What My Biological Father's Passing Taught Me About Connection
There are losses that don’t just break you — they rearrange you into someone new. My biological father’s death was one of those moment in time for me.
I was reunited with Jack, my biological father, back in 2000 through letters that crossed the country, handwritten bridges between two souls who had been searching for each other without knowing what they would find. He had spent much of his entire adult life searching for the daughter he’d been forced to give up, while I had spent my entire life wondering if anyone ever would.
Our connection unfolded slowly — through ink, through distance, through the safety of our words until we were ready for the phone calls. And yet, even in our absence from one another, I felt that pulse of belonging deep within my body. We were perfect beautiful strangers linked by blood and longing, cautious but curious, circling something that felt both fragile and somewhat fated.
On my 42nd birthday, Jack sent me what would become his final message, what I now recognize as his soul’s goodbye letter to me. He shared feelings he had never expressed before—his love, his pride, his sense of completion in knowing me. It was a letter of pure love. Three weeks later, I received a call that would change everything.
Jack was an avid fly fisherman who had gone out fishing for the day and never returned home. His truck was found on the side of the road, and days after days later, a search party using helicopter support found and recovered his lifeless body floating down the Skagit River, in Concrete, Washington.
Grief had arrived like a tsunami, surging into my body while we were receiving all the information. This primal feeling of devastation overtook me by its powerful currents, emotionally flooding me with a force so strong, I couldn’t even comprehend or understand how to name the depth of it. It had its own sounds within me that came from somewhere much older than our words shared. It wasn’t only the loss of him that was demolishing me; it was the loss of everything we hadn’t yet been and the loss of a sacred life line I hadn’t finished exploring yet.
That kind of pain carves you open. It empties you out, reshapes the landscape, but in that emptiness, something, somehow begins to grow.
Reflection Invitation
Grief is the body’s way of remembering how deeply we’ve loved.
What has grief asked you to release — and what has it asked you to remember?
Can you feel how heartbreak and hope can coexist, each teaching you a different language of strength?
What does connection mean to you when there’s no one left to hold but memory?
When Jack went missing, an unexpected connection arrived — not through him, but because of him.
His sister, who I had no previous contact with, appeared like a golden thread of hope from another lifetime. She carried pieces of him, but in truth, she really carried the reflected faceted parts of me that had been waiting to be seen.
In her, I found familiarity — the kind that transcends explanation. It was as if the universe was gently saying, even what you lose will find its way back to you, in another form. Where Jack and I struggled to complete and close the circle in this life, she helped me fulfill spiritually and soulfully through her . The connection we never fully built became a bridge between worlds — his, mine, and hers.
Through her, I understood that love doesn’t always finish the way we imagine. Sometimes, it changes form, continuing to work quietly beneath the surface — not to return us to what was, but to help us become who we were meant to be. This Grief became my initiation — the shadowed side of love that asks us to grow wider, softer, more awake. When someone leaves, they don’t vanish; they evolve into the unseen architecture of our becoming.
So, I ask you:
What part of your own story is still waiting to be closed?
Who has shown up in unexpected ways to help you finish what love began?
Can you allow your loss to become a teacher — not of endings, but of continuance?
Because sometimes, the deepest connections are the ones that death can’t unweave.