2 weeks ago
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Life is full of love, joy, and so many beautiful things, but grief is also inevitable. It can take so many different forms, from anger and recklessness to bottomless depression, and it's important to talk about it all so that grief doesn't become taboo.
One Reddit user, u/Curious-Strategist, started an important conversation when they asked, "What is a kind of loss people quietly grieve even though almost nobody treats it like grief?"
Although people may be quick to offer condolences after the loss of a loved one, so many other quiet struggles deserve the same recognition and support. The more we talk about it, though, the more things may change.
1. "Grieving the life you wish you could live when you are a long-term caregiver."
"I've been through this for the last 7 years, taking care of my abusive, alcoholic, drug-addicted, narcissistic, sociopathic father after he'd had a stroke and became partially paralyzed. (He also has dementia.)
I felt like a stone being held against a grinder, just gradually being worn down. It's such a slow, painful, quiet type of suffering. And I could never get anyone else to understand.
As of a few days ago, we placed him in a nursing home, and I'm no longer his caretaker. And I've come to realize that I have so much healing to do."
2. "Grieving the person someone should have been to you."
"My mom lost her first daughter the year before I was born in 1991. I never had the mom I could have had; she was never the same after that, despite how much she loved me."
3. "Infertility. It's such a complex grief."
"And on a similar vein, miscarriage.
We got the news halfway through the pregnancy when we went in for the anatomy scan. Everyone moved on so easily since they had never actually met my child. My midwife fumbled the death and didn’t even let us know the gender. We were left with nothing.
But I knew that baby. And I grieve my life with them. I grieve their future. So many hopes and dreams were shattered.
And for so many women with infertility, they go through this time and time again. It’s a horrible pain."
4. "When you lose a parent as a child, the birthday when you become older than they were."
5. "I feel like divorce has become completely normalized and turned into a rite of passage. If you are a man, you are supposed to act like someone you loved is suddenly a complete bitch and just get over it. It doesn’t help that the reasons behind a divorce are simultaneously extremely complex (like constantly dying a million tiny deaths), and nobody really wants to hear about it. Aside from the death of a loved one, it is probably the most traumatic thing you can go through, but it really doesn’t affect others (outside the family) much. Nobody else really cares. It isn’t a shared form of grief. Most people have been through some sort of breakup at some point — so it is easily trivialized, reduced to nothing. Meanwhile, we are expected to pretend everything is fine for the good of the kids."
6. "The loss of a pet. Non-pet people just don’t get it. They are family, and the loss is devastating."
I wish I couldn't relate. Only 5 months ago, I said goodbye to my 15-year-old rescued Cockapoo, Carter. He was my best friend, my partner in crime, and basically my little brother, and nothing is the same without him.
7. "When I was in middle school, my father and his fiancé broke up abruptly, and poof, she was gone from my life. I was very attached to her, as I never had a good relationship with my mom. When the fiancée was around, my sister couldn't bully me. I was safe. But then suddenly that safety was gone. She was loving and caring, which I didn't get from either of my parents. I was devastated at the loss, but I was never allowed to mourn, as my dad painted her as the 'bad,' 'crazy' person in the relationship. I still wonder where she's at in life, and I hope she found a better partner. She was the best."
8. "Grieving for work. It's surprising how much of an effect retirement can have on some people. Especially those who had a very physical or stressful job. To go from 'non-stop' to nothing can take an immense toll on a person, and the desire to get back into it can be strong."
9. "I think a common grief people feel, yet is never considered seriously as grief, is the loss of childhood. There's a turning point in life that isn't noticed until it's happened: childhood vanishes, and suddenly I'm dealing with a more complicated world. That sense of simplicity, excitement at the world, and childhood wonder is mourned in a nostalgic way."
"I read something once about how there was a day that you went out to ride your bike and it was the last time you went to play and didn’t realize it."
10. "Dropping my 18-year-old son off at university! I was not prepared for the sense of loss. I miss him so much."
"The grandfather in Modern Family talked about this best — how you are constantly losing a version of your child, and they're replaced with a new version. Then suddenly all those versions walk out together."
11. "I am grieving life before smartphones and social media. I feel it really deeply, and I cry heavily watching old videos from the '90s or early 2000s. I feel like I’m grieving a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Phones have changed humans, and the future scares me. It makes my heart ache. The world was less overwhelming and overstimulating; the lighting was better; people spent more time together and were more polite and courteous; and even the way people spoke was better."
12. "The loss of missed opportunities. Feeling like you had something in the bag, then lost it, and life went in a completely different direction."
13. "Aging."
"It's the process of turning potential into experience. You gain experience, but you lose potential.
The potential is definitely worth grieving, but the experience is also worth appreciating."
14. "I've occasionally been grieving my old home. I moved states back in March from where I'd lived since I was 11. I thought I'd die in that house. I'm now married, have a much nicer house and overall far better life, and yet I find myself grieving the old house."
15. "Grieving the version of your life you thought you’d have. Nobody really sees that as a loss, but it can hurt like one"
"Similar to this, the loss of the life you could've had, or deserved. More specifically, never having had the chance at a good life you know you could've achieved if you had been raised in a healthy environment.
It feels like your entire life was stolen from you, all because you got dealt a shitty hand in the form of parental unit(s). Imagine being a young, innocent child, and someone steals your favorite toy that you've had for years and can never be replaced. Now imagine that you are also blamed for having lost the toy. It's like that, but now make that apply to decades of your life, rather than just a specific item."
16. "Grieving the way life used to be with your old friend group a decade ago. We are all happy in our lives, but we are different; hangouts are different; interests are different. It's not less fun now; it's just different, and sometimes I miss the 'old times.'"
17. "I've been thinking about things like losing a friendship without any dramatic falling out, leaving a place you thought would always feel like home, watching your parents get older, and realizing the version of your future you always pictured probably isn't going to happen."
18. "Grieving your children as they go through the various stages of life. You're not allowed to grieve them when they were 3, 5, and 9, because you will be accused of living in the past or not enjoying who they are now. I loved that little girl with all my heart and soul. And I love the new 26-year-old woman she has become with all my heart and soul. But I grieve the loss of the girl who put her puppy in a backpack, the one who said 'beprella,' the one who sat with me at work, and so many since. It is a loss felt all the time, and we must not grieve it, or we lose now. And it sucks."
20. "Destroyed forests, streams, special trees, and the lovely turn in the path. All flattened for a fucking rich guy's shitty lawn."
21. "Grieving someone who is still alive. It feels like a difficult topic to talk about because a lot of people just do not understand it, because you’re grieving over someone who is still living. Watching someone suffer with dementia is heart-wrenching. Them forgetting everyone and everything that they once held dear and watching them think they are a child reliving their worst trauma again is heartbreaking. Watching someone close to me go through a traumatic brain injury, and they are a completely different person now than the one I grew up with. I grieve the loss of who they used to be and the freedoms they had; now they have had a complete personality flip, lost independence, and struggle to do most things throughout the day."
22. "Losing a version of your life you used to have. I miss the person I was before kids. As much as I love my kids and love being a father, I miss the way things used to be, too."
23. "Grieving the loss of 'good looks.' I was never a beauty queen, but I was always slim with blue eyes and long blonde hair. Those days are gone, and realizing I was becoming invisible was a profound shock. I’m fortunate to be still very active and healthy, but the bloom of youth is gone. There is a sense of loss associated with that."
"And it's hard to discuss, because it can come across as just vanity or being shallow.
I'm a fortysomething woman and was always decently attractive. Or at least not unattractive. I am so grateful for the solid men and women in my young life who taught me to rely on things besides looks, and build intelligence, education, humor, self-reliance, etc., but it's still hard to acknowledge that I will never again be 'hot,' at best 'looks good for a woman of a certain age.'"
24. "When you thought a relationship with someone would turn into something more, only for you both to move in different directions in life. All of the effort, all of the daydreams, fade into something that never mattered in the long run. It's a loss that you need to grieve, but folks around you might make you feel like 'nothing happened anyway,' so why should it hurt at all?"
25. And lastly: "Grieving your old self when you get a chronic illness. Sometimes it feels like you're in a pinball machine, doesn't it? One issue makes another thing worse, and then you need to do something about that, which affects something else. I have several chronic illnesses that interfere with each other. For example, two make me gain weight, two make it difficult to exercise, and all get worse when I gain weight."
Whatever you may be grieving, your feelings are completely valid and worth talking about. I applaud these Reddit users for sharing their most vulnerable moments, and I hope their bravery inspires others to give their quiet grief the attention it deserves.
Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
English (US) 