The Energy We Leave Behind: What Remains After We’re Gone

December has always felt different to me.

There’s a stillness to it, a quiet heaviness in the air, like the world slows down just enough for memories to catch up. This is the month where the people I’ve lost feel closer somehow. Not physically present, but emotionally near. As if the distance between then and now thins just enough for their energy to brush against mine again. This reflection isn’t about legacy in the traditional sense. Not about accomplishments, timelines, or being remembered in a grand, historical way.It’s about the invisible legacy, the kind that lives on quietly in hearts, habits, and moments we don’t always realize are connected.

What Doesn’t Disappear

I’ve always believed that the essence of who we are doesn’t vanish when the body leaves. It lingers.It settles into the way we made people feel. The lessons we passed on (intentionally or not.) The love we offered freely. Even the mistakes we learned from too late.

The physical form ends, yes. But energy doesn’t disappear, it shifts. Sometimes it shows up in the way you laugh. Or the way you comfort someone instinctively. Or the way you pause at a sunset because someone you loved used to do the same. In ways we don’t always notice, it becomes part of someone else’s story, sometimes very specifically, your own. And for me, December is the month that reminds me of that truth most clearly.

Loss That Shapes You

When I was around fourteen or fifteen, I experienced loss for the first time in a way that truly shattered me. One of my closest friends passed away suddenly. The kind of loss that doesn’t give you time to prepare or understand, it just hits, abruptly, and rearranges your entire world. Less than twenty-four hours later, I lost my grandmother. Two losses. Two worlds. Two loves.. gone almost in the same breath. At that age, you don’t fully understand the weight of grief. Not right away. It settles later, in the quiet moments, years down the line, when you realize how deeply someone’s absence has shaped the person you became.

Every December, those memories return. Not to break me, but to remind me of what remained. I don’t remember every conversation. I don’t remember every detail.But I remember how they felt. The warmth my grandmother carried, the kind that lives in your bones long after she’s gone. The laughter and light my friend brought; his youthfulness, his joy. Their endings aren’t what stayed with me. Their imprint did. And that’s what legacy means to me now: the invisible mark we leave on the hearts of those who knew us. The kind that quietly outlives us.

Energy Leaves Evidence

We often talk about legacy as something measurable; achievements, success, proof that we existed. But the most lasting legacy isn’t always visible. It’s emotional. It’s spiritual. It’s energetic.

It lives in ripple effects: The way your presence shifts the tone of a room.The way your words echo in someone’s mind years later. The way your love becomes a place of safety someone didn’t even realize they were collecting at the time. Legacy isn’t always loud. It isn’t about fame. It’s about energetic fingerprints. Sometimes it’s the gentleness someone carries because you once treated them with care. Sometimes it’s courage they found because you believed in them when they couldn’t believe in themselves. Sometimes it’s softness, learned simply because you showed them it was safe to feel deeply.

There’s actually a psychological concept called emotional contagion - the idea that emotions transfer between people, often unconsciously. Our nervous systems sync. Our moods ripple outward. Even our heart rates can shift depending on who we’re around.

Science confirms what many of us feel intuitively: Our energy is real. And it changes people.

Researchers have shown that humans unconsciously mirror tone, expression, posture. We absorb one another. We’re wired for it. So when we say, “Your presence matters,” it isn’t just poetic. It’s neurological. It’s emotional. It’s real.

The People Who Still Live Inside Us

The people I lost changed me, not because of how they died, but because of how they lived.

Because of how they showed up. Because of the love they gave without condition. Because of the space they held for me when I didn’t yet know how to hold myself.

In a way, they’re still here. They live in my reactions. In my values.In the way I speak, love, and move through the world. They live in the parts of me they helped shape, quietly, permanently, beautifully.

And maybe if you pause long enough, you’ll notice the same thing in yourself.

Maybe someone you’ve lost still lives in the way you comfort others.Or in the boundaries you learned to set.Or in the courage you didn’t always have — but somehow do now.

Maybe their laughter echoes in yours.Maybe their wisdom guides you when you’re unsure.Maybe their love became something strong enough for you to carry forward.

Because the people we lose don’t just leave holes behind.They leave imprints.

We Are Mosaics

We aren’t untouched individuals moving through the world alone.

We are mosaics. This is something my sister, Kimberly Hernandez, expresses beautifully in her poetry book (Mosaic Of Love) - the idea that we are all made of fragments: moments, people, joys, losses, lessons we didn’t ask for but needed. Each experience becomes a piece of art. Imperfect on its own, but meaningful when placed together. And the powerful thing is our mosaics don’t exist in isolation.

The love you give becomes part of someone else’s design. The kindness you offer becomes color in someone else’s story. The pain you survive becomes strength someone else carries forward without knowing where it came from. Our lives overlap. Our stories intersect. And piece by piece, we contribute to one another, until something far greater than any one of us begins to form. A collective masterpiece made of shared energy, shared presence, shared humanity.

What Remains

If this time of year feels heavy for you, if old losses resurface or memories come back a little too vividly, you are not alone. December has a way of opening old doors.

But maybe instead of focusing on what ended, we can learn to hold what remained. The laughter. The wisdom.The comfort. The softness. The parts of them that became part of us.

Because the people we love don’t fully leave. Their energy becomes a thread woven into who we are. I once wrote a poem that reflects this belief, about impermanence, time, and the energy that never truly fades:

“..When the spirit rises to depart and the pulse weakens on this vessel’s full heartEarth will swallow it whole and this body will decay, though the energy inside is ceaseless, never wasting away.”

When everything else falls away, titles, timelines, possessions, even the body itself, energy is what remains. And every single day, we get to decide: What kind of energy we leave behind.What kind of love we gather. What kind of echo we create in the lives of others.

That, to me, is what remains after we’re gone.

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To hear the rest of “Energy Echoes” and listen to the full audio version of this reflection, check out the latest episode of The Journey We Take - Episode 22: The Energy We Leave Behind: What Remains After We’re Gone.

The Journey We Take (Poetry Book) - Available HERE