If you love our laughter, it’s because we’ve known the heartache of loving and losing. It’s because we’ve gotten to a place where laughter didn’t feel like a betrayal; where laughter didn’t hide the tears and frustrations. We’ve fought through the guilt and now embrace the pureness of that laughter.

If you love the way we love, then you’d understand the depth of our love. You’d realize that death won’t erase you from our heart or mind. You’d know that if we let you in, truly let you in, then you live on, even if you die. We love so fiercely because we’ve lost. That love is not a threat to a new love. It’s simply an expansion of the heart.

If you love our independence, know that it comes from making hard decisions alone—about children, kids, finances, etc. Decisions we never thought we’d have to make by ourselves. But with each decision and each win, we gained newfound confidence and the ability to ‘go it alone.’

If you love our spontaneity, you have to know that seeing “we” became “me” is a total paradigm shift. You realize that those plans – the ones for after retirement…when the kids get older…the savings account gets bigger – don’t always happen. We’ve learned to live in the moment and seize the day!

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If you love how much friendships mean to us, understand that death brings out the best and worst in people. Losing a spouse showed us which friendships mattered. People we thought would show up for us didn’t and those we least expected to did. We value our tight-knit circles and the ones we’ve found within our widow tribes.

If you love our empathy, it’s because we’ve known hurt. We know what it’s like for people to bail on us. We know how it feels when no one seems to see us being dragged out to sea by depression, grief, loneliness, sadness, despair, etc. Now that we’ve gotten to that other side of pain, we can acknowledge it in others and be there as best as we can for them.

If you love how affectionate we are, it’s because we’ve experienced the brokenness that comes with staring at the empty side of a bed night after night. We’ve experienced “skin hunger” and know what it means to want physical touch so badly it hurts.

If you love our humor, it’s because there were times we could only laugh to avoid losing our mind. Death puts things into perspective. When your spouse receives a terminal diagnosis, you quickly realize the things you thought were important, really aren’t that serious in the grand scheme of life. You learn to take yourself a little less seriously and find humor in everything.

If you love our patience, it’s because of the unpredictability of grief. We’ve had to come to accept that we can’t outrun it. It takes its time and the rawest stage leaves in its own time.

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If you love our resiliency, know that it comes to getting up each and every time life throws us a knockout blow. For many in the widowed community, the loss of a spouse only began to scratch the surface of our pain. There have been cancer diagnoses, suicidal children, foreclosures, health issues and more. But we keep going, believing that tomorrow will be a better day.

It is impossible for you to love the person we are today without acknowledging that our grief has shaped and will probably continue to play a role in our lives and how we see the world.

While the parts that hold us back from truly experiencing life are the things we should ultimately want to rid ourselves of, there are parts of our grief that aren’t worth “getting over” because that would mean letting go of the most significant pieces of who we are today.

Kerry runs a support group for young widows and widowers venturing back into the world of dating and is a contributor to Open to Hope. She is the author of “Letters to the Widowed Community” and “The One Thing: 100 Widows Share Lessons on Love, Loss, and Life.” Her articles on widowhood and grief have been featured in HuffPost and Love What Matters. She’s also the host of the Young, Widowed & Dating podcast.