Supporting Structures: Building What You Need to Face Loss with Strength and Clarity

When you’re walking through the experience of watching someone you love decline, you need supporting structures. Without them, the ground beneath you feels like it’s constantly shaking. With them, you have something steady to lean on when the weight of grief feels too heavy to carry alone.

So what is a supporting structure? At its simplest, it’s anything that holds you up when you need it most. A vehicle that gets you where you need to go. A home that gives you shelter. Insurance that gives you access to doctors. A counselor. A coach. A friend who listens. A meditation that steadies your breath. A nap when your body needs rest. A workout when your energy is stuck. These are all supporting structures. They may look different for everyone, but the purpose is the same: to keep you from collapsing under the weight of it all.

The truth is, some structures serve you, and some don’t. Drinking, overeating, ignoring your body, or surrounding yourself with the wrong people, those are structures too, but they don’t hold you up. They pull you down. During the five years I walked through my mother’s decline, I learned this lesson the hard way. I didn’t always care for myself the way I needed to. I let grief pull me off track. I skipped workouts. I didn’t always nurture my body or my creativity. And sometimes, I put my energy into the wrong people.

At one point, I had at least seven different people in my life who weren’t truly supporting me. They were family, friends, business connections, even a love interest. Instead of giving me strength, they were draining me—taking my energy, my resources, my attention. And because I’m naturally an over-giver, I let it happen. Not because they deserved it, but because deep down I was afraid of being abandoned. My mother was dying, and my fear of losing her had me clinging to people who didn’t really love me, just so I wouldn’t feel that same loss twice.

It took a lot of honesty—and a lot of coaching—to see that clearly. My coach and I sat down and realized that my focus was misaligned. I was giving away precious energy to people who didn’t earn it, instead of reserving that strength for my mother, who needed me most. When we made that shift, everything changed. I reclaimed my priorities. I put my attention where it mattered. And because of that, I was able to stay steady, present, and committed to my end goal: having no unfinished business with my mom.

Looking back, I’m grateful I made that adjustment. Because if I hadn’t, I would have regretted it. I would have resented myself for letting distraction, fear, and the wrong people steal from me at the most sacred time of my life. Instead, I can say with honesty that I stayed focused on what mattered most, and I walked away from that experience complete.

Supporting structures are not just about convenience. They are about survival. They are about clarity. They are about choosing what gives you life instead of what drains it. Sometimes that means therapy. Sometimes that means vitamins, sunlight, or a daily walk. Sometimes that means saying goodbye to people who can’t show up the way you need them to.

At the end of the day, supporting structures are about love—self-love. You cannot serve your loved one if you’re running on empty. You cannot be present if you’re constantly being pulled into chaos. You cannot finish strong if you’re surrounded by people who won’t stand with you in the storm.

One of the most important structures I learned to put in place was loyalty. I became very intentional about who I allowed in my life. If you couldn’t show up with loyalty when things were messy, then you didn’t deserve a seat at the table when things were good. That boundary was painful to create, but it saved me. It gave me the strength to serve my mother the way she deserved—to stay committed to the end, to love her through the hardest days, and to let her go without regret.

So here’s the question for you: What supporting structures do you have in your life right now? And are they really serving you? This journey is too sacred, too short, and too important to be carried without the right supports in place. Build them wisely. Protect them fiercely. And lean on them, because you deserve to be held up while you walk through the hardest season of your life.