On what we lose — and what we never had
Some experiences change the way we see our lives — quietly, but irreversibly.
Some time ago, I learnt something about my life that led me to experience a different kind of grief — the grief of what never was.
The life I didn’t have, and the moments I didn’t experience.
The grief for emotions I didn’t feel, and the relationships I didn’t get to build.
A sense of peace I could have known but didn’t.
At 46, I found myself grieving a life I didn’t live.
And there was something deeply disorienting in that, because there was nothing to bury — no rituals, no shared language.
And yet it lived quietly in the body —
in moments of reflection, or in sudden waves of sadness,
in a sense of something missing that is hard to name.
For a long time, I didn’t recognise this as grief.
And yet this is what grief keeps reminding me —
that it has many shapes.
We grieve not only people,
but the more subtle losses too:
changes in our bodies,
the passing of time,
relationships that quietly fade,
opportunities that never materialise,
versions of ourselves we never became.
And this grief deserves just as much space, care, and compassion.
I did not try to resolve it, or to make it disappear.
I learned to acknowledge it and allow it to unfold — in its own time.
And in doing so, something shifted.
Not the past I was grieving, but the way I carry it.
I see this often in the people I work with, too —
people who are quietly coming to terms with something that never was,
no longer fits,
or something they once held tightly that is now gone.
Grief is not something to overcome.
It reflects the depth of what we carry.
And sometimes, when we can name the loss,
the grief itself begins to make more sense.
So when we respect it and allow it to unfold in its own way,
we begin to move forward —
not by leaving it behind,
but by carrying it differently.
much love,
R
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“You will be whole again — but never the same.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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