GRIEF & LOSS

Yes, sweetheart, you DO actually get to grieve this.

SUMMARY

I’m curious about something: Do you dismiss your grief? Do you allow yourself to deeply mourn losses, shifts, and transitions in your life – both big and small – fully? Do you believe that you actually get to grieve when no one’s death is involved?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. I’m curious about something: Do you dismiss your grief?
2. Why is grief so hard to put into words?
3. Look, chances are we all intellectually know that grief is an emotional reaction to loss in our lives.
4. You don’t need permission to grieve what was taken from you.
5. References
6. Frequently Asked Questions

I’m curious about something: Do you dismiss your grief?

DEFINITION
GRIEF

Grief is the multifaceted response to loss, encompassing emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions that unfold over time. In the context of relational trauma, grief often involves mourning not only what was lost but what was never received: the childhood, the parent, the safety, or the version of oneself that might have been.

Do you allow yourself to deeply mourn losses, shifts, and transitions in your life – both big and small – fully? Do you believe that you actually get to grieve when no one’s death is involved?

SUMMARY

One of the most common ways women with relational trauma minimize their own pain is by insisting their experience doesn’t ‘count’ as something worth grieving. This post is a direct, warm permission slip: your grief is real, it is valid, and giving yourself space to feel it is not weakness — it’s how healing actually works.

Definition

Disenfranchised Grief: Grief that is not socially recognized, acknowledged, or supported — including grief for experiences that others may minimize, such as emotional neglect, relational wounds, a childhood that wasn’t fully safe, or losses that don’t fit conventional grief categories. Commonly experienced by those with relational trauma histories.

Related Reading

• What does it mean to be an ambitious, upwardly mobile woman from a relational trauma background?
• Attachment Trauma: How Early Relationships Shape Your Adult Connections
• Trauma and Relationships: When Your Professional Strengths Become Your Relationship Blindspots

I ask because, between my recent article on grieving the parenting that you may not have received growing up and my recent Upworthy.com article on why you might be grieving the state of the world, in the past few weeks I’ve received a slew of comments from folks along the lines of:

“It’s not like anyone died, so it’s not like we actually get to grieve that stuff, right?”

and

“But there’s all this good stuff going on in my life, too, so I can’t be sad about that.”

Comments like these, in my opinion as a psychotherapist, unintentionally and unfortunately illustrate how misunderstood grief actually is and how dismissive many of us can be about our own feelings. Comments like these showcase how many of us essentially de-legitimize the grief we may be experiencing around events in our lives.

And that’s sad and hard. Because grief is painful and challenging enough as it is. When we tell ourselves, “No, I don’t get to grieve this, this doesn’t count, I shouldn’t feel this way”, we make the experience so, so much harder for our tender, vulnerable selves.

Now let’s face it: Grief is a huge, complex, intensely personal, unusually painful and triggering topic – one short online article from me can hardly do the topic justice and I want to admit that fully.

However, my hope is that in today’s post I can at least challenge some common myths about grief, validate what it is you may personally be going through, and provide some further resources if you need additional assistance navigating the wild, brambled, thorny journey of grief.

So if you in any way tend to dismiss, invalidate, or ignore your own grief, today’s blog post is meant for you.

Why is grief so hard to put into words?

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.”

WASHINGTON IRVING

Grief. What a powerful, evocative word. And yet what words exactly can describe such an intense experience?

Grief, according to Merriam Webster, is explained as:

: deep sadness caused especially by someone’s death

: a cause of deep sadness

: trouble or annoyance

 

Grief, according to the poet Mary Oliver in her poem, A Pretty Song, feels like this:

Thank you — check your inbox.

Your guide is on its way.

From the complications of loving you

I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?

This isn’t a playground, this is

earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence

to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.

And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song,

And I say to my heart: rave on.

(I personally prefer Mary Oliver’s interpretation.)

Look, chances are we all intellectually know that grief is an emotional reaction to loss in our lives.

And we all likely have heard about the five stages of grief, pioneered by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD in her groundbreaking work on death and dying: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. That’s grief, right?

Maybe. Kind of. In a sort of way, yes.

But, to quote the opening paragraph of On Grief and Grieving, also by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

“Our grief is as individual as our lives.” You see, there’s no way I could capture what grief is or means to you in this blog post. Grief is up to you to define both in how you experience it and also in what triggers it. And while we have some wonderful, helpful thought leadership about the actual physical and psychological symptoms of grief, still many of us hold onto myths about grief – what causes it, how we get to experience it, etc.

What are the most common myths about grief that keep people stuck?

• “It’s linear, right? I’ll just move through those five stages and then I’ll be done grieving.” See the above quote. Also, see this amazing little illustration that circulated on social media last year. Grief could not possibly be less linear.

• “Time will heal my grief.” Maybe. Or maybe not. As a psychotherapist I personally think it depends on how much you’re willing to turn and face and acknowledge and feel your grief. It depends on how much you’re willing to process and metabolize your feelings of grief across time. Time could pass and still you may not have “fully healed” your grief.

• “Grief is something that can be fully healed and gotten over.” Fully healed and gotten over implies an endpoint to grief and I don’t think that’s realistic. For many of us, the intensity of the sting and acuity of grief may ebb over time and with the processing we choose to do, but there may always be “spikes” in pain when memories surface, anniversaries and holidays come round, or when we encounter particular triggers. So in this way, grief may be something we can integrate, something we weave into the fabric of our lives, fold into the depths of our psyche, but perhaps it’s unrealistic to think that we can ever “fully heal” or “get over” our grief.

• “I can predict how grief will feel for me when it happens.” Like with so many things in life, we can only take guesses from outside the experience. It’s only when we’re going through the experience will we know, truly, what grief may actually feel like and there’s possibly no way you could predict the rollercoaster of corresponding feelings, behaviors, thoughts, and new ways of being this may birth in you. You will only know when you’re in it.

• “If I let myself feel my grief, I’ll be grieving forever.” Oh honey, no. You see, the only constant here on earth is that everything changes and shifts and eventually ends. And this includes your feelings. It may feel like once you start letting yourself feel your grief it may never end, and that’s normal and makes sense: grief is such a painful, huge soup of emotions! But it will end. Sometime. Especially if you help yourself by getting supports as you move through it.
• “I don’t get to grieve unless there’s a death.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, please read on below for a list of things and life experiences many of us may often grieve and yet also often do not allow ourselves permission to grieve.

Do you actually have permission to grieve losses that others dismiss?

Too often, I think, many of us disregard and invalidate our grief by believing grieving is only “allowed” or “reserved” for death. And while, of course!, the deaths of those we love will cause us to grieve, there are countless other ways and reasons why you might personally be grieving. Here’s a handful of examples why, “yes, sweetheart, you DO actually get to grieve this.”:

• You get to grieve parenting you didn’t receive;

• You get to grieve the release and death of a dream (or many dreams!) you once held;

• You get to grieve selling the family home;

• You get to grieve the loss of your identity before you became a parent;

• You get to grieve the loss of ability in your own body as you age;

• You get to grieve expectations you have to let go of;

• You get to grieve what you may never be able to receive from your partner or spouse;

• You get to grieve the state of the world and the pain of others;

• You get to grieve the loss of a job;

• You get to grieve the change of responsibilities within your job;

• You get to grieve a change in your finances;

• You get to grieve a change in your home life, in your living conditions;

• You get to grieve transitions from your beloved city, employer, career, even if it’s by your choice, it’s still a transition;

• You get to change a loss of trust in others, and in yourself’;

• You get to grieve the passing of time, and your own aging;

• You get to grieve the shifting form of your relationships with others;

• You get to grieve separating from your partner (if even by your choice) and you get to grieve reconciling with that partner (if even by your choice);

• You get to grieve the addition of a new family member;

• You get to grieve the outgrowing of friends, of lovers, of the life you’ve previously created for yourself;

• You get to grieve the loss of babies from your body;

• You get to grieve the impossibility of fertility within your own body;

• You get to grieve the illness or changing health of a loved one;

• And of course you get to grieve the death of loved ones: spouses, partners, parents, siblings, a child, a pet, a friend.

And this list is just but a small, tiny fraction of the possibilities of things/events/circumstances that may trigger grief!

So what can we do to help ourselves through this experience?

How do you take care of yourself while you’re in the middle of grief?

There are, of course, as many unique supports for your own grieving process as your grieving process itself will be unique. There is no one size fits all when it comes to what your grief will look like or what supports your grief may need. The supports that work for some may not work for others but examples and suggestions could include:

• Acknowledging your grief
• Turning towards your family and friends for comfort
• Seeking out therapy or support groups
• Tending to your feelings, tending to your body
• Setting healthy boundaries with the difficult people in your life
• Practice creative, need-fulfilling self-care
• Reading the memoirs, accounts, articles and poetry of those who have also traveled down the road of grief

You don’t need permission to grieve what was taken from you.

Grief is a complex, tangled, emotionally vast and utterly individual journey for each of us that we will face many times in our lives. What we grieve, how we grieve, and what can support us in our grieving process is going to be unique. One of the more important things we can all do though, is to honor and validate our feelings of grief when they emerge and to remember and say to yourself, if you can, that “yes, sweetheart, you DO actually get to grieve this.”

Now I’d love to hear in the comments below:

Leave a message in the comments below for our community of blog readers and I’ll be sure to respond personally.

Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.

Warmly,

Annie

What resources can help support you through your grieving process?

• This extensive list of books on grief and grieving from GoodReads
• This powerful open letter from Sheryl Sandberg last year on her grief on the death of her husband.
• This article from Buzzfeed filled with self-care tips that can help you while grieving.
• This online support community for people dealing with grief, death, and major loss, with over fifty monitored support groups for both kids and adults.
• “The Well of Grief” and “Despair” from poet David Whyte.
• This letter of encouragement from me to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.

References

• Doka, K. J. (1989). Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. Lexington Books.
• Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying. Macmillan.
• Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. Scribner.
• Worden, J. W. (2009). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner. Springer Publishing Company.
• Bonanno, G. A. (2009). The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss. Basic Books.
• Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.

Both/And: Your Drive and Your Wounds Can Both Be Real

The driven women I work with often arrive in therapy with an unspoken fear: if they stop pushing, everything falls apart. If they let themselves feel what they’ve been outrunning, they’ll never get back up. So they frame the choice in binary terms — keep performing or collapse. In my clinical experience, neither option is necessary.

Maya is an executive at a major tech company who hadn’t taken a sick day in three years. When she finally came to therapy, it wasn’t because she decided to — it was because her body decided for her. Migraines, insomnia, a jaw so clenched her dentist flagged it. She told me, “I can’t afford to fall apart,” and I told her the truth: she was already falling apart. She just hadn’t given herself permission to notice. What Maya needed wasn’t to dismantle her drive. It was to stop treating her own pain as an inconvenience to her productivity.

Both/And means this: you can be the person who delivers exceptional results at work and the person who cries in the car afterward. You can be fiercely competent and quietly terrified. You can want more and still appreciate what you have. These aren’t contradictions — they’re the full truth of what it means to be a driven woman navigating a world that rewards your output but not your wholeness.

The Systemic Lens: Why Individual Solutions Can’t Fix Structural Problems

Driven women are systematically taught to locate the source of their suffering internally. If you’re burned out, you need better boundaries. If you’re anxious, you need more mindfulness. If your relationships are strained, you need to communicate better. This framing isn’t accidental — it serves a function. It keeps the focus on individual behavior and away from the structural conditions that make individual behavior so costly.

Consider what the typical driven woman manages in a single day: high-stakes professional work, emotional labor in relationships, mental load of household management, caregiving responsibilities, her own physical and mental health, and the performance of equanimity required to be taken seriously in all of these domains. No one designed this workload to be sustainable because no one designed it at all. It accrued — the result of decades of women entering professional spaces without the domestic and structural supports being redesigned to accommodate that shift.

In my clinical work, I’ve found that naming these systemic forces is itself therapeutic. When a driven woman realizes that her struggle isn’t evidence of personal inadequacy but a predictable response to impossible conditions, something shifts. The shame loosens. The self-blame softens. And she can begin to make choices based on what she actually needs rather than what the system tells her she should be able to handle.

If what you’ve read here resonates, I want you to know that individual therapy and executive coaching are available for driven women ready to do this work. You can also explore my self-paced recovery courses or schedule a complimentary consultation to find the right fit.

About the Author

Annie Wright, LMFT

LMFT #95719  ·  Relational Trauma Specialist  ·  W.W. Norton Author

Helping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.

As a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719), trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.

Work With Annie

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