What Grief Taught Me About Resilience: A Love Letter to My Brother

There are moments that split your life in two – a before, and an after. Losing my little brother, Phil, in October of 2023 was one of mine.

He was 31. He was hurting deeply. And he died by suicide – overwhelmed by a world that felt far more cruel than he could carry.

For weeks afterward, I carried two questions I was afraid to say out loud:

1. Why didn’t he call?

2. Even if he had… would I have answered?

Grief has the tendency to rearrange your life like that. It sits you down in front of truths you would have given anything to outrun, and the love you wish you’d shown more openly. More often.

And yet, in its brutal, disorienting way, grief has also taught me more about resilience than anything else in my life ever has.

This is the beginning of that story – not just about losing him, but about being changed by him.

Who He Was: The Boy With the Hammer

To understand who I lost, you have to understand who he was.

Phil wasn’t just the youngest of six; he was the kid who followed our dad and nearly any adult around town, eager to help with whatever they were fixing or building. His “help” often slowed things down more than anything else – but he showed up with so much enthusiasm that he made quite the impression.

When he was no more than 5, a local contractor gifted him his very own child-sized hammer, complete with a small piece of wood and his own set of nails. Phil was ecstatic. It was the perfect gift: a symbol of the little boy who believed he could make anything better just by showing up and trying.

He was also the boy who said yes to almost anything his older siblings suggested – whether it was being mercilessly tackled in the snow, watching the Chucky movies when we were far too young to be doing so, or using our imaginations to explore the world from the quiet of our own backyard.

He was the teenager who spent his summer weekends mowing yards around town – and his winter weekends shoveling snowy sidewalks for anyone who needed the help.

He was the young man who developed a deep and lasting love for nature, and who found a unique appeal in challenging everything he was ever taught in hopes of finding his own truth. His own path. His own identity separate from those of us who came before him.

Four years older than him, I was the closest to him in age, making our relationship uniquely ours. I was often assigned to letting him tag along with me when we weren't in school, often begrudgingly creating experiences and memories I now cherish in ways I could never have imagined at the time.

When I graduated high school, he spent months insisting he couldn’t wait for me to leave for college. But just days before I did, he plopped down on my lap (as a nearly-full grown 14-year-old) and admitted he was struggling more than he thought he'd be. Nervous for life without me there – nervous I would be too busy if he needed to talk.

Within weeks of my arrival at school, he called to apologize for ever wanting me gone. It turns out having our parents’ undivided attention wasn’t nearly as fun as he'd imagined. "Dad is so annoying! He always wants to know what I am doing and thinking and going to be doing. How did you deal with this?"

Even while desperately craving his privacy, I was grateful he called to connect.

The Hard Parts of Loving Him

Loving someone who struggles with addiction and mental illness is complicated. You’re loving them – their heart, their potential, their courage – and you’re also loving the parts shaped by pain. The exhaustion. The relapses. The unpredictability. The fear.

Learned from our dad, Phil had an intense stubbornness – admirable in its independence, frustrating in its resistance. He refused to follow any path that resembled an older sibling’s, even when it might have supported his best interests. He wanted to carve his own life, his own way, come hell or high waters.

And then there was addiction. When it started, it felt temporary. An explorative chapter that he'd move past in time.

And after a while, it felt personal. His choices felt intentional. Disrespectful. His relapses felt like betrayals. My desire to protect my mom made it difficult to separate her pain from his. I was impatient, even when supportive. Sometimes harsher than I meant to be. Sometimes more distant than he deserved.

And yet…

Watching my mom love him was one of the greatest lessons of my life. My momma bear loved him fiercely, unapologetically, unconditionally, and without ever withholding her heart. Her door was always open and always would be. And her love showed me what compassion actually looks like when it’s lived instead of simply preached. And – in time – it softened something within me I didn’t know needed softening.

He was struggling, absolutely – but he was also trying. Always trying.

The Questions That Broke Me Open & Let the Light In

“Why didn’t he call?” may have been what came first, but "Would I have answered" is the question that haunted me. For weeks, every missed call from someone I loved came with a sting and panic.

But with time and some painfully honest reflections, I saw something I hadn’t wanted to see:

He didn't call, because I wouldn't have answered. I had relegated nearly everyone I loved to scheduled hours during my weekends and rarely more.

Not because I didn’t care. Not because I didn’t love them. But because I was drowning in a life I had built around burnout, shame, and a desperate attempt to find myself in external validation and achievement.

My job swallowed every corner of my emotional bandwidth. My family got what was left – which was often very little. If he had called on a weekday, it almost certainly would have gone to voicemail with little thought on my part.

And the hardest truth?

If I had answered, I don’t know how much compassion I would have had to give him. I had spent years listening to people tell me that “boundaries” meant emotional distance. I was exhausted, resentful, and running on fumes.

I didn’t realize how empty I had become – until it was too late.

Owning that truth was (and still is) an excruciating process. But it was also the catalyst that saved my life.

What Grief Made of Me

Just two days after his memorial service at our home in New York, I was back in the Austin office leading nearly six hours of year-end meetings. My brother had just died, and I was sitting in a Zoom session discussing performance ratings and promotion criteria.

That moment crystallized something in me. I'm not sure anything could have revealed the misalignment of my life more clearly.

In the weeks that followed, I made a commitment – to myself and to Phil: I would not be living the same life in a year, sacrificing those I love for a life that felt increasingly hollow and unsatisfying.

I would forge my own path, the way he had always tried to do.

That December, I enrolled in my first positive psychology class. One class became six. Learning about connection, compassion, trauma, and resilience transformed me from the inside out. It gave me language, understanding, and a new way of loving people – including myself.

I left corporate America. I built a coaching practice grounded in empathy, science, and humanity. I started loving my friends and family with less fear, less distance, and far more presence.

Grief didn’t just break me open. It let the light in, so I could see the way forward.

And it continues to nearly every single day.

What I Hope You Know

If you’ve lost someone and are asking yourself similar questions, I hope this brings you a sense of comfort. Your grief is not a failure. Your guilt is not the end of your story.

Healing is not forgetting – it is honoring. Every day, even the small moments can be most meaningful.

And if you haven’t lived this kind of grief, you don’t have to wait for loss to teach you how to love. You don’t have to wait for the calls to stop before you start answering them. You don’t have to wait for tragedy to remind you what truly matters.

Love people now – while you still have the chance.

Final Thoughts

If Phil could read this, I would want him to know the impact he continues to have. That the world he dreamed of – kinder, more compassionate, more humane – is the world I am trying to help build.

I would want him to know that I miss him. That I’m sorry for the ways I failed him. That I carry him with me in the work I do, the life I live, and the love I offer others.

And I would want him to know that the best of his spirit lives on, and I am committed to honoring it for the rest of my life.

Grief is not a straight line. Some days I feel strong. Some days I cry alone in my room asking him to forgive me.

But every day, I try to live a little closer to the love he deserved – and the love he never stopped offering the world.