Recently, I had lunch with a friend of mine who I absolutely adore. We sat at a picnic table enjoying our to-go orders as wasps buzzed around our heads every few minutes.

We talked about work and life and the idea that working our lives away when we only have one to live is devastating. We talked about how distressing life is when you don’t make enough money to live on and how being in a soul-crushing atmosphere every day isn’t worth the pride of success. Maybe if our lives look different than that, it’s okay if we just focus on who we are as people and find a way to be happy without the outdated idea of the American Dream.

Another small red flash hovered and dive-bombed toward us. The conversation moved forward to love. More precisely, it moved toward lost love.

I sat quietly and listened as words spilled out, clearly pouring from a crack running through her heart. As she talked about running into her ex, how years of love were reduced to 5 seconds of passing by each other with only a lukewarm hello, a familiar torn countenance overtook her face that I know all too well.

At that moment, I wanted to hug her and not let go. At that moment, I wanted to tell her that even though most people meet confessions like these with a “let that go and move on” that her words felt like home to me. At that moment, I wanted to offer some relief but knew the best thing I could do was listen without judgment because even though I could relate it didn’t mean I understood.

Please read what I’m about to say carefully, because it could easily be misconstrued.

In my own life, grief and heartbreak have been woven together with the same thread. They are different, but similar in many ways. I am not here to say that all grief and heartbreak are equal. I am not here to try to compare losses either.

Thanks to Megan Devine, the author of It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay, I’ve found some quotes that frame this well:

“Grief is as individual as love: every life, every path, is unique.”

“Grief is as individual as love. That someone has experienced a loss—even one similar to yours—does not mean they understand you.”

Grief, loss, heartbreak: all of these are as individual as the love that was there.

Love does not disappear when we lose someone. Its existence isn’t erased from the past. Pretending that it never happened doesn’t change that it did. And caring deeply about the wellbeing of another person doesn’t just go away if we throw an invisibility cloak over it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not so naïve to miss that sometimes love does end, especially in situations where it deserves to. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. There are people no longer in my life who I would do nearly anything for if they asked and there are people who I would politely tell what I really think of them. And there are people who feel the same about me in both instances.

Life is complex. We are complex people who have relationships with other complex people: family members, friends, lovers, whoever it may be. When one of those other complex humans that we have poured parts of ourselves into is gone, whether by death or heartbreak or some other means, those parts of ourselves go with them.

This is not me saying we need to hold onto the past with white knuckles. This is not me saying life doesn’t still move forward. This is not me saying that love doesn’t evolve to look differently as time ticks on.

What I am saying, is that there seems to be some widely accepted idea that we should have some sort of switch with which we can turn these complex feelings on and off. But that just isn’t realistic. At least it’s not realistic for some of us.

Of the 107 billion people that have lived over the course of history, how many have created works of art around this very idea?

So many of the things we are told to fix are often just us being human.

So, for my beautiful big-hearted friend, and all of the other beautiful, messy, complex people out there: Just because someone else’s experience is different than yours, it does not invalidate your own. Thank you for being exactly who you are. You’re fantastic.