The Parallel Lives of Loss and Liberation

Photo by Riho Kitagawa on Unsplash

In a parallel universe we are unbroken—but are we transformed?

This reflection was inspired by The Isolation Journals by Suleika Jaouad—a reminder that writing through our questions can sometimes bring us closer to living into the answers.

The other night, my husband and I found ourselves circling back to the same question that always seems to hover in the room with us: Why us? Why did this happen? What are we supposed to learn from it?

It’s a question that first surfaced after my breast cancer diagnosis, and again after his heart transplant. It lingers even now, years later, as we piece together new rhythms of living, loving, and surviving.

I told him that sometimes I feel like our alternate selves are out there in a parallel universe. In that world, neither of us got sick. We live somewhere else, with different careers and different choices. Maybe in that version of our lives, I never made it to Harvard—or maybe our daughter never would have been inspired to apply to Harvard by the banner she saw in Harvard Yard at 11 years old that told her, “You belong here.” I imagine we are happy in that world, but I wonder: are we transformed in the same way?

Because here’s the hard truth I’ve come to know: transformation requires loss.

Illness stripped away the illusion that life was predictable, manageable, guaranteed. It took careers, security, and the comfort of believing we had time. But alongside that loss came an unexpected kind of liberation.

Liberation is tricky, though. It’s not the tidy freedom that gets stitched on a pillow or quoted in a graduation speech. It can be terrifying to realize you are no longer bound to the expectations that once defined you, that you’ve been set free from old selves and old paths. But not as terrifying as chemotherapy. Not as terrifying as waiting for a new heart to keep beating.

Transformation = Loss + Liberation.

It’s not a formula I would have chosen to live by, but it is one I now understand in my bones.

Our alternate selves may have been spared the suffering, but I’m not sure they would have learned to live with this much gratitude. They may never have asked the hardest questions. They may never have discovered that survival itself is a form of rebellion.

This life—our life—cost us dearly. But it gave us something we could not have gotten any other way: the freedom to begin again, again, and again.

And maybe that’s what transformation really is. Not just the ache of what’s been lost, but the wild possibility that even here, even now, another life is still waiting to be lived.