Grief, at its core, is the pain of loss.
We often associate grief with funerals, tears, and the passing of a loved one, but grief wears many faces. Grief doesn’t always or only come tied to death. Sometimes it’s tied to dreams, roles, identity, or seasons. To seasons that changed before we were ready.
Grief, at its core, is the pain of loss. Those losses can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational. No one needs permission to express or feel the grief of something they’ve loss even when others can’t see it or understand.
Here are a few examples of the kinds of losses people like you or your loved ones may be carrying in silence:
1. Loss of a Loved One
This is the most visible form of grief and generally the most known by any. Whether expected or sudden, the absence of someone we love changes us forever. But grief doesn’t stop here.
2. Loss of a Relationship
Separation such as a breakup, a divorce or estrangement.
When a bond is broken with someone you love, whether by choice, force, or silence—it leaves an empty space. The absence echoes in daily life, in memories, in the moments you expected to share. The grief doesn’t come from whether the relationship was ideal or complicated, it comes from the significance it held in your heart. The history, the hopes, the shared experiences, all of it mattered, and all of it matters to your heart. When that connection is severed, something deep within mourns the loss of what was… and what will no longer be. The grief of a divorced is often compared with the loss of a death, and in reality it was the death of something even if not someone. Grieving a long time relationship, is often times more complicated because you’re grieving someone who is still alive.
3. Loss of Identity, Role, or a Dreamed Version of Self
These losses could be becoming an empty nester, changing careers, retiring, or realizing you’re not the parent, spouse, or leader you hoped to be by now can create a deep inner ache. The grief of “what could’ve been” is real and often invisible to others and misunderstood.
4. Loss of Health, Freedom, or Physical Ability
A chronic illness can bring this kind of loss and grief. A sudden life-altering diagnosis. The slow decline of aging. Living with physical limitations or needing help when you once didn’t can create havoc in an individual’s life. These can chip away at dignity and spark grief over the body’s former capabilities.
5. Loss of Safety, Security, or Stability
Abuse, trauma, financial devastation and betrayal among many others like, natural disasters or eviction fall into this category. These experiences shake the foundation of what once felt safe, internally or externally leaving an individual with a deep ache in the heart [and that is grief].
6. Loss of Purpose, Direction, or Meaning
When what once gave your life meaning disappears whether we’re speaking of a job loss, a ministry assignment, or a cause, it can feel like your soul is drifting. Grief creeps in quietly when you’re no longer sure what you’re here for.
7. Loss of Faith, Spiritual Clarity, or a Mentor
Even Christians wrestle with seasons of doubt, spiritual silence, or disillusionment. Losing a pastor, mentor, or spiritual guide can shake your footing. It’s okay to admit you’re grieving spiritually—even when others tell you to “just trust God.”
8. Loss of Childhood or Innocence
Many silently grieve the childhood they never had, yes it is possible to grieve something you never had. The love they longed for, the protection they lacked, or the freedom they were denied. Especially for survivors of abuse or neglect, this type of grief runs deep and resurfaces often in their adult years. Seeking help to manage grief is highly important.
9. Loss of Connection—with Self or Others
People who have lost years in addiction, people-pleasing, unhealthy coping, bad habits, toxic relationships, codependent patterns grieve the loss of connection with themselves and others. Some of these individuals, may grief before change takes place. The estrangement from a child, family member, or even your own voice can trigger this type of grief. It’s grieving disconnection, not just from people, but from who you used to be or never got to be.
10. Loss of Culture, Community, or Belonging
Those who leave a country or move away. Being cut off from your roots can feel as deep grief and if unmanageable it can turn into self-resentment. Gentrification, and losing touch with traditions or language deepens this feeling. What causes this grief could come from the slow fading of home, and the known, even when you’re still standing in it.
11. Loss of a Season of Life
Sometimes it’s not a person, place, or thing, but a chapter in our lives that we lost and grief. Life after caregiving or after raising children. Life after the “big moments” pass. These subtle transitions often go unnoticed, but they carry weight that often times goes unseen.
12. Loss of Trust or Reputation
When betrayal, deceit, or misunderstanding tarnishes how you see people, or how they see you, there’s grief there too. Trust, once broken, doesn’t just rebuild overnight and neither does your name. Sometimes this can be caused by your own actions and you’re okay to grieve that too.
13. Loss of Time
Maybe you lost time in survival mode or in a relationship that stole more than it gave. Maybe waiting for someone to come through or change, healing, or for things to get better, in a general sense. That ache you feel? That’s grief too.
14. Loss of Independence or Control
Going from living and being self-sufficient to not. This can be due to the loss of a job, aging, disability, imprisonment, or being in a controlling relationship, when you can no longer move freely, decide freely, or live on your own terms, it can be a devastating loss.
15. Loss of a Guiding Voice
Like when a teacher leaves the school, or leader leave town, the death or lack of connection with a pastor, or friend. Some people shape our lives more than we realize until they’re no longer in it. Losing that kind of influence, guidance, or encouragement leaves a unique void.
Grief is as complex as life itself. Just because a loss isn’t seen doesn’t mean it’s not felt. Grief doesn’t have to be visible to others to be valid to you. It doesn’t need a funeral to be real.
If your heart is aching, allow it to ache and identify where this ache is coming from. If your eyes need to cry, let them weep and seek guidance. Healing of the ache (not grief) begins where honesty is allowed to breathe. You’re not broken for grieving, you’re bleeding and need to be sooth until the heart is ready to live with the grief but not bleed again.
In all of it, God is not absent.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:18
Grieving is part of the human experience, at one point or another we will all experience some type of grief. Grieving means that you are healing., that you are alive, that you love, have desires, dreams and care. You are not alone in your pain, God sees you.
Be blessed and be well 🤍
©️2025 Denise Kilby New Hope MHCLC Assoc. All rights reserved.
