Why witnessing your losses comes before making the most of what you have.

How do you make the most of what you have when you’re drowning in what you’ve lost?

I recently heard Sir Chris Hoy say his wife helped him by saying “make the most of what you have” after his cancer diagnosis, and something in me wanted to listen, but I couldn’t get there. The words felt like they were for people on the other side of something I was still trapped inside. It felt like a shove to be grateful which I knew mattered but it felt like a step too far.

I’ve recently realised that I’ve spent a long time focusing on the things I’ve lost. My mum to cancer, my dad to dementia, though he’s still alive. Favourite foods to a gluten intolerance, a glass of wine, gone, due to menopause. My running, my fitness, my movement, all feeling lost to injury and menopause again.

No wonder I’ve been sad, even saying that here, on this page, makes me feel okay to be human. The start of self-compassion.

Here’s what I need you to know: I’m a trained counsellor, an accredited coach and I’ve known for years that all of my emotions matter. I teach this. I know about Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems work, the idea that we all have different “parts” that carry different burdens and protect us in different ways. I know Susan David’s research on emotional agility, how trying to force ourselves into positivity can actually keep us stuck. I teach people this.

And I was still operating on autopilot, unaware of what was happening. Still drowning in the inventory of losses. Still unable to hear the well-meaning advice to focus on what remains.

Eleven days ago, I started morning pages, Julia Cameron’s practice of writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness first thing each morning. Not journaling with purpose, just letting whatever wants to come out, come out.

And something shifted.

I noticed my ‘poor me’ part showed up every day, spoke loudly with anger and sadness, demanding I listened in a way that I’d not noticed before.

I found myself asking: Is my ‘poor me’s power’ relative to the depth of my suffering?

I realised she’d been there all along, my victim part, my protective part, holding everything I couldn’t hold anymore. She’d been shouting to be seen, to have the depth of what she carried witnessed. Not fixed, not miraculously gone, not transformed into gratitude, no, she just wanted to be seen.

I had been trying to make the most of what I have while still unconsciously attached to what I’d lost, and you cannot do both, or at least I couldn't.

Here’s what I learned that the theory didn’t prepare me for: witnessing is not the same as rumination. Rumination keeps you spinning in the same thoughts, the same stories, like a hamster wheel. Witnessing is different, it’s turning toward the part with curiosity and compassion, letting it show you what it’s carrying, and asking: what do you need me to know? To do this I needed to feel safe, safe in the knowledge that my writing wasn't going to be judged or critiqued (and I mean by me) that through letting the pen guide me as it hit the page I made space for these parts to be seen like they mattered, because they do.

When I stopped trying to fix this part, transcend her, or positive-think her away, something released in me. It didn't happen overnight, not completely, but I sensed the grip had loosened.

This part isn’t weakness, it’s a part that needs acknowledging. The inventory of losses isn’t self-pity, it’s the weight of real things that happened, and that mattered. Losses that changed you and no amount of being told to stay positive will make that weight disappear.

What I needed wasn’t another reminder to be grateful. I needed to stop running the autopilot program that kept me performing okayness while a part of me was suffocating under losses no one could see

If you’re reading this and those words, “make the most of what you have”, feel impossible right now, maybe it’s because something in you needs witnessing first. Not fixing, not fast-forwarding to acceptance. Just the simple, profound act of turning toward what you’ve been carrying and saying: I see you. I see what this has cost.

This might look like:

∙Morning pages, three pages of uncensored writing before your day begins

∙Sitting with the part that’s angry or sad and asking “what do you need me to understand?”

∙Noticing when you’re performing okayness and letting that mask drop, even just for a moment

∙Speaking the inventory of losses out loud to someone who won’t rush to fix you

You’ll know it’s witnessing (not ruminating) when there’s a sense of turning toward something rather than spinning in something. When there’s curiosity rather than judgment. When you feel accompanied rather than alone with it.

I’m not on the other side yet. Eleven days in, I’m still learning what my protective part has been carrying, still practicing the turn toward rather than away. But I can feel something different now when I hear “make the most of what you have.” It doesn’t feel like a shove anymore. It feels like something that might be possible, once this part of me knows she’s been truly seen.

Only then can you begin to make the most of what remains. Not because you’ve transcended the losses, but because you’ve finally stopped trying to. And then you get to feel like you're choosing the path.