Grief When There’s No Death
A note before you begin: I share a bit here about losing someone to brain cancer. Some of this may be difficult or uncomfortable reading, particularly if someone in your life has died from or is living with brain disease or dementia, a degenerative disease, substance abuse, or mental illness. Proceed gently if this describes you/
At the age of 40, my sister Melissa died from brain cancer. In the six months or so prior to her death, I watched her slowly disappear. Her texts became confused. Her short-term memory failed her. She lost interest in some of her usual activities, and she retreated more and more into herself. She smiled less. She talked less. The person I had connected with effortlessly for decades suddenly became harder and harder to reach.
I didn’t know how to feel. One hour she was the same Seester I’d known and loved, and the next hour she was someone I didn’t recognize. I was so damn grateful that she was still alive that I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that she didn’t seem to be fully here.
I walked around all the time with the heaviness of grief, but it wasn’t a grief that I knew how to name. It wasn’t the kind of grief that elicits sympathy cards and casseroles. It was a grief that felt silent, lonely, and confusing as hell.
At the time, I didn’t have the language to understand my experience. It wasn’t until I began searching for a way to describe my grief that I came across the term ambiguous loss.
Ambiguous loss was first named by Dr. Pauline Boss, who describes it as “unclear loss with no documentation of permanence of the loss.” It’s the kind of loss that often leaves us feeling confused—the kind that doesn’t have a finality to it, that doesn’t involve a funeral, and that rarely gets recognized by others as grief. Examples include things like estrangement, incarceration, divorce and breakups, the ending of a friendship, job loss, racism, dementia, substance abuse, mental illness, life transitions and moves, and grieving for your younger self who didn’t get what they needed in childhood.
With ambiguous loss, you don’t often get the same recognition and support that comes with a death. Unless you are exceptionally lucky, no one’s going to send you a card that says, “I’m sorry that the holidays are reminding you of all that you didn’t get in childhood” or plan a ceremony for you when you decide to end a toxic relationship with a parent.
This lack of recognition and support can leave you feeling isolated and confused. On top of that, not naming your loss for what it is can leave you with grief that hasn’t been acknowledged and integrated, which can leave you feeling “stuck.”
Ambiguous loss is a universal experience, and the pain of these losses can arise during the holiday season just as surely as death-related grief. Here are some things that you can do to cope with the grief of ambiguous loss:
Identify and validate your loss. Are there losses in your life that you haven’t identified as losses? Allow yourself to notice and name these and to acknowledge the grief that’s resulted from them. One way to do this is to write down not only what you’ve lost, but what has changed in your life because of those losses.
Allow space for multiple truths and emotions. Ambiguous loss is one space where it’s especially important to allow more than one thing to be true. In my example above, it was heartbreaking to feel like my sister wasn’t herself and I was grateful for whatever moments we could share. All of your feelings are valid, and it’s important to make room for them without getting stuck in either/or thinking.
Resist the urge to minimize or compare. Telling yourself that your loss “isn’t as bad” as someone else’s invalidates your feelings and experience. Resist the urge to be a participant in the Grief Olympics; it’s a losing game for everyone. Your grief is real, and there is room for it.
Forget about closure. It doesn’t exist when there is a loss from death, and it doesn’t exist with ambiguous loss either. The “goal” of grief isn’t closure, but rather integration: sitting with multiple truths, acknowledging the loss while also finding a meaningful path forward, and allowing your feelings of grief with the understanding that grief is not linear and has no endpoint.
Connect with someone else who’s a little less merry. Maybe this holiday season is a good time to call up your friend who also has a sibling struggling with substance use and talk about how hard it is over coffee. Maybe you reach out to someone who’s also having a difficult year and make a plan to FaceTime on New Year’s Eve to specifically celebrate the departure of a crappy 2023. Not everyone is having the most wonderful time of the year; find your people and connect with them.
Seek out support. If you’re struggling with your loss and experiencing overwhelming emotions, there’s nothing wrong with you, but you also don’t have to go it alone. Consider talking to a trusted friend, seeking out a support group, or engaging the support of a therapist or counselor to help you learn new ways to cope. If you live in Pennsylvania and would like to learn more about working with me, you can get more information here.
Ambiguous loss is no less real just because it often goes unnoticed and unnamed. The pain of those losses is real, and if you’re feeling that pain more than usual during the holiday season, you aren’t alone.
As always, take gentle care of yourself.
