Oftentimes when we think of grief, images of death and dying immediately come to mind. However, experiencing grief isn’t limited to losing someone we love when their life comes to an end. Grief comes in many forms—some more recognized as warranting a full grieving process than others—but regardless of what anyone else thinks, grief is always real for the person experiencing it.
Unfortunately, because our culture often views grief through such a limiting lens, many people are left to process other types of grief without the outpouring of support that is most commonly associated with the expected grieving process following a death.
Maybe people reach out to see how a woman is doing when she announces that she’s getting a divorce and feels like her life is falling apart as a result, but it’s unlikely that all of her friends and family sign up for different meals to bring her for a week or two after the news breaks. There often isn’t any formal ceremony, celebration, or remembrance of what was when someone loses their job, is abandoned by friends and family for coming out about their sexuality or gender identity, or develops an invisible chronic illness that robs them of their life before getting sick.
As a result, many people are left to grapple with more ambiguous losses alone and without the support of community that they need. Even worse, their grief may not be recognized as being as "valid" as the grief of someone whose loved one has just died, diminishing the very real and painful feelings they’re experiencing.
You may recognize some of your own story in that isolating description of what it’s like to process a loss that isn’t widely recognized by others. You may also be realizing that you didn’t know there was a term for what you’re experiencing. The concept of "ambiguous grief" might feel brand new even though the feeling is something you know intimately.
Keep reading to learn more about what ambiguous grief is all about, how it might be impacting your life, and what you can do to process and heal from the unique loss you’ve experienced.
What is Ambiguous Grief?
When it comes to ambiguous grief, your loss may be tangible or symbolic but uncertain either way. According to Katherine Walsh, the author of Grief and Loss: Theories and Skills for Helping Professions, an ambiguous loss “occurs without closure, and therefore leaves someone searching for, or wondering about, an outcome.”
In the case of many ambiguous losses, you may be grieving for someone who is actually still alive. This often happens in the case of divorce, losing a parent to cognitive decline or when a friendship ends due to substance abuse. According to Psychology Today, most people will experience the pain of grieving a loved one who is still living at least once, but it’s not commonly discussed how profound losses such as this are.
Ambiguous loss also occurs due to other life transitions such as being impacted by a natural disaster or moving away from a longtime community. It can also look like life before and after a major event such as a health diagnosis or traumatizing experience.
As a queer person growing up in the south, one of my first experiences with ambiguous grief was recognizing love and acceptance from my community was contingent on me staying in the closet. I first felt this loss when I left the Christian church as a teenager and again in college when I was outed about my identity to someone I had a close relationship with who wasn't accepting of who I am. This was the first time I experienced someone telling me their love and support for me was conditional on me denying a part of myself, and it was damaging in a way that heartbreak and other relational discord had never been before.
To make matters worse, while my closest friends at the time weren't overtly prejudiced against the queer community, they did reinforce false narratives about my bisexuality just being a phase or for attention which left me feeling like there wasn't space for me to grieve this invisible loss I was experiencing. On top of the grief I felt for losing the love and support of the person who rejected me for being queer, this was also the beginning of me internalizing biphobia and believing the lie that I wasn't queer enough to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community and simultaneously not straight enough to fit in elsewhere.
It took years for me to examine how this experience impacted me so deeply and to make sense of what a profound loss this really was for me. In fact, it wasn't until my studies in counseling, including a course on grief and loss, that I learned the term ambiguous grief and finally felt seen in my experience.
While my experience with ambiguous grief may be vastly different from your own, I'm guessing that you might be able to connect with certain pieces in my story. Maybe you’re familiar with feeling unseen and misunderstood in your pain and having your experience minimized or not recognized at all. Maybe it’s just now clicking that what you’ve experienced is a valid form of grief that deserves to be honored and explored.
Types of Ambiguous Grief
I suspect that if you’ve read to this point, you’re beginning to identify threads of your own story in the words of this blog. However, you might still be second guessing whether your own experience really counts as ambiguous grief. Here are a list of common sources of ambiguous grief:
Divorce: Following the end of a marriage, you might be left grappling with the lingering emotional wreckage of the divorce. While your ex-spouse is still alive, a huge piece of what your life was for so long is now missing.
Miscarriage: Experiencing a miscarriage carries complex feelings of grief including the loss of the pregnancy as well as the dreams you may have had for this child.
Infertility: If you’ve lived through the struggles of infertility, you know the unique grief that comes with this experience, from not being able to have the family you desire for yourself to the financial toll or inaccessibility of fertility treatments to the complicated questions about how to handle unused embryos at the end of your conception journey.
Religion: Leaving a faith practice and experiencing the loss of community, connection and understanding of close friends and family can be a huge source of unspoken grief for many, especially women who have endured religious trauma and abuse and those in the LGBTQIA+ community who’ve felt abandoned by their faith communities for living authentically.
Abuse & intimate partner violence: If you’ve experienced abuse or violence in a relationship, you know how painful, confusing, and alienating it can be to experience repeated harm from someone who claims to love and care for you. It can feel like the person you fell in love with no longer exists.
Cognitive decline: Watching a loved one decline due to an illness such as dementia is a profound form of ambiguous grief. While the person you love is still living, the essence of who they once were feels like it’s slipping away.
Chronic mental illness: Much like losing a loved one to cognitive decline, it’s extremely painful to see someone you love battling severe mental illness and feel its impact on your relationship with them.
Adoption: For bio parents and children, ambiguous grief is a common experience in that they aren’t physically present in each other’s lives but the awareness of their existence elsewhere in the world is ever present.
Maybe you see yourself in this list. If you don’t, that just means the source of your grief needs to be added to make it more complete and comprehensive of the many unique experiences of ambiguous grief that shape the lives of so many women.
The Unique Impact of Ambiguous Grief on Women
Having a name for what you’re experiencing is helpful, but it can also be helpful to drop down to a deeper layer to explore the far reaching impacts of ambiguous grief that may be present in your life.
Psychological distress: Living with ambiguous grief takes its toll on our mental wellbeing. Many women experience feelings of helplessness and persistent rumination about the missing person/people and changed relationship(s). They may feel frozen and unable to move forward.
Physical & emotional toll: The complex feelings associated with ambiguous loss often
impact stress levels which can exacerbate emotional distress and disrupt the sleep/wake cycle. Many women experiencing ambiguous grief may find themselves feeling exhausted during the day and impacted by distressing dreams or an inability to sleep well at night. Other physical health issues can result from the prolonged strain associated with persistent stress due to ambiguous grief.
Social isolation: As discussed earlier in this blog, it’s not uncommon for women suffering from ambiguous grief to do so in silence because others in their life don’t recognize the grief as being valid or real. This can lead to strained relationships when friends and family aren’t able to show up with empathy for just how real the ambiguous grief is.
How to Heal from Ambiguous Grief
The first step in healing from ambiguous grief is honesty and acceptance about the profound impacts it’s having on your life. By being honest with ourselves about just how deep our grief runs, we can begin to understand it more fully, and that understanding often leads to acceptance. The unfortunate truth is that these experiences are common and often not fully reconcilable, but you do have the choice to confront the pain even if you can’t fully make it go away.
While closure may never come or not look the way you’d hoped, it’s possible to wrestle with the ambiguity less and cultivate acceptance for the uncertainty. When we surrender our need for certainty, we create more space to allow ourselves to grieve despite the lack of a clear endpoint. And isn’t that the truth with all forms of grief? It doesn’t end, it just continues to change and unfold over time.
You may be asking yourself how you can possibly reach acceptance and understanding about the loss you're grieving, and that’s understandable. It can feel like an insurmountable feat to accomplish, but the good news is that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. Grief counseling with a supportive therapist can be a powerful step toward healing and grief recovery.
Additionally, you might consider a grief counseling group online to connect with other women with similar experiences with ambiguous grief.
Whether you’re seeking individual or group support though, help is available, and the feminist-oriented therapists are Her Time Therapy would be honored to walk the path to grief recovery alongside you.
Her Time Therapy, PLLC, is an integrative group counseling practice comprised of licensed
therapists in Colorado who specialize in providing convenient and empowering online therapy for women. You can feel confident working with a Her Time therapist because we are women who get it—we recognize that women like you experience a unique set of biological, environmental, economic, and social challenges that have a real impact on your mental health and are deserving of specialized support.
Call/Text (720) 255-1667 | info@hertimetherapy.com | www.hertimetherapy.com
Lesley Fulton (she/her), is a Clinical Mental Health Graduate Student Intern offering affordable counseling services to Her Time Therapy Clients under the supervision of Julie Noyes, MA LPC NCC and Adams State University professors. Lesley is passionate about helping clients with trauma, LGBTQIA+ identity, attachment issues, codependence, chronic illness, and disordered eating/body image.
*Disclaimer: This blog does not provide medical advice and the information contained herein is for informational purposes only. This blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a licensed health provider before undertaking a new treatment or health care regimen.
*Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain ads and affiliate links that Her Time Therapy, LLC earns a small commission from when you make a purchase by clicking links on our site at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualified purchases. Rest assured, we only recommend products we've used ourselves and would feel comfortable recommending to clients to improve their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Comments