Normalizing Invisible Grief
I recently came across a podcast in my feed that I don’t remember subscribing to. The title of the podcast is Good Life Project, and the title of the episode was “Invisible Grief.” In listening to the episode, I was struck at how Dr. Lucy Hone spoke to some experiences I have had during my life that had I had found confusing. She spoke to invisible grief, and normalized the experience, in a way that lifted the weight of self judgement.
Invisible grief is about the losses we don’t often recognize right away or even consider as something that can be grieved because it is not the tangible loss of a person. An example that Dr. Hone gave in the episode to was that of a living loss, or of mourning the loss of someone who is still physically present, but maybe not emotionally available. I have worked with many people and had several friends and family members with firsthand experiences of this, especially when it comes to living with dementia. Slowly losing connection to someone you love, even as they sit in front of you, is incredibly painful. I’ve also seen this in the context of addiction. Whether it was a parent watching their child struggle, a partner or spouse slowly losing touch with their loved one, or even a child experiencing their parent slipping through their fingertips as the addiction takes hold. It is a complicated ball of emotions with everything from anger, to frustration, to fear, to grief.
Living losses are not the only types of loss Dr. Hone validates. She also speaks to losing the life you had envisioned for yourself, or the relationships your planned to work out differently. Invisible grief is sometimes also called silent grief, and it is something that touches most of us in some way. Hopefully we can continue to acknowledge it and support each other through it so that an inevitably painful process doesn’t have to also be a lonely path.
Here is the link to the podcast episode from Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yQM4HAgN4vUzT7aWGwUg3?si=rQHipsL1QoCTdfBEW7GRJw
