The Losses We Don’t Always See

The Losses We Don’t Always See

“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a mirror of our love.” —Francis Weller

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When most people think of grief, they imagine funerals, black clothes, and the ache of someone’s absence. But the truth is, grief is so much larger than that. It moves through our lives in quiet, hidden ways, asking to be felt even when there’s no obvious event to point to. It doesn’t wait for a death certificate.

Some grief arrives with a name: the death of someone we love, the end of a marriage, the loss of health or home. These are the moments where the world tends to know what to do with us. Peoples end flowers, bring food, or offer words of comfort. There’s a shared script for these kinds of sorrows.

But then there are the losses that no one sees. The kind that can sit in the chest like a stone for years, unspoken and unacknowledged. The life we thought we’d have but didn’t. The version of ourselves we had to leave behind to survive. The community that slowly disappeared. A dream that quietly dissolved in the night. The safety we once felt but can’t find anymore. The places in us that longed to be met with love and never were.

These losses don’t come with rituals. There are no cards in the mail. No one says, “I’m sorry for what you didn’t get to become.” Yet they shape us just as profoundly. They live in our bodies, in the pauses between breaths, in the sense of being inexplicably tired or heavy.

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“Grief is not a feeling to be fixed, but a companion to be met. It is not a problem to be solved, but a presence that asks for our attention.” — Francis Weller

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For many of us, these invisible griefs show up as numbness. As a sense of floating just outside our own lives. As a quiet, persistent sorrow that doesn’t have words. Part of healing is acknowledging: This too was a loss. It mattered, even if no one else saw it.

What often emerges beneath anxiety, depression, burnout, or the ache of “not enough” is unacknowledged grief for the subtle, steady erosion of something meaningful. A childhood where needs weren’t met. A friendship that faded away. A piece of land that once felt like home. A season of life that slipped away too fast.

This is tender work. It requires patience. Grief won’t be rushed; it requires compassionate witnessing. Sometimes that means speaking the loss out loud for the first time. Sometimes it means crying in the car or lighting a candle. Sometimes it means simply breathing with the ache, allowing it to exist without needing to explain it away.

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“We must move grief out of the private domain and into the communal setting. Only then will it release its medicine.”— Francis Weller

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When we name what has been lost—especially the things no one else thought to name—we begin to reclaim parts of ourselves that have been waiting in the dark. Grief, paradoxically, is a doorway back into aliveness. It doesn’t diminish us. It deepens us and grows emotional resiliency as we work through it.

If you feel a quiet ache inside and can’t quite explain why, it may not be that something is wrong with you. It maybe that something has been lost along the way—and it deserves to be grieved.

Grief is not weakness. It’s a language of love.

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An Invitation

If some part of you stirred while reading this—if a forgotten ache rose to the surface or a lump formed in your throat—I invite you to give that feeling a little room. Maybe that looks like journaling about what’s been lost, lighting a candle, taking a quiet walk, or speaking it aloud to someone you trust.

You don’t have to face it alone. Grief softens when it’s witnessed. If you find yourself carrying a sorrow that feels too heavy or too quiet to name, consider reaching out for support. Your losses matter, even the invisible ones. They deserve to be met with tenderness, not silence.