How has years of grief work changed how I face my own mortality?

You have held so many people through loss that death has become familiar to you in a way it is not for most. That closeness has changed you, changed how you think about your own end and the ends of those you love. This is one of the quiet costs of your work, and it is worth facing openly rather than carrying alone. Being changed by all that death is not damage; it is a kind of hard-won knowledge. You have seen what matters at the end and what does not, how people meet their losses, what brings peace and what brings regret. Few people learn this until it is upon them. You have been given an early, heavy education in the one thing everyone eventually faces, and it can make your own living wiser if you let it. Let what you have seen shape how you live now, not just how you grieve. Ask what the dying taught you about what is worth your days. You have carried others through the hardest passage there is. Let that same knowledge gently guide your own, so the weight you absorbed becomes something that steadies you too.