Excuse me, is my grief showing?

Grief is as much social as it is individual.

It’s important for others to know we’ve experienced a loss so they can affirm our pain and care for us in our suffering. The ability to grieve in community helps us feel seen and shares the burden of grief. When others do not acknowledge our loss or show compassion for our grief, it becomes disenfranchised.

Disenfranchised grief is grief that it not recognized or supported by others.

Grief is disenfranchised for a variety of reasons, intentional and unintentional. A person’s grief may not be recognized because the loss was not known to others, such as miscarriage that takes place before the pregnancy was ever shared.

The relationship might not be recognized or socially sanctioned. Perhaps the griever is an ex-husband who still very much loved his ex-wife and had a healthy relationship with her, but doesn’t receive the same social support as he would have if they were still married when she died.

The type of death is taboo. If your loved one died at war, was murdered, or had a drug overdose, people who genuinely care and want to support you may fall silent out of an inability to communicate around these topics. Such socially unspeakable losses put the griever in a position of having no one to share their trauma with, process their loss, or go to for comfort.

When we’re not treated as grievers, we can start to question if we deserve to feel sad and heartbroken, and have invalidating thoughts such as:

We weren’t that close.

He was just a dog.

I didn’t know him that long.

She had been sick for years.

She was very old.

But notice how none of these thoughts, true as some may be, take away your loss? If your mother died at 93, your grief is different, but just as real, as if she had died at 43. When you try to talk yourself out of feelings of bereavement, you’re still left bereaved.

Grieving is hard work, no matter what type of loss. Recognize your losses and give yourself credit for what you’re going through. Start with self-compassion, and then consider inviting a trusted person to see and share your pain.