The Hayden Panettiere death hurts.

I think because she was one of those faces we watched grow up. The cheerleader on Heroes who needed saving and somehow became the one who could save the world. Then Juliette Barnes on Nashville: hot-tempered, complicated, enormously talented, singing her way through addiction, motherhood, heartbreak and recovery.

And now she’s gone at 36.

Of course every death is sad. But there is a particular ache in losing someone so young, someone who had already lived so much life and endured so much pain. Hayden was open about postpartum depression, addiction, alcoholism, anxiety and the heartbreak of giving up custody of her daughter while trying to get well. Those aren’t character flaws. They are signs of someone who was hurting.

As a psychologist who works around addiction, one of the hardest things to watch is someone trying to medicate unbearable pain with substances and sometimes being surrounded by people or circumstances that make recovery harder rather than easier. Addiction doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Neither does recovery.

And there is something especially haunting about Nashville. Hayden later described how painfully close Juliette’s storyline came to her own life. She was sometimes essentially asked to perform her own wounds for an audience. Imagine trying to heal while reading a script that keeps handing you a version of your own pain.

I hope we can remember Hayden for more than the struggle.

The little girl who became a star. The fierce cheerleader. The singer. The complicated, funny, talented woman. The mother who loved her daughter. The person who kept trying.

Sometimes the people we watched on television become tangled up with our own lives. We don’t really know them, but somehow we grew up alongside them.

And when they die too young, it feels like losing a little piece of the world we thought would still be there.

Rest in peace, Hayden. You deserved more time.