The Impossible Idea of Moving On

I’ve always been the kind of person who holds on tightly—to memories, to people, to moments that should have been fleeting but somehow stay lodged in my heart. Sentimentality is my default, and moving on has never come naturally. But this year, that usual nostalgia has taken on a weight I wasn’t prepared for. It’s not just about missing what used to be; it’s about grieving in real time. This year has been marked by loss that feels too deep to grasp, and the unsettling realization that the world around us seems to be moving forward, while so many of us are stuck in the past. As we step into 5785, I find myself struggling with the impossibility of letting go. After months of heartache, endless updates, and prayers whispered for lives torn apart, moving on feels like an impossible idea.

The days after October 7th have blurred together into a surreal stretch of fear and grief, with every waking hour spent compulsively refreshing news feeds, anxiously checking group chats, and holding my breath in anticipation of more bad news. Weeks slipped away like this, swallowed whole by uncertainty and heartbreak. People I know, people we all know, have been directly touched by the horrors of that day and the violence that followed. It has been hard to make sense of time since then, as though our lives were paused while the world around us rushed ahead.

This year, I’ve found myself returning to the prayers of Rosh Hashanah with a new sense of urgency. The words in my Sedur, the familiar rhythms of tradition, felt different—almost too real. The “U’netaneh Tokef” prayer, in particular, hit me hard: “Who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by sword, who by beast and who by plague…”* I’ve heard those words countless times before, but this year, they seemed to cut through me. It’s one thing to read about life’s fragility in a prayer book, and another to witness it firsthand, to feel it as an ever-present shadow. This year, those words weren’t an abstract reflection on the unpredictability of life; they were a stark reminder of the lives we’ve lost, the people who are no longer with us, and those still waiting for us.

Rosh Hashanah is meant to be a time of renewal, of reflection and repentance, of stepping into the future with hope. But how do you step forward when the past is still pulling at you? When the wounds of the present are still fresh, still bleeding? As I sat in services this year, the prayers felt like both a comfort and a challenge—a reminder that even when it feels impossible to move on, we are still here, still breathing, still required to move forward.

What makes moving on so painful is not just the act of letting go, but the fear that in doing so, we will somehow betray the memories we hold onto so tightly. That in moving forward, we leave behind those who are no longer with us. That in stepping into a new year, we abandon the pieces of ourselves that were shattered in the last. But I don’t think that’s what our tradition calls us to do. The prayers we recite aren’t about forgetting. They are about carrying forward. About acknowledging that life is fragile, that it is unpredictable, but that we have to keep going—not because we want to, but because we must.

The world seems to have moved on in a way that feels jarring, almost cruel. News cycles have shifted. People have returned to their routines. But for so many of us, October 7th and everything that came after it still feels as immediate and raw as the moment it happened. We are still living in the aftermath. We are still mourning. We are still trying to make sense of a world that has fundamentally changed for us, even if it hasn’t for everyone else.

So how do we reconcile this? How do we navigate a new year when the past refuses to release its grip on our hearts? Maybe the answer lies in the very prayers we recite. Maybe we aren’t supposed to “move on” in the way we think of it—where we leave the past behind and step into the future unburdened. Maybe we are meant to carry our losses with us, to honor them as we move forward. Maybe the pain of moving on is not a sign that we’re doing it wrong, but that we’re doing it right. That we’re holding on to what matters most, even as we make space for whatever comes next.

As the Jewish New Year unfolds, I am learning to embrace the impossibility of moving on. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting. It means living with the weight of the past, acknowledging the pain and the loss, and continuing to take each step anyway. Because in the end, we move forward not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary. And perhaps, in that act of carrying our grief into the future, we find the strength to heal.

In this New Year, I find myself searching for balance. We live in a world where vulnerability can feel like weakness, where to grieve openly is to invite discomfort. But perhaps vulnerability is also a form of resilience. It’s an act of courage to show up as we are, raw and unfiltered, carrying the weight of our experiences and memories with us. There is power in naming our grief and recognizing that it doesn’t diminish us; rather, it shapes who we are becoming. Moving forward may feel impossible, but in our grief lies the strength to honor those we’ve lost as we embrace the future.