My mom always says: “Jo hota hai ache ke liye hota hai.” [Everything in life happens for a good reason]. My first memory of her saying these words to me was when I was five years old. Dazed, confused, and paralyzed with loss. You see, these words aren’t easy to internalize for a five-year-old, especially when they have been uttered in the context of losing one’s dad. In fact, it has taken years of denying this universal truth, and a sum total of my entire life’s experiences to realize that she was right. Mothers are indeed always right.

My father had a long-winded battle with cancer. My entire childhood was seeing my young parents give cancer a hard fight-back, and still doing their best at raising their two kids. A five-year-old, you may think, doesn’t understand all this. But when your family goes through something of this severity, circumstances teach you to mature well beyond your years. We were often left with our grandparents and aunts, and we learned to be well-behaved children with no demands. My brother and I knew that we didn’t have the luxury as kids to throw irrational tantrums, fight, or not do our homework. Because if we did any of that, it would have made our parents’ life much harder. My mom used to say: “When God puts you through adversity, he also blesses you with the strength to cope with it.” I didn’t realize the truth of this statement growing up, but I do now. There was goodness in the horrors we witnessed as children. From a young age, I realized the value of family and self-reliance. So, you see, there was some good to the turmoil I endured as a child.

But putting that aside, grief does a lot to you as a person. In fact, it’s the purest of human emotions; its gravity absolutely unquestionable. It’s the only emotion that’s so powerful in its intensity that its after-effects leave you changed for the better. Grief builds character. It lets you tap into latent strength you never knew existed within you. And the experience of loss gives you an incredibly potent gift: the power to help someone out of their own grief.

In 12th grade, my best friend lost her mother to a sudden heart attack in the middle of the night. I was the first person she called, before she called her own brother, because she didn’t want her brother to see her in the state she was in. I remember reaching her house and walking in on her trying to console her inconsolable father, completely calm, and making feeble attempts at jokes to cheer him up. The second she saw me, she broke down. It was at that moment I realized why I had been solicited by her, why I was the one she could be weak in front of. Because she knew I had gone through something similar in my life and had come out the other end. I was able to talk to her, to repeat some of the adages I grew up hearing, and just be there to help her out.

It was then that I realized what I had gained from losing my father. I could help others.

Throughout my life, I had questioned my mom when she said everything was for the best. “How can you say losing a father is for the best?”, I would counter. I questioned the will of God and questioned “Why us”? Well, now I know why. “Why my family?” Because it didn’t break us. It made us stronger. It united us. It taught us to always have each other’s back and to see positivity in everything. It enabled us to help others reach this beautiful place of acceptance over the years. Yes, it takes courage to stand before you today and talk about this, but it is with the sincere hope that your takeaway from this is that grief isn’t really the Big Bad Guy everyone makes it out to be. Indeed, everything does happen for a reason.