The Grief We Never Knew We Carried

There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after.

For me, one of those moments came during COVID.

My mother died in Italy while I was living in Australia.

Because of the lockdowns, I couldn’t get on a plane. I couldn’t be with my family. I couldn’t hold her hand one last time. I couldn’t stand beside her coffin. I couldn’t attend her funeral.

I couldn’t say goodbye.

Like so many others around the world, I found myself grieving in isolation.

For a long time, I simply assumed this was what grief felt like.

Heavy. Disorienting.

As though I had somehow lost part of myself.

And in many ways, I had.

But looking back now, I realise I wasn’t only grieving my mother.

I was grieving the goodbye I never had.

The embrace I couldn’t give.

The funeral I couldn’t attend.

The rituals that help us slowly accept that someone we love is really gone.

At the time, I couldn’t have explained any of that.

I only knew something inside me had changed.

Months later, while trying to make sense of it all, I came across an idea that stopped me.

I had always believed grief belonged to death.

You lose someone you love. You grieve.

Simple.

Except it isn’t.

What if grief is much bigger than that?

What if grief is the natural response to losing anything that mattered deeply?

A friendship, a marriage, trust, and health.

A dream. A childhood you never really had.

The future you imagined.

The person you thought you were going to become.

That thought has never left me.

Because I wonder how many people are carrying grief without ever recognising it for what it is.

Instead, they simply notice the symptoms.

“I don’t know why I’m always angry.”

“Something feels off.”

“I can’t seem to trust anyone anymore.”

“I’ve never really been the same.”

“I don’t even know who I am now.”

We spend so much time trying to change our behaviour that we rarely stop to ask what loss that behaviour might be protecting us from.

We are not our behaviour.

Behaviour is often the visible expression of something invisible.

We notice what people do, but we rarely stop to ask what happened before they did it.

Sometimes that invisible reality is fear.

Sometimes shame.

Sometimes exhaustion.

And sometimes…

It’s grief.

Not because someone died.

But because something precious disappeared from our lives, and we never allowed ourselves to mourn it.

Over time, we begin mistaking our protective patterns for our personality.

We start believing,

“This is just who I am.”

When perhaps it is simply who we’ve become while living with a grief we never recognised.

I sometimes wonder whether many of us spend years trying to fix what actually needs to be grieved.

We read another book, change jobs, end another relationship, and stay busier.

Work harder and distract ourselves.

We blame ourselves, or we blame others.

Yet all the while, a quiet part of us is still standing beside something we lost years ago.

Waiting.

Not for an explanation.

Just to be acknowledged.

I don’t believe grief is something to overcome.

I think it’s something to walk through.

Not because grief has all the answers.

But because refusing to grieve often means refusing to love what was lost.

Perhaps grieving isn’t about letting go of what mattered.

Perhaps it’s about finally telling the truth about what mattered.

And perhaps that is why grief hurts so deeply.

Not because it is a sign of weakness.

But because it is evidence that something beautiful was loved.

Perhaps there is something in your life that doesn’t need fixing first.

Perhaps it needs grieving.

Not because grief will erase the loss.

But because bringing truth into the light is itself the beginning of hope

What have you lost that has been quietly shaping your life?