“You will be fine,” he whispers.

Something in me resists the words. How can I be fine?

“Believe me," he continues, with quiet conviction. "I know. You will be just fine.”

For a moment, I want to argue. I want to hold on. I want to beg time to fold in on itself.

Instead, I lean into him.

And breathe.

Without another word, he turns, gets into the car, and drives away.

Dust rises behind the wheels as the car disappears down the narrow road, crossing the small one-way bridge at the edge of the deserted town.

The sun vanishes. The brightness dulls. A grey stillness settles.

Somehow, I know this is the last time I will ever see my father again.

An immense emptiness fills the space around me. My heart aches with a pain that feels unbearable.

And then I wake.

I wake in a pool of tears, my pillow damp beneath my cheek. The grief feels fresh, as though twenty years have not passed since he died.

For two decades, he has come to me in dreams during the most difficult seasons of my life. When I doubted myself. When I felt alone. When the weight of responsibility pressed hard against my chest. He would appear — steady, reassuring. And I would wake with the sense that I was not alone.

I was a teenager when he died suddenly. There was no preparation. No slow goodbye. Just absence.

Perhaps my mind kept recreating him because I was afraid of losing him twice — once to death, and once to forgetting. I feared forgetting his voice. His laugh. The way he asked questions and truly listened to my answers.

My parents had separated when I was three. I lived with my mother and he visited when he could. Not consistently, but intensely. When he was present, he was present. He took me for long drives. He spoiled me. He looked at me as though I mattered.

I teased him more than I thanked him.

I rarely said, “I love you.”

He did.

Often.

Looking back, those memories and an old black-and-white portrait are what remain. And yet, this morning, it feels different. As though something has shifted. As though this dream was a farewell.

For years after his death, especially around my birthday, the ache felt unbearable. I would scold myself for still hurting. I would wonder why I could not “move on” like others seemed to.

But grief does not obey deadlines.

Loss is not a personal failure.

It is human.

I am still lying in bed when I hear chatter downstairs — footsteps running, cupboards doors, the television murmuring to life.

My son.

Life, continuing.

“I need to get up,” I whisper to myself.

My body still feels heavy, but I place a hand on my chest — not to push the grief away, but to acknowledge it.

This hurts.

Of course it hurts.

Anyone who has loved deeply knows this ache.

The thought softens something inside me.

In the bathroom mirror, toothbrush in hand, I lift my eyes and meet my reflection.

There he is.

My father’s gaze looks back at me. The same forehead. The same half-smile. Even my hands — I turn them slowly — carry his shape. I resemble him so much. 

For years, I searched for him in dreams.

This morning, I find him here.

Not as a ghost.

Not as an echo.

But as a voice.

A warmth rises in my chest — not sharp like grief, but steady. Compassionate.

My son bursts into the room moments later and throws his arms around my waist. I bend down and hold him tightly, aware of the ordinariness of the moment — and its sacredness.

Love is rarely dramatic.

It is daily. Repetitive. Quiet.

My father is gone. I cannot change that. Death is part of the human story we all share.

But the love he gave me did not disappear. It reorganized itself inside me.

When I miss him now, I do not scold myself for longing. I do not rush to be strong.

I pause.

I feel.

I remind myself: this is what it means to love.

Then placing a gentle hand over my heart, I speak to myself the way he once spoke to me:

You will be fine.

Believe me.

I know.

And in that gentle inner voice, I find him — and myself — still here.

Compassion comes from the Latin com (together with) — and pati (to suffer). To be compassionate is therefore not to remove suffering, nor to rush it away, but to remain with it. Self-compassion is the courageous act of staying present with our own pain, offering ourselves the same steadiness we would offer someone we love. It is the gentle hand on the chest. The softening instead of the scolding. The quiet reminder that suffering is not a personal defect, but part of a shared human experience. In moments of grief, doubt or longing, self-compassion becomes the inner voice that says: This hurts. And I am here with you.

March is about turning inward with kindness.

It is about becoming the steady presence for ourselves in moments of ache — staying long enough for the inner voice to soften.

And that feels like the right place to continue.

Photo by Ray Bran: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stunning-black-and-white-wanaka-tree-landscape-34128963/