Love, Loss, and the City That Never Sleeps: Anxiety, Grief, and the Power of Connection

Opening: A Return, A Reckoning

The moment I landed in New York, a wave of sensory memory hit me—the sharp tang of city air, the layered hum of sirens and conversation, the skyline stretching tall with both old icons and new silhouettes. Excitement and nostalgia surged together. Though the skyline had changed since 1990, the city’s energy pulsed with the same electric familiarity. My brain scanned for what it once knew—landmarks, rhythms, smells—while also navigating the unfamiliar: sleek new buildings, digital payment systems, and a city that had evolved. I wandered back to old haunts, but this time through different eyes—older, perhaps wiser, but still young at heart. Beneath it all stirred a familiar emotional terrain: the flutter of anticipatory anxiety, the uncertainty of how the days would unfold, and the quiet tug between past and present.

Part 1: The Nervous System in the City That Never Sleeps

Even before I left for New York, I could feel the quiet hum of anticipatory anxiety begin to build. It wasn’t fear, exactly—it was more like a heightened alertness. A constant mental rehearsal of what might go wrong, what I might forget, what I couldn't predict. This, I’ve come to understand, is my nervous system doing its job: scanning for threat, seeking control in uncertainty, bracing for the unknown.

Travel, especially across time zones and into high-stimulation environments, activates the nervous system in complex ways. Novelty can be exhilarating, but it also puts the brain on high alert. In polyvagal terms, my system was toggling between sympathetic activation—energised and ready to respond—and moments of dorsal withdrawal, where the sheer scale of what lay ahead felt overwhelming.

I knew this trip would challenge me—not just logistically, but emotionally. I’d been invited to join the Master Event’s  team supporting Esther Perel during her live session Mating in the Metacrisis: Connection, Polarisation and Eroticism in a World on Edge. My role was to help bridge the experience between the live audience in the room and the 2,000 people attending virtually—ensuring they felt included, connected, and part of the moment.

On paper, I was prepared. In practice, I was holding a lot. The weight of responsibility. The adrenaline of being ‘on’ in a high-profile event. The personal significance of returning to a place I once lived, as a different version of myself.

To stay grounded, I leaned on the practices I teach: orienting to the present through my senses, lengthening my exhale, anchoring through touch—hand on heart, feet on floor. I checked in regularly with my internal state. Am I safe? Am I here? What does my body need? These micro-moments of regulation helped me remain steady as I held space for others.

It’s one thing to understand the nervous system intellectually. It’s another to navigate it in real time, under pressure, in a city that never stops moving.

Part 2: The Echoes of Grief in Familiar Streets

Walking through the streets of New York, I was struck by a strange dissonance—everything was both familiar and unfamiliar. The places I used to know had shifted. Some were gone, replaced by shiny new facades. Others were intact yet felt different because I was different. What surfaced wasn't just nostalgia—it was grief.

Not the sharp grief of a recent loss, but a quieter, more complex kind: the grief of time passed. The grief of who I was then, and who I’ll never be again. A younger version of me once moved through these streets, full of possibility and uncertainty, on the edge of adulthood. Coming back, I met her shadow in every corner.

Julia Samuel writes about grief as a process that reshapes us—it doesn’t go away, but it changes form. We oscillate between loss and restoration, in what she and Stroebe & Schut describe as the dual process model. I could feel this duality acutely: moments of joy and reconnection alongside sudden, inexplicable waves of sadness. The city held memories of friendships that had faded, dreams that had shifted, identities I had long outgrown.

David Kessler speaks of the sixth stage of grief: meaning. I found myself in that stage often on this trip—not by choice, but by necessity. Each corner, each encounter asked something of me: to let go, to reclaim, to honour the passage of time. Grief was no longer just something to endure; it became a quiet teacher, inviting reflection on what matters now.

There’s a bittersweetness in returning to old places. Love and loss live so close together. You can’t have one without the other. To have loved a place, a person, a version of yourself—and to return to find it changed—is to encounter grief in its most intimate form. But it’s also to experience growth, perspective, and presence. Because in that grief lives the depth of our capacity to feel, to care, and to connect.

Part 3: Holding Connection in a Polarised World

In a world marked by division and digital disconnection, the work of creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and part of something meaningful has never felt more urgent. That was the heart of my role during Mating in the Metacrisis, Esther Perel’s live session exploring connection, polarisation, and eroticism in our fractured modern world.

I wasn’t on stage, but I was holding the virtual room with Dr Keisha from the side of the stage—bridging the gap between the live event and the 2,000 people tuning in from around the globe. It was my job to ensure that those behind the screen didn’t feel like afterthoughts. That they too were part of the emotional fabric being woven in the room.

Esther often speaks of eroticism not just as sexuality, but as vitality—the life force that animates us, the spark that keeps us engaged and alive in relationship. In a polarised world, that spark is easily extinguished by fear, judgement, and defensiveness.

Connection becomes transactional or performative. Curiosity is replaced by certainty. We stop listening.

This is where Amanda Ripley and Helene Biandudi Hofer work on “good conflict” offers a vital point. They argue that not all conflict is bad—some is necessary for growth. But it requires us to resist binary thinking, to move beyond demonisation and toward deeper understanding. Good conflict, like good connection, asks us to stay in the discomfort long enough to discover what’s underneath.

During the event, I watched this play out in real time. People from different backgrounds—cultures, beliefs, identities—were showing up with vulnerability, insight, and hunger for something real. My job was to support that invisible current: to hold space with both structure and softness, to reflect warmth and presence even through a digital interface.

It reminded me that connection isn’t just about proximity—it’s about presence. It’s about creating the conditions for people to be fully themselves, to be witnessed without judgment, and to meet one another in our shared humanity, even when we disagree.

In that sense, the session wasn’t just an event—it was a practice. A living example of how, even in a world on edge, we can still choose to show up with compassion, curiosity, and care.

Part 4: The Pain That Transforms

Pain has a way of demanding our attention. Whether it shows up as a jolt of anxiety, the ache of grief, or the deep fatigue of emotional labour, it interrupts our momentum. Slows us down. Asks us to listen. In the past, I might have seen that as something to fix or push through. But this journey—through the streets of New York, through memory, through the intensity of holding space—reminded me that pain can also be an invitation.

In the language of the nervous system, pain—emotional or physical—is a signal. It tells us something needs tending. That something meaningful has been lost, or threatened, or is ready to change. It’s not a weakness. It’s not a failure. It’s part of how we adapt and grow.

Grief, too, is a form of pain that transforms. It strips away what no longer fits. It humbles us. It opens us to deeper truths. Edith Edger in T’he Gift’ calls it a “form of love with nowhere to go”—a reminder that we grieve because we care.

That the capacity to feel pain is inseparable from the capacity to love.

Throughout the trip, I found myself moving through these dualities: excitement and anxiety, connection and loneliness, certainty and surrender. And each wave of discomfort held a gift. A deeper self-awareness. A renewed sense of purpose. A more compassionate relationship with myself and others.

This, I’ve come to believe, is the quiet power of nervous system awareness—not just as a tool for regulation, but as a gateway to transformation. When we learn to stay with our pain—not drown in it but stay—we begin to understand what it’s asking of us. And we create the conditions for healing, learning, and change.

I left New York different. Not dramatically. Not outwardly. But with a subtle internal shift. A softening. A deeper trust in my capacity to hold both joy and sorrow, excitement and fear, aliveness and uncertainty. To hold the paradox of being human.

Closing: Love, Loss, and the Long View

As the plane lifted off from JFK, I looked down at the city that had once shaped me—and had just shaped me again. I carried with me more than memories. I carried the living tension of what it means to be human: to belong and feel adrift, to be rooted and in motion, to love and to lose.

In the days that followed, I noticed something subtle but profound. The world hadn’t changed—but I had. Not in some dramatic, movie-ending way. But in the kind of way that matters most: a deeper presence to my own experience, a renewed appreciation for connection, and a softened stance toward the inevitable uncertainties of life.

Esther Perel often says,

“The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.”

I would add: the quality of our relationship with ourselves—with our inner world, our nervous system, our pain, our past—is just as important.

Anxiety and grief are not problems to be solved.

They are part of the landscape of being alive. And when we learn to meet them with curiosity, compassion, and connection, they can become guides. Not away from ourselves, but back home to who we truly are.

Andrea Edmondson partners with high-achieving leaders feeling the hidden cost of success. Her approach blends brain-based tools, nervous system science, and compassionate strategy to support real transformation—from the inside out.

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