When New Year’s Cheers Meet Private Grief (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hi, Anderson. My name is David Sharpe. My grandparents raised me from infancy. My parents were teenagers struggling with addiction. My grandfather was really my protector. When he died a month before my 16th birthday, I felt unmoored. I was just beginning to come out to myself as a gay teenager, and the person who made me feel safest in the world was suddenly gone. After that, my grandmother became my anchor. She was warm and curious and funny and deeply alive. I thought that we had all the time in the world, but on New Year's Eve, I held her hand as she died. Suddenly, unexpectedly, while the rest of the world was celebrating the promise of a new year, I felt like time had stopped entirely, like I was trapped in the space between seconds while everyone else was just counting down. You recently shared on the New Year's Eve celebration something about grief.

[00:00:57] Speaker 2: Some of you watching right now, maybe a lot of you watching tonight, may see all these crowds and the merriment and feel alone, even if there are others around you.

[00:01:06] Speaker 1: It felt like someone was acknowledging the quiet devastation happening behind closed doors for me while confetti fell elsewhere. In the early days after my grandmother died, grief felt really sharp and brutal. But over time, something else began to happen. I realized that everything steady within me, my compassion, my resilience, my ability to love, came from her, from them. All there is has helped me understand that grief is not just the price we pay for love. It's the proof of it. Even when the people who made us feel safe are gone, what they gave us doesn't leave with them. It lives on in how we move through the world. If you're grieving and the world feels like it's moving too fast without you, you're not broken. You're not behind. You're carrying love that mattered and learning how to live with that love still inside you. And that takes time.