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Buddhists call it “walking through the fire.” Therapists refer to it as “when things get messy.” I’ve talked about “facing the grief beast.” It’s all different ways of saying the same thing: at some point, you have to look at what  scares you the most and begin to move through it.

I can’t tell you when—only you know when—but I can tell you how.

With apologies to Nike: just do it!

I don’t mean to make light of anything you’ve been avoiding. I’m sure you’ve been avoiding it for a very good reason—you’re scared. You’re scared that looking at it will hurt more than anything has ever hurt. You’re scared that you’ll never get past it and be eternally stuck in this circle of grief.

I was scared too. We’re all scared. How can you not be? This  confrontation has been a long time coming and will be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

The good news is—you’ve already been doing it.

You’ve been taking small steps forward for several months now. You’ve been breaking down your monumental loss into bite-size pieces that no longer engulf you. You’ve asked and answered every question that has been torturing you. You’ve been processing and integrating your loss into your daily life without even knowing it.

You’re tougher than you think you are. You’re ready. You’ve got this!

Now it’s time to listen to your heart. Your heart is no longer scared of anything. Your heart is fearless. Your heart has been busy repairing itself, right under your nose, while you’ve been putting in the work. Your heart is filled with the love of your child and is prepared to take on all comers.

Which is not to say that you won’t still hurt. You will, but you’re no longer afraid of feeling the terrible sting of sorrow. In a strange way, you almost welcome it because you’ve discovered that the pain can help you heal. The pain gives you strength, like flame hardens steel. You’re about to move through the fire with determination and grace.

It feels easier to endure, and the longer you stay in there facing what scares you the most, the faster you’ll move toward the light at the end of the grief tunnel. This is the great leap you’ve been waiting for or has been thrust upon you, and once you take it, there’s no turning back.

You’re not completely out of the woods yet, and some days will still suck because that’s just the way it is and will be. But things are different now because you are different now.

I made several leaps after Rob’s death, starting with the recognition and acceptance of his mental illness. I had a much harder time with my second big jump—getting a grip on exactly what happened on the night he shot himself.

Every time I tried to picture Rob holding a gun to his head, I felt sick, and I’d deflect that nightmare image with a flood of questions: How did he get a gun? Who were the people in his apartment? What was his state of mind that night? How do we know it was definitely suicide? How could he have done this to us?

These questions continued to swirl around in my head for almost a year until one of my last sessions with Katarina. She asked me to visualize the night Rob killed himself. She felt that I needed to take a close look at the most traumatic moment that changed all of our lives. She insisted that it had become an anchor that was weighing me down and that I needed to cut the rope attached to it and sail off into the rest of my life.

I resisted at first, which immediately told me this was something I had to finally contend with. And that’s when my heart decided to take over.

I closed my eyes and saw Rob sitting on his beat-up leather couch, drunk on malt liquor, petting his cat Biscuit. He looked so sad and so alone. He took a pull on the forty and threw the can across the living room. He picked up a gun that he had stashed under one of the leather cushions and started to play with it. Twirling it around and pointing it at the window that looked out at the ocean, he made soft “pew pew” gun sounds and then blew on the tip of the barrel, just like he did when he was a little boy playing with his first toy gun.

His friends were in the bedroom doing who knows what. He slipped in a pair of Apple AirPods, cranked up “New Crack” by Wax, his go-to song to rap to, and slowly raised the gun to his head. He paused for just a moment and so did I. That moment, I imagined, felt like a lifetime to both of us.

“Fuck it. Peace out,” he finally whispered and pulled the trigger.

The next thing I saw was Rob looking incredibly surprised when he got to the other side. “Dang! What the hell just happened?” I imagined him saying, and then I opened my eyes.

I went through an entire box of tissues that night, and before I got up to leave, Katarina said one last invaluable thing.

“Give yourself permission to be,” she urged.

 And from that day on, I did.

Larry Carlat is the author of A Space in the Heart: A Survival Guide for Grieving Parents.