The Grief We Don’t Call Grief

When most people hear the word grief, they think of death. We associate grieving with losing someone we love, attending a funeral, and trying to adjust to life without that person.

But grief is much bigger than death.

Grief can show up whenever something meaningful changes, ends, disappears, or never becomes what we hoped it would be. And because we don’t always recognize these experiences as losses, many people are carrying grief without realizing that grief is what they are feeling.

You can grieve a relationship that ended, even if ending it was the right decision. You can grieve a friendship that slowly faded away. You can grieve your health, your youth, a career you thought you would have, a version of your family you hoped would exist, or years spent struggling before you finally received the help you needed.

You can even grieve getting something you desperately wanted.

A promotion may mean leaving coworkers you love. Becoming a parent can involve grieving freedom and an earlier version of yourself. Reaching a long-awaited career goal may leave you wondering, Now what? A new beginning almost always requires saying goodbye to something else.

These experiences can be confusing because they don’t fit our traditional picture of grief.

When We Tell Ourselves We Should Be Fine

One of the clearest signs of unrecognized grief is the word should.

“I should be grateful.”

“I should be over this by now.”

“Other people have it worse.”

“This was my choice, so why am I sad?”

“I got what I wanted. I should be happy.”

Instead of becoming curious about what we feel, we often immediately explain why we shouldn’t feel it. But disqualifying ourselves from an emotion doesn’t make the emotion disappear. Sometimes it creates a second layer of suffering. There is the original sadness, disappointment, loneliness, or loss—and then there is the judgment we place on ourselves for experiencing it. Recognizing grief can remove some of that internal struggle. It allows us to shift from I shouldn’t feel this way to Of course part of me feels this way. Something mattered, and something changed.

A Different Question to Ask

When we are struggling, we often focus on symptoms:

Why am I so anxious?

Why am I exhausted?

Why can’t I move forward?

Why don’t I feel like myself?

Those are important questions. But another question can sometimes reveal something underneath them:

What have I lost?

If you’ve been depressed, what parts of your life have you missed? If you’ve struggled with chronic illness, what has your body prevented you from doing? If you spent years taking care of everyone else, what did you give up along the way? If you don’t feel confident enough to pursue the life you want, what opportunities, relationships, or experiences have you missed? If you achieved the goal you spent years pursuing, what did you have to leave behind to get there? The purpose of these questions isn’t to search for another problem. It’s to understand the full story.

Grief Doesn't Always Need to Be Fixed

We live in a culture that is uncomfortable with pain. When someone tells us something hurts, our instinct is often to make it better.

“Look on the bright side.”

“At least…”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“Try to focus on the positive.”

Usually, these responses are well intentioned. But sometimes what a person needs most isn't to have their pain corrected. They need it acknowledged.

“That sounds really hard.”

“I can understand why you would miss that.”

“It makes sense that there are mixed feelings.”

“There was a lot of loss in this for you.”

Acknowledgment doesn't make someone sadder. It gives sadness somewhere to exist. And sometimes there is tremendous relief in finally having language for something you've been carrying silently.

Making the Invisible Visible

Not every difficult feeling is grief, and not everyone will identify with that word. That's okay. The goal isn't to convince ourselves—or anyone else—that everything is grief.

The invitation is simply to become more curious about loss.

What changed?

What ended?

What did I have to give up?

What did I need that I never received?

What am I leaving behind as I move forward?

There may be grief there. There may not be. But when we make room for the possibility, we give ourselves permission to tell a more complete story about our lives. Sometimes healing doesn't begin with figuring out how to stop feeling something. Sometimes it begins when we finally allow ourselves to say: This mattered to me. And losing it mattered, too.

By: Robin Kaye, MHC-LP