The Grief We Don’t Talk About
Grief isn’t just about death.
It took me a long time to learn that through my clinical training. I used to think grief came wrapped in black clothes, crying at funerals, with sympathy cards and casseroles. But the grief I’ve come to know and witness with my clients - the one that lives in the silent pockets of everyday life - has no rituals, no closure, no language. Just a silent weight we carry.
There’s grief in realizing the “shoulds” might never happen. You grieve the ease others seem to move with. You grieve the energy it takes to mask. Maybe you imagined you'd be a parent by now, or in a different job, or living in a city that always felt like home. Maybe that version of you never arrived, and no one throws a ceremony for the dreams that quietly disappear.
Sometimes the loneliest moments happen when you’re not alone. You’re surrounded by people, but feel unseen, unheard, untethered. And no one tells you that friendships, especially in adulthood, are hard. That building a village takes work. That being “okay” on the outside doesn’t mean you aren’t aching.
We are grieving. Things no one told us we were allowed to grieve. Things that didn’t come with closure. Things we keep quiet about, because they feel too small, too weird, too invisible.
But what if we stopped measuring grief by funerals and started honoring the soft, silent heartbreaks too?
You are allowed to grieve the job you didn’t get. The mother you never had.
The version of your life that never happened.
The parts of yourself you had to let go of to survive.
Grief is not a detour. It’s the road we walk when we’re still learning to live with loss, without losing ourselves. And sometimes, naming it is the most sacred thing we can do.