Ep 17: The Grief No One Sees: Mourning the Life You Dreamed Of

Most days you're fine. You get up. You do your things. After a while, people stop asking how you're doing.

And then something catches you off guard. Not the loss itself, but the sadness you feel around the loss of the life you thought you'd be living.

The marriage, the career, the family, the plans. Whatever it was for you. You find yourself mourning the future you envisioned for yourself.

In this episode, you'll get a name for that kind of grief and why it sometimes feels selfish to mourn the loss of a future we haven’t ever lived. You'll hear what it looked like for me, once after losing my daughter and once after a divorce. And you'll leave with one small practice you can do today to give that loss the space it deserves.

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If you're carrying grief for a future no one else could see, you don't have to carry it by yourself. I work privately with women through this exact space, whatever loss brought them here. When you're ready, I'd love to talk. Book a Discovery Call.

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The Grief No One Sees: Mourning the Life You Dreamed Of

Kendra Merrill

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Now, I'd love to hear from you!

If you tried the practice, how did you finish the sentence?

Share as much detail as feels comfortable for you. Many beautiful souls come here for insight and inspiration. Your story may spark a breakthrough for someone who really needs it.

With endless love and appreciation,
Kendra 💜

• View Transcript

  [00:00:00] 

  Host: This episode answers the question underneath the one that you've been asking. Not just what happened to me, why did it happen to me, but the one layer deeper, the thing that's underneath, the who am I now that the future I thought I was building is gone? Stick around, you're gonna leave with a name for that type of loss and proof that you're not the only person carrying this, to a certain extent, invisible [00:01:00] loss, the loss of the future you thought you were going to have.

  So if you're here, maybe it's been a little bit of time since you've experienced some sort of sense of loss, whether that's divorce, the loss of a loved one, loss of a job. Whatever happened to you, maybe it's been about a year or longer since that event, and people have stopped asking you, "How are you doing?"

  You've hit that moment, 'cause there is one, where you're kind of left all on your own to figure it all out. And most days you're fine. Most days you're functioning, you're getting up, you're doing your things. But every so often, something catches you a little bit off guard, not because of the loss itself.

  Certainly, you have those moments of, you know, missing the person, or wishing that it could go back to the way it was, or whatever the, the circumstances might be of [00:02:00] that, that thing that catches you off guard. But sometimes it's not because of the loss itself. Sometimes it's a little bit harder to describe.

  It's the grief that you feel for the version of you that you were building inside of this future vision that you had planned for that isn't gonna happen anymore. You know, um, let's back this up. So I'm gonna go back a little bit. It's the grief that you feel for the version of your life that you were building

  Mm, no. It's the grief that you feel for the vision of your future that you were holding onto. The, the future that you had planned with either this person or in this space or in this environment or in this job, whatever it might be, that just really straight up isn't happening anymore. And so now you're left with this blank space of what do I do now?

  So if you're here, you, um, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my experience with this, uh, this type of loss. So if you've been here now, you, you know that, uh, I lost my daughter. She was stillborn at 40 weeks and five days. And after that loss, my husband and I went on two family vacations that we had planned Long before this happened, so while I was pregnant, we were planning for how do we create a family vacation that's gonna be supportive for both a younger baby, and also, um, our, my stepdaughter, who was probably nine at the time, something like that.

  So we, we had been [00:03:00] looking at family vacations and where we could go. We had asked for specific rooms to have access to the pool to make things easier. We looked for playgrounds and, you know, uh, resorts that had things to do for kids so that our, my stepdaughter would have something to do, and yet it would be accessible and easy for a baby.

  We spent a lot of time planning what these vacations would look like, right? The whole time I was at these experiences, I missed my daughter terribly, certainly. Hmm. But it wasn't just missing her that got me. It was missing the version of myself that was supposed to exist on these trips.

  Um, I was supposed to be a mom with a baby. I was supposed to be moving around, pushing around a stroller and changing diapers. And I was 35 years old when we went through this experience, and I hadn't yet experienced that in my life, the being a mom, and I wanted [00:04:00] it. And so not having it felt soul-crushing.

  So she was gone, and I was grieving her, but I was also grieving the identity that I had envisioned for myself because that was gone too.

  And there really wasn't a name for grieving that kind of loss. For me, I didn't understand why it hurt so bad to not have the life I wanted, and I felt honestly a little bit, let's say, selfish. Like, I had lost her, and I had also lost my dad within a six-week period, so there was, there were several things going on.

  But I felt a little selfish for grieving the loss of the life that I wanted when I was also grieving the loss of actual human beings, my daughter and, um, my dad. I felt a little selfish, and I wanted to be able to take a moment to, like, witness that and acknowledge that because it wasn't selfish. It was absolutely what [00:05:00] happens when our perceived future changes, when our planned future changes

  The event is only part of what dies. We each hold, um, a self-concept. So it's a... So we each hold a self-concept, which is your theory about yourself, the person you were in the past, how you are now, and who you're becoming in the future. You have this self-concept of what that looks like, including your roles and including your social roles, and group memberships, and family environment, and what you want that to look like.

  That self-concept is tied to helping you make sense of your present moment, and makes predictions about your future and what that's supposed to look like, and guides your motivation. You know, if you're working towards something, obviously you're envisioning the future and what that's gonna look like. So, so for this conversation today, we're specifically talking about this future or- oriented component of the self-concept, which has been termed possible selves.

  So when you think about the future

  The event is only part of what died. We each hold what's called, um, a self-concept, which is your theory about yourself, about the person that you were in the past, about who you are now, and who you're going to become in the future, including your social roles, your group memberships, your environment, what you want that life to look like.

  So that self-concept is very tied to helping you make sense of your current and present moment, and it makes predictions about your future. Um, and it helps guide your motivation because if you're working towards something, you know, you take... You have motivation to take steps to move forward. So for this conversation today, we're really specifically focused on the one part of self-concept that is specific to that future self, and it's termed possible selves.

  So this is a possible selves theory that was constructed by Markus and Nurius in 1986, and they say that possible selves represent the individual's ideas of what they might become in the future, what you might look like, what you might be, mm

  what you would like to become and what you're afraid of becoming, and thus providing some sort of conceptual links to your, um, cognition and your motivation. So now, if you've experienced some sort of loss

  So the event is the only part that died. We each hold what's called a self-concept. So I'm gonna talk psychology for just a minute. And what I mean by that is we, uh, we each hold a theory about ourselves that is the person that we were in the past, who we are now, and who we're going to be in the future.

  And that includes, like, the whole picture, the social roles that we play, the group memberships that we have, the environment that we live in. We all-- we have that, um, self-concept, and that self-concept is tied to helping us really make meaning of our lives and our present moment. For this conversation today, we're gonna specifically talk about that future forward part.

  Um, and, uh, you know, psychology has termed this [00:06:00] as possible self theory. So it's basically, um... It was constructed by Markus and Nurius in 1986, and they say that possible selves represent an individual's idea of who you might become, what you might be afraid of becoming, and thus providing some sort of conceptual link in your head to motivation.

  So it's like if you have a goal to run a marathon, that's in the future, and so you're gonna take steps and you're gonna be motivated to do the things you wanna do to get there, right? Okay. Well, let's say you no longer can use your legs the idea of your future self has changed, or you break a leg and you can't do the thing that you thought you were gonna do.

  Now

  Now, your experience of loss may not be like mine. I lost a child, but we al- and I, you know, expected to have her in my life, but we all have this future vision of our possible self that frames how we show up every day

  Now, your experience of loss may be different than mine. It may not be the loss of a child, but we all have this future vision or possible self idea of what our futures will look like. And the loss, no matter what kind of loss it is, changes the options that we had in our mind for what our future self might look like.

  So maybe you can't have the life that you envisioned with the partner or the spouse that you, um, were with. Maybe you've learned that you can't have kids. Maybe it wasn't losing a kid. Maybe it was losing the possibility of having kids. Or another example from my early days was when I was younger, I went through a divorce in my 20s, and I mourned the loss of the kids that I thought we'd have but didn't.

  So I, I So the event is not the only loss. Whether you've built your future around that role or a plan or an identity, we're growing, and you were growing into it It went with that loss too, that future vision of who you would be, it, it's gone. It went with that idea of, um, it went with the loss too

  Now, your experience of loss may not be exactly like mine. You may not have lost a child, but we all have these future visions or these [00:07:00] possible selves in our mind of what our futures are gonna look like, and the loss, no matter what kind of loss it was, changes that perception. It changes your future. It changes what you thought your future would be.

  . So maybe you can't have the life that you envisioned with your partner or - spouse because either they've passed away or you're going through a divorce. Maybe you've learned that you can't have kids because that's also an extreme loss, too. Or another example from when I was, um, young.

  In my 20s, I went through a divorce, and I went through a mourning process, not for the loss of the marriage or loss of my spouse. Um, it was the loss of the kids that I had envisioned us having, the family I intended us to have that we didn't have. So the event is not the only part of your loss. Whether you built your future around a [00:08:00] particular role or a plan or an identity that you were growing into, that went with that loss, too

  The loss of who you thought you would be and what you thought your life would look like is a valid loss. It's not just some abstract loss that is something that you, you know, some people might be like, "Why are you mourning something that you never had?" Why did I mourn the kids that I never had in a marriage?

  'Cause I never had them. We never even got pregnant. Like, that wasn't even on the table. But I had a vision of what our lives would look like in the future, and it included kids. So in some people's minds, you may think, "Why am I mourning a loss of something that I never actually had?", which was the future.

  But it is an actual loss,

  And it doesn't really get talked about a lot . And it doesn't really get talked about a lot, so I wanted to [00:09:00] talk about it here

  And I wanted to do that because so many times people feel alone in their loss, not just the loss of the person or the job or the, the spouse, whatever it might be. We feel alone in our loss because often nobody understands the grieving that we do for the invisible losses, like our future selves.

  It doesn't seem real to other people. You know, why would you be so sad about something you never had?

  If a divorce happened, there might be a divorce party. Um, there's typically some sort of ritual or something to kind of earmark that loss. But there isn't really a container to support or acknowledge the invisible losses that you are grieving, the loss of the version of you that isn't happening. The event gets some sort of knowled- acknowledgement, but the s-

  In our culture, in the West where I live, there's not really a container to support or acknowledge the invisible losses of the version of you that isn't gonna happen, isn't gonna come to fruition, uh, because everything's changed for you. The event gets some sort of acknowledgement typically, sometimes.

  Some sort of ceremony, a ritual, an outpouring of support, especially if it was the loss of a loved one. You have a [00:10:00] funeral, you have people who come and check on you, you have the dinner trains, you have, um, you know, the divorce party. Whatever it might be, some sort of marking of the moment. But the future you dreamed of with that person or with, um, or career path that you thought you were going to go on, it, it rarely gets any kind of acknowledgement from the outside world, and this is sometimes referred to as disenfranchised grief.

  So this term was coined by grief expert Kenneth Doka. Disenfranchised grief basically describes the pain that people feel, that you may be feeling, when your loss is not openly acknowledged or socially validated. Um, I had someone that I was talking to, I was doing some interviews for my work and my business, and someone talked about a miscarriage.

  That is something that is, in this day and age difficult to socially validate [00:11:00] because many women who experience that particular loss do it in silence. It's happening while they're at work. It's happening and they're going back to work the next day. It's happening and other people don't know it's happening.

  And so if it's not acknowledged or socially validated, it can feel like a - disenfranchised grief. It's not publicly supported, and it describes the loss that society wrongly labels as maybe less important because you never had a baby in your hands, and so you're not really losing anything. You are. I believe you are.

  So... Or for example, what I've given you, like, me grieving the loss of my identity as a mom wasn't something that we talked about in my therapy sessions. It wasn't something I talked about with other people. It wasn't something I really understood or realized until really years later when I was... And I won't go into that.

  That's a tangent. But really, it [00:12:00] w- it took me years later to really realize that I was grieving the loss of my identity as a mom. So this is not the only kind of disenfranchised loss, but it's one of them, and when our grief isn't recognized, you feel isolated, ashamed. You feel silenced. -- Like when I sat, like when I sat on the steps in the living room of my home when I was 20-something years ago after realizing that my husband and I were actually going to be splitting up and getting a divorce, and I just sobbed in the dark with the lights off because I was losing him and the marriage.

  But what I was grieving on those steps, and I actually realized it in that moment, what I was grieving on those steps was the idea of a family, of the family that I thought we would have, the family I thought we would-- I would [00:13:00] have with his family, like his parents. Um, nobody grieved that with me. I sat alone in the dark and grieved that loss on my own.

  So this is why I do what I do. Because without the support or social validation, it can be really hard to make sense of your loss. And if you're going through that experience, I am a somatic life coach. I do work with people who are going through experiences like this. Um, and if you want some support, I will, uh, put a link below to a discovery call if you wanna chat.

  I'm, I'm here. So when the future you imagined dissolves, you start to look at a blank canvas, really, and wonder, " Who am I now? What does my future look like?" If the identity that you thought you would have in the future dissolves, disappears, is no longer a potential reality for you, [00:14:00] then this becomes an identity question that stirs up underneath all of your grief.

  So not only are you grieving, you're also going through a bit of an identity transformation. Identity, you're qu- you're questioning your own identity and what that future will look like. So you're not just processing what happened, although you are still processing what happened, but you're also beginning to notice these questions start to arise.

  And you're trying to figure out who you are without that future version of yourself to grow into. You have a blank canvas, and that feels very uncomfortable for our humanness. So if you're sitting in that place, here's one small practice for you. One small practice. Finish this sentence out loud, in your notes app, on a journal, whatever works for you.

  I am not just grieving X, I am also grieving the version [00:15:00] of me who was going to blank That's it It just gives you permission to grieve the loss of what you never actually had. It allows you to know that it's okay to grieve that part of you that's gone missing in that moment, on the vacation that I was on after losing my daughter, and I had to witness not just the grief of not having her, but also the profound sadness that I felt for the identity that I hoped I would have, the one of being a mom and pushing the stroller and carrying my little one, and all of those feelings and emotions that I had envisioned having that I wasn't ever gonna have, that I didn't think I was ever gonna have.

  For context, my husband and I did go through fertility stuff, um, and ended up several years [00:16:00] later having a child. Um, so I did get to experience that in my life. But in that moment, at that vacation, I was unsure as to whether or not I would get that, and I certainly wouldn't get that... I would never get that with her.

  So let's, let's just- I still got the moment of being a mom, but I would never get the moment of being her mom here on this earth. So grieving two things at once is possible. Um

  So grieving two things at once is possible, and your grief about your identity loss deserves to be witnessed and honored.

  Grieving two things at once is possible, and the loss of your identity of who you thought you would be deserves to be witnessed and honored. Because when you do, you can then take a moment to see the possibilities in front of you, that possible self. It's not just one possibility. There are many possibilities for your future.

  And when you grieve the loss of the one you thought you would have, and you sit with that and you feel that, [00:17:00] which is the work I do with women. So again, if you're interested, certainly, um, grab that link to the discovery call and let's chat.

  This is an opportunity to rewrite your future story in a way that's guided not by, you know, everyone else's expectations, but guided by your inner wisdom and by your true self 

  ​[00:18:00]