Everything Happens
What I'll never say to you.
“When we see that someone's hurt or in pain, it's our instinct as human beings to try to make things better. We want to fix, we want to give advice. But empathy isn't about fixing. It's the brave choice to be with someone in their darkness--not to race to turn on the light so we feel better.”—Brené Brown
This morning I started writing a poem about how much I hate the saying, “Everything happens for a reason.”
Later, I was sight-seeing in a small coastal town, looking for good seafood, and checking out gift shops. I walked into one mariner themed shop and before I could look around, I recognized the familiar sound of a small dog’s “reverse sneeze.” I walked over to the woman behind the counter and told her how my Yorkipoo makes the same sound. I asked if I could pet him—Gizmo—and she told me he was a gift from her daughter and her son-in-law.
“They paid $4000 for him,” she told me, “they bought him for me after my son died. Yesterday was the third anniversary of his death.”
She told me how her son was murdered when he was only thirty-three, just two days after his birthday. He had called his grandparents asking for help, saying someone was after him, but they didn’t believe him. His body was found three days later.
She held Gizmo to her chest. Her eyes turned red and she tried to talk, and she couldn’t. Finally she said, “Sorry.”
She was embarrassed to grieve in front of a stranger. Embarrassed for not keeping up appearances. Embarrased for not shoving her overwhelming grief into a drawer until closing time.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.
I told her how sorry I was. I told her not to apologize. I told her I was writing a poem about how I don’t believe everything happens for a reason and that I think it’s awful when people say that to someone who has suffered an unspeakable loss.
“Exactly! It’s bullshit!”
And she told me how her parents tried to tell her that very thing in the beginning, how they needed to find a way to assuage their own guilt for not believing their grandson when he told them he was in danger.
Once I told her I would never tell someone that everything happens for a reason, she shared more of her story with me. She let herself cry and I just listened. All I could say was how sorry I was, and that she had every right to her grief.
“It’s not true,” she said, “That you can get over anything. You don’t get over this.”
I agreed with her. I said I hoped she could take time away from work. We talked about our dogs, and how sometimes they are the only ones to keep us sane, or bring us any comfort.
“He’s my therapy dog, but I can’t talk about it, I can’t talk about what he means to me or I’ll cry.” And at that point, I fought back tears myself.
Customers walked in and out and in and out. I joined her in ignoring them. She talked about her stepfather’s struggle with manic depressive disorder, and how during an extreme manic episode the police showed up and beat him so violently he ended up in a wheelchair.
“He could sue,” she said, “but he thinks he deserved it.”
The word “deserved” seemed to hang in suspended animation for a moment with the silence creating a momentary chasm between us.
I was tempted to share something, to show I could relate to some of her pain. But I stopped myself. I could tell by her rawness and expressed vulnerability, she had been waiting for someone to hear her and see her.
I was also tempted to offer her a hug. But I didn’t want to offer her something she would have to politely decline. I didn’t want to make things awkward for her. Plus, sweet Gizmo with his round, dark eyes, filled her arms and welcomed her squeezes.
She apologized for sharing so much, for not being able to hold back. I told her, “You chose the right person to share with,” I said, “Please don’t apologize.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she repeated, “I should be hibernating.”
By the end of the conversation we were talking about her former career in speech therapy, working with children with autism, and how she might go back to school.
When I left she still had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling too.
I hope I did the right thing, said something right, because there are no words that could do her pain justice.
I came home and finished the poem I had started earlier. I hope she’s cuddling up with Gizmo and letting herself grieve and cry, and I hope she doesn’t feel embarrased for opening up to a stranger. I hope she knows I’m still thinking of her.
Everything Happens I will never finish this baneful platitude. I will never tell you that your suffering was necessary. I will never say, “but it made you who you are!”’ When I know you wonder who you might have been without it. I will never ask you to believe some lopsided reason justified your tragedy. I will never argue with you when you tell me you feel broken. I won’t deny the truth of brokenness. I won’t make Job out of you, because we know what bullshit it is when they say: God won’t give you more than you can handle. I won’t insist it was for some greater good. Not every lesson makes you stronger and even if it did, it's not always worth the scars. There are whole armies of former selves we may never find again, some losses we can’t come back from. I won’t say, “Time heals all wounds.” I will never tell you “it wasn’t so bad.” I’ll never ask you to explain your grief. I won’t pretend to speak the same language of pain, won’t make comparisons or offer examples of similarities. I will not feed or erase your pain, but I will sit beside you. I will hold you. I will listen to the beat of your ransacked heart. I will put my hand to the small of your back, while you scream in your car, And pummel your steering wheel. I will scream with you. I will say: Things happen. They happened to you. They happened to me. And they shouldn’t have. The bridge from your sorrow to your healing is not a reason. It’s the sanctuary of radical empathy, where wounds are not currency, but echoes bouncing against the shared walls of our hard-won emancipation. –Kristy Webster, July 2025
This poem 😭❤️🩹❤️🩹 exactly what we need.