The Grief We’re Not Allowed to Have

It’s easy to envy someone who appears not to have experienced grief at all, though I’m not sure anyone truly avoids it.

Grief moves through lives in different ways, and some losses are simply more visible than others.

Grief is something society doesn’t deal with well.

It often becomes a private affair, something you are expected to carry quietly and alone.

Support may be offered, but it’s frequently shaped by what’s convenient for the giver rather than what’s actually needed by the one grieving.

So we isolate.

We close off.

We lick our wounds in private and try not to bleed in public.

Sometimes we over-function, moving through daily life while holding grief inside us — either because we’ve learned to carry it, or because it feels illegitimate compared to other losses.

Grief comes in many forms: the loss of identity, who you used to be, the life you expected, a job, motherhood, a version of yourself.

Even changes that appear positive can leave holes that go unacknowledged.

Any wound that isn’t cleaned becomes infected.

Grief, when unattended, can quietly harden into something we carry without noticing the harm it causes. Without acknowledgment; personal or cultural, grief doesn’t resolve. It settles.

We may appear perfectly functional on the outside. We may seem successful, composed, or entirely withdrawn.

Shame around what we’ve lost, or confusion about how to carry it, can disconnect us from what we once loved and from others who no longer understand us.

The danger of unaddressed grief is not always collapse.

Often, it seeps into other areas of life.

For some, it’s manageable. For others, it compounds.

Decisions begin to form around loss rather than alignment. Lives can stagnate or quietly veer off course.

When grief is not acknowledged, it doesn’t disappear.

It simply moves underground; shaping the structure of our lives without ever being named.