Becoming Human Again, Part 2 – Grieving the Almosts
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 13
- 10 min read
Updated: Nov 14
Dana Hatch is renowned for employing a variety of coaching methods to assist leaders in overcoming their struggles and achieving the next level of success.
Imagine the weight of almost in the palm of your hand, its subtle heft like a clenched fist. We often overlook the grief of what almost was, the love that nearly became, the dream on the brink of realization, and the version of you that came so close to crossing over. Feel the tension as your fingers curl around the intangible, the loss nearly palpable yet elusive.
This is Part II of Becoming Human Again, a four-part unfiltered descent and resurrection through what it truly means to grow. If Part I, The Space Between Knowing Better and Doing Better, cracked us open to the brutal honesty of awareness, Part II is where we bleed.
This is the chapter of mourning what never finished, the heartbreaks that didn’t end, they just stopped. The versions of ourselves that had to die quietly so something truer could one day live. It’s about the ghosts that linger in the nervous system and the science of why our brains keep replaying stories without endings.
It’s about almosts, the beautiful, unbearable middle ground between potential and loss, and how learning to grieve them is the only way we ever make space for what’s next.
The ache that lingers
There’s a specific kind of grief we don’t talk about enough, the grief of almost. The dream that nearly happened. The love that almost worked. The version of you that almost made it.
Almosts are quiet, too quiet for the rituals we reserve for real loss. You don’t get condolences for the job you didn’t get, the relationship that never officially ended, or the version of your life that never quite came to life. There’s no language for it, no sympathy cards for “close but no cigar.”
You just carry it like a song that never resolves, a sentence that trails off mid-breath.
Almosts are the ghosts that don’t haunt, they hover. They linger at the edges of memory, reminding you of how close you came. You can feel them when you pass certain streets, see certain faces, hear certain songs. They don’t scream, they hum, quietly, constantly, madly, in the background of becoming.
And the world expects you to move on because technically, you didn’t lose anything. There was no death, no divorce, no dramatic ending to mark the moment, just a slow, silent undoing. A fade-out instead of a final act.
But your heart knows better. It knows the cost of proximity, how being close to something real can still leave a mark when you lose it. Because even when it never fully became yours, it still lived in your nervous system.
You felt it. You planned around it. You believed in it. You fell in love with the notion of it. So when it’s gone, you’re not just grieving what didn’t happen, you’re grieving the you that existed when you still thought it might. Almosts are heavy because they never got permission to exist, and without permission, they never got the grace to end.
The aftertaste of unfinished stories
Almosts don’t vanish, they echo. They live in the pauses, in the what if that hijacks your thoughts mid-drive or mid-scroll. In the way your body tenses when someone says their name, or when that song slips into the playlist, and then you’re transported, not just in memory but in biology.
Suddenly, you’re Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, the bar lights dim, smoke curls in the air, and Sam starts playing As Time Goes By. Your nervous system whispers the line before your brain even catches up:
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
That’s what an almost feels like, a moment suspended between nostalgia and nerve endings. Your heart clenches, your breath catches, and for a split second, your body doesn’t know it’s 2025, it thinks it’s then.
Because the limbic system doesn’t keep time, it keeps sensation. That’s why memory feels like teleportation, the body doesn’t realize the story is over until you tell it so.
Neuroscientists call this reactivation. Your brain replays the neural pattern of the original experience, the same electrical rhythm and biochemical storm, as if offering you one more chance to understand the ending. But your nervous system doesn’t want to relive it, it wants to resolve it. It’s searching for the missing frame, the closure that never came.
That’s why almosts haunt us, not because we can’t move on, but because our biology keeps trying to finish a story that never wrote its final line. Every replay is an attempt at repair, and every flashback is your body’s way of saying:
“This mattered.”
Unfinished stories leave open loops in the nervous system, incomplete electrical circuits still pulsing and asking to be grounded. You can’t think your way out of them because they don’t live in logic. They live in the body, in the breath that catches, the shoulders that tighten, the heart that races when memory slips through the cracks.
You can feel it even now, the heaviness in your chest, the quiet tightening in your stomach, proof that even what never was can still live inside the body.
This is the aftertaste of an almost, the static that hums long after the signal is gone, the evidence that even unspoken stories leave their imprint on the skin.
Reframe: Why “almost” means you’re aligned, not unlucky
We’re taught to see almosts as failures, near misses, cosmic jokes, heartbreaks that almost healed. But what if an almost isn’t punishment? What if it’s proof that you’re getting closer to what’s meant for you?
Almosts don’t appear when you’re lost, they appear when you’re close to alignment, when your nervous system, heart, and vision begin to hum on the same frequency as what you’ve been asking for.
Think of it as neural rehearsal. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between “almost” and “ready.” It’s practicing alignment, testing your capacity to hold what’s coming. Every almost strengthens the circuitry that will carry the real thing.
That’s why almosts feel electric. They light you up because they’re teaching your body how to hold more truth, more intimacy, more purpose. They’re expanding your emotional capacity. They’re not false starts, they’re calibration.
And yes, they hurt because your brain equates proximity with possibility. It doesn’t know the difference between “close” and “complete,” only that it tasted something real and lost access to it. But that ache isn’t a sign that you were wrong. It’s evidence that you were awake.
Sometimes the thing you almost had wasn’t meant to stay, it was meant to tune you.
To refine your boundaries. To show you what your nervous system is now ready to sustain.To stretch the edges of your becoming so that when the next resonance arrives, you won’t shrink away from it.
Because almosts are not endings, they’re invitations, markers on the map saying, "Keep going. You’re closer than you think."
You didn’t fail, you evolved. Your timing wasn’t off, it was syncing. And what didn’t stay wasn’t meant to wound you, it was meant to prepare you for what will.
So no, the ache isn’t evidence of failure, it’s the echo of readiness. You didn’t imagine it. You aligned with it. And that alignment, even for a moment, means you’re already on the right frequency.
Don’t get stuck in the reruns
Almosts are seductive, like sirens calling from familiar shores. They whisper, “Just one more memory… one more replay.” And before you know it, you’re lost in the land of the lotus eaters, lulled into forgetting that you have a ship to sail.
The Greeks warned us about this kind of forgetting, the sweet paralysis of nostalgia. Odysseus didn’t lose years to war, he lost them to the trance of the lotus. That same chemistry lives in the brain today. Dopamine spikes with every recollection, tricking you into confusing comfort for closure.
And the more you relive and rehearse those alternate endings, the versions where it all worked out, the more oxytocin floods your system, bonding you not to the person but to the possibility. Your brain, loyal and literal, mistakes fantasy for connection, tethering you to a ghost.
You end up chemically attached to what was never real, addicted to a neurological love story that always ends in heartbreak. You stand at the window watching a life that’s already moved on without you, forgetting that you’re supposed to be the main character in the scene, not watching it from the audience.
At some point, you have to stop auditioning for roles you’ve already outgrown. Stop showing up for reruns when your next act is waiting. You weren’t meant to live in rewind, you were meant to direct what’s next.
Every almost gave you a line, a lesson, a scar, a truth. But they were never meant to be the full script. They were the rehearsal scenes for the version of you who’s finally ready to star in the movie you were destined to make.
So stop memorizing scenes that no longer serve you. Pick up the pen. Rewrite the role. And for the love of your own becoming, get back in the damn movie. Because the story didn’t end there, that was just the trailer.
How to begin again
Healing from an almost isn’t about pretending it didn’t matter. It’s about teaching your mind, body, and heart that the story has reached its natural end, and that you’re safe to begin again.
The brain resists unfinished business. It’s designed to seek completion, to close loops, to find meaning. When you consciously create new endings, you’re not dismissing the past, you’re helping your nervous system find peace.
Below are five ways to help your body and brain remember that the past can stay in the past, and that possibility still belongs to you.
1. Ritualize the release
Your brain craves closure, and rituals are how we translate emotional endings into physical reality. When you do something to mark the end, light a candle, write the unsent letter, burn it, bury it, or whisper goodbye into the night air, you tell your nervous system, this chapter is complete.
Ritual gives structure to the intangible. It anchors emotion in action and signals the limbic system that the story has been acknowledged. Without ritual, the body holds the tension of “unfinished.” With it, the body finally exhales.
Release doesn’t always mean forgetting. Sometimes it means remembering, but in a different way, without resistance.
2. Rewrite the narrative
The mind hates gaps, so it fills them with blame, fantasy, or what-ifs. That’s the trap of an almost, the constant search for logic in something that was always emotional.
To heal, shift from meaning-seeking to meaning-making. Instead of asking, “Why didn’t it work?” ask, “What did it reveal?”
Maybe it showed you your capacity to love fully. Maybe it revealed your need for boundaries or your tendency to over-give. Maybe it wasn’t about loss at all, but about self-recognition.
Rewriting doesn’t erase the past, it integrates it. It transforms pain into pattern recognition. When you can name the lesson without reopening the wound, you reclaim authorship of your story.
3. Reconnect to the body
Almosts live in the body long after they leave the mind. You might be over it logically, but your shoulders still tighten when that name comes up, or your heart still skips when that song plays.
This is your body remembering. The good news is, you can retrain it. When the ache hits, return to the present through sensation. Feel your breath, your feet on the floor, and your hand on your heart. These small grounding moments activate the vagus nerve, the body’s internal safety switch, and remind your system that you are here, now.
Grief is energy looking for direction. Give it one through breath, movement, or stillness. Yoga, walking, stretching, and even humming, all of these help discharge what was never expressed.
4. Reimagine the future
When something ends, the brain fixates on what was lost, not what’s possible. That’s because memory and imagination share the same neural networks. The same pathways that replay your pain can also envision your potential.
Visualization isn’t wishful thinking, it’s neurological rehearsal. When you picture what’s next, you activate reward circuitry that helps your brain anticipate joy again.
So begin small. Imagine mornings where your chest doesn’t ache. Imagine peace that isn’t conditional. Imagine laughter, connection, and purpose that aren’t anchored to the past.
Don’t just grieve what almost was. Design what could still be.
5. Rebuild trust, gently
Almosts can fracture trust, not just in others, but in yourself. You start to question your judgment, your timing, your worth. Healing begins when you start proving to yourself, through small, consistent actions, that you are dependable again.
Every time you keep a promise to yourself, waking when you said you would, showing up for the workout, saying no when it matters, you rebuild neural evidence of self-trust.
The prefrontal cortex learns through repetition. Each micro-moment of integrity strengthens the internal signal that says, I can count on me.
Trust isn’t restored overnight. It’s rewired slowly, in quiet acts of self-honoring. But each act becomes a new baseline of safety, not in certainty, but in confidence that you can handle what comes next.
The reclaiming
Beginning again is not about replacing what was lost. It’s about remembering that your story isn’t over, and your nervous system doesn’t have to stay stuck in survival.
You are not broken for grieving what never became. You are simply human, wired for meaning, built for connection, and capable of repair.
Let this be your turning point, from longing to learning, from replay to rewrite, from almost to again.
The future doesn’t belong to the person you were before the almost. It belongs to the one who survived it, the one who stayed open, the one who finally realized the story was never about what you almost had, but about who you were always meant to be.
Author’s note: What comes next
There comes a moment in healing when the softness of grief must meet the strength of truth. You’ve named the loss, honored the ache, and learned to breathe again. But eventually, the work shifts. You stop tending to the wound and start asking who you became while carrying it.
That’s where the reckoning begins.
Because healing isn’t just about soothing what hurts, it’s about confronting what kept you repeating the same story. It’s about seeing the patterns you called fate, the habits you mistook for love, and the versions of yourself that survived by shrinking.
It’s the part of becoming human again that asks you to trade sentiment for self-honesty.
In Part III, The Reckoning, it’s where mourning becomes movement, where the energy of loss turns into radical clarity. It’s the chapter that burns, not to destroy, but to purify. Because to truly begin again, you have to stop running from what you already know, and finally have the courage to face it.
Read more from Dana Hatch
Dana Hatch, Executive and Neurolinguistics Coach
As a certified executive and neurolinguistics coach with over 15 years of experience in business consulting, I bring a unique blend of psychological insight and practical business acumen to help leaders and organizations achieve transformative results. My approach combines cutting-edge coaching techniques with deep industry knowledge to unlock potential, drive performance, and foster sustainable growth.
