Grief Is Unexpressed Love

August 16, 2025

After I posted my mother’s story, I received some deeply thoughtful comments from several of you. One of them brought to mind something Andrew Garfield, the Actor, once said in an interview, reflecting on grief while speaking about Rent and the loss of his own mother. His words have stayed with me ever since, but after reading the feedback on my post, they struck even deeper:

“Grief is all the unexpressed love you didn’t get to show.”

It’s such a simple truth. We often think of grief as the hollow ache after loss, the emptiness left when someone we love is no longer within reach. But Garfield’s words reminded me, it’s not an emptiness at all. It’s fullness. It’s love that hasn’t lost its shape, even though the person it belongs to is gone.

Grief is the love we never got to speak out loud, the hugs we didn’t give, the apologies we didn’t voice, the thank yous we thought we’d have more time for. It is conversations cut short and laughter that will never happen again. It’s the impulse to call someone, only to remember they will never pick up.

We’re told that grief fades with time, that it’s something to “work through” or “get over.” But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe grief isn’t meant to disappear. Maybe it’s meant to live alongside us, a reminder that the love we felt was real, deep, and worth carrying, even when it hurts. In that way, grief is not a weakness. It’s proof of how much we dared to love.

Buried in Garfield’s words is a challenge: if grief is unexpressed love, then why wait to express it?

We have this habit of assuming there will be another phone call, another holiday, another lazy afternoon together.

We save our most vulnerable words for the “right moment,” as if love should be rationed out carefully. But the truth is, the right moment is always now.

So tell people how you feel.

Tell them they matter.

Send the message, write the letter, say the words out loud.

Hug longer than usual.

Notice the little things and speak them.

Let there be no doubt in the people you love about where they stand in your heart.

One day, grief will still come, because love always outlives presence; but when it does, may it be softened by the knowledge that you gave away as much of that love as you could while you had the chance.

Because love expressed becomes part of someone else’s life.

Love unexpressed becomes the grief we carry.