Another lifetime ago, I remember different sunflower seed shells finding their way into my clothes. I lived in Egypt between 2011 and 2012 with my then-husband, Amr. We didn’t have a clothes dryer, so I would meticulously hang every item of clothing out to dry after a wash cycle. I made sure to hang my bras and underwear on the inner lines, not directly facing the street (heaven forbid a passerby discovered I wore undergarments).

The neighbour above us had a nasty habit of standing on his balcony and chewing on sunflower seeds to pass time. His spittle and shells would float down and nestle themselves into our clothes. Sometimes I’d find the little pieces and brush them off, but sometimes I’d miss a shard or two.

It was never a pleasant feeling to find out that the something scratching at my back all day was not a clothing tag, but a something that was actually spit out of a man’s mouth.

At the time, this was enraging. Now, not so much.

Fast forward 13 years, and the sight of the sunflower seed shells in my Michigan home’s dryer immediately takes me by the hand, leads me across time and space to my old apartment in Alexandria. The seeds say to me: you will never be allowed to forget.

It doesn’t have to be sunflower seed shells. It can be a single word spoken with the familiar Egyptian twang, the scent of a marketplace heavy with raw meat, or ghee sizzling on the stove. It can be the smell of a cigarette, or the sound of waves crashing against rocks. It might even be the curve of my child’s smile or the arch of her eyebrows. One image, one sound, one smell, and I’m back. Back in my small apartment, or back on the coast, staring out into the Mediterranean.

All the things, all the things that yell and whisper: you will never be allowed to forget.

Amr, the man I shared an apartment with in Egypt, and who I still share a beautiful child with, was shot and killed on August 16, 2013. What happened in the years that followed, I do not want to write about anymore. I’ve written enough of what my heart endured in A Temporary Gift and A Place of Refuge. I’ve written essays and posts. Thousands of them by now. I’ve made videos and speeches. I said his name over and over again into the world.

But I haven’t written much about what that grief stole from me. And it stole quite a bit.

It stole memories of my child’s first steps, her first words, and what she was like as a toddler. My grief was a cloud that hovered in those first years. A fog set in, heavy and thick with a shapeless sadness that couldn’t be contained.

I know I was a present mother then, and I loved my Ruqaya with ferocity. But as I sit here, I cannot remember my daughter’s first word, or the sound of her chubby, rolling laughter as she discovered the world around her. I have to open my camera roll and watch videos from years ago to remember, to see, and to hear.

As if for the very first time.

How could I have forgotten what is so, so precious? How.

Grief stole things from me that I didn’t know I possessed—things I didn’t know I would need all these years later. It was like I was carrying around a secret prepaid credit card in my purse, and someone snatched that purse right off my shoulder and ran.

Only when I remarried did I realize I didn’t have that prepaid card on me anymore. I had assumed I would automatically fall into the role of a loving, nurturing wife—self-assured, confident, and kind. But the card that was stolen from me had those things on it, and I had to start from scratch. Perhaps even lower than scratch (what’s lower than scratch?).

I no longer felt safe with a spouse, and I didn’t understand it. Whenever we argued, as any couple does, I would become upset and automatically assume my marriage was coming to an end. Not because it was, but because my sense of safety was stolen from me.

Any and all shifts in tone, mood, or body language of my spouse, or those around me, immediately kicked my protective system into high gear. You are not safe, you are not safe, you are not safe.

Those are the words that were pumped through my veins, as though completely replacing the blood that was meant to carry oxygen throughout my body. Grief, although time, faith, and friendship had worn away at its sharp edges, still had a deep hold on me.

My entire system—the one previously wired for love, connection, and tenderness, was now wired…differently. It was wired to protect me at all costs. It was wired to show me all the ways I could potentially be hurt, and then consequently map out the different paths I could take to “protect myself.”

And as you may have already guessed, the paths it would show me were usually not reconciliatory.

I stayed with my husband (a wonderful, patient man), although my limbs were at war with my brain. My brain, rewired to protect me, yelled at my limbs to move to “safety.” My limbs did not acquiesce. They stayed, even in the midst of an internal jihad that asked them to pack a bag and go.

Even amidst me staying, the work of rewiring my system to trust, to feel safe, and to return to a softer, more tender version of myself, was unfathomably backbreaking.

Is unfathomably backbreaking.

But here I am, still breathing (for now). Still reeling from what has been taken—still finding sunflower seeds in uncanny locations, still being transported to times and places that have certainly passed, and certainly no longer exist in the material realm. Still ping-ponging between the past and the present, still being forced to make connections between them until my heart is fatigued, and my body nearly limp. Still loving the children in my life ferociously.

And still hearing this statement vibrate in my brain: the things grief stole, the things grief stole.

Perhaps I’ll never come up with a perfectly complete list of things. Perhaps many prepaid cards were stolen out of my purse that day, and I just won’t know until I’m standing at a cashier who has her hand held out, waiting for me to pass the card over. And I just won’t have it.

But I’ll have something else instead. Because in writing this, I know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t acknowledge now and again that while grief stole things, it didn’t steal everything. Oh no, it didn’t steal everything.

It gave me things, too.

It gave me the ability to pause in the middle of a laugh or a dance or funny story and see beneath them—see that these small moments are miracles, mercies, calls (I believe) very purposefully made from the unseen to coax me back into the world of the living.

Because that’s what I am, still: living (for now), breathing in the yellow and orange of butterflies and flowers, instead of the damp, thick fog that held me hostage for years.

I am slowly recovering from what grief stole. Slowly rebuilding beliefs and realities that others take for granted: that there is good in the world, that people who love me will show up when I need them, and that I am safe now, where my Creator has put me.

I lost someone I loved once. That reality will never go away. And I will surely lose more.

But I have seen now, guided by a Creator who is merciful and just, that pain doesn’t mean the end. It only means more learning. It only means more growing and reaching towards what is greater than me. Even if it is backbreaking work.

Whatever grief stole from me, it can keep.