Invisible Grief: Life Not Going as You Expected
Society seems to have invisible milestones for us to meet by certain times and seasons in our life. Ones that don’t seem to make allowances for the changing generations or demands of everyday life.
For instance, the American Dream. The idea that by a certain point, we should be married, have a house with a white picket fence and 1.5 kids. Yet today, the cost of living is exponentially higher than it was for past generations — like our grandparents or even our parents — that it’s not as realistic anymore. Owning a house itself comes with challenges when some have to work multiple jobs just to afford an apartment.
At the same time, not everyone wants a family or is starting one in their twenties anymore. More individuals and couples are choosing to have children — if they do — later in life, often in their thirties or forties.
Because of these invisible expectations, many individuals are feeling grief, guilt and shame for not living the life they think they are supposed to.
What You’re Feeling is Grief
There is often a gap between the life you imagined and the reality of the life you're living.
That gap can carry grief.
The type of grief that you’re experiencing is called ambiguous grief or disenfranchised grief. Ambiguous grief is known as “the painful, confusing process of mourning a loss that lacks clear closure, finality, or social validation." Disenfranchised grief is “any grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly supported.”
The grief you’re feeling is a mix of the two, because there is no guidebook on how to navigate something that’s outside of societal expectations. There’s no clarity as to how your life should go if you’re not following a clear path.
If you haven’t gotten a BA or a MA by the time you’re 25, then what? Is it too late? If you’re not married by 30, will you ever get married? If you don’t have a house, dream job, and family by the time you're 35, who are you? What’s the point? What’s your purpose?
Letting Go of a Future Imagined
Whether we realize it or not, all of us have crafted a narrative of what we think our life should look like, or what we want it to look like. We develop assumptions about where we’ll live, who we’ll marry, if we’ll have kids or not, what our careers will look like, and how fulfilled we expect to feel at certain times and stages of our lives.
Then reality hits.
A marriage ends. We learn we can’t have children. Finances don’t permit the purchase of a house. We either lose or never obtain our dream job. A surprise medical diagnosis changes everything. Therein lies the grief.
Letting go and changing what we once thought to be our future can cause various emotions — disappointment, sadness, even anger. All of these are valid and real symptoms of grief.
Take time to feel these and process the changes happening in your life. Give yourself grace and patience to allow your brain to remap what it always believed to be what your life would or should look like. Allow yourself to mourn this loss without judgment.
Reframing What Life will Look Like
When you’re able to, remind yourself of what you do in this life. What you have accomplished. Let yourself remember how far you’ve come and what’s going well.
So maybe you didn’t get your MA by the time you were 25, but perhaps you went back to school later in life. This gave you the opportunity to change your career and get closer to the idea of a dream job in a way that you hadn’t imagined before.
Maybe you discovered you couldn’t biologically have children, giving you the chance to consider fostering or adoption. Maybe you didn’t meet your partner until later in life, allowing you to get to know yourself better and be more secure in who you are before sharing your life with someone else.
By doing this, while we grieve the life we thought we’d live, we create for ourselves the opportunity to fully engage with the other possibilities that life has for us. We open ourselves up to a road less traveled, wherein lies a future that we never thought could be us, but turned out better than we could have imagined.
Grieving Invisible Grief
If you or someone you know is grieving invisible grief and struggling to navigate it, don’t hesitate to reach out to a mental health professional, therapist, or counselor. We are here to help you.
We understand how difficult this can be because many of us have experienced versions of this grief ourselves — or may even be navigating it alongside you.
Either way, we can offer you a compassionate, nonjudgmental, and safe space to help you process the changes in your life, navigate your grief, and discover tools to help you move forward.