The term “disenfranchised grief” refers to grief that is not validated by society, whether because the loss, the relationship, or the griever is not acknowledged or approved of.
I feel lonely in the grief I carry about my situation. It feels like an invisible weight on my heart. It’s present with me all the time; I don’t think an hour has gone by in the past decade that I haven’t thought about it, felt it in my body. It’s so real, so painful, and sometimes so consuming. And there are no words to explain it to others. It feels too delicate, too easily misunderstood, too easily dismissed with platitudes. I want the encouragement that things will work out in the end, but I also want the acknowledgment of this depth of pain that is so real now and all the time. And that is part of the pain, that there is no real support for it.
But we do have each other. We get each other. And hopefully, our grief is not disenfranchised amongst ourselves. There is nothing like a friend who understands.
I hope you have that, and I hope if you don’t that you reach out here because I want to see your grief, too.
