When most people hear the word grief, they think about death.
A person dies.
Someone you love is gone.
There is a funeral, people offer condolences, and eventually there can be an expectation that you should begin moving forward.
But grief is much bigger than death.
You can grieve a pregnancy that never happened.
A baby you never got to bring home.
A pet who was part of your family.
A marriage that ended.
A career you built your identity around.
Your health.
Your independence.
Your ability to do things you once took for granted.
A version of yourself you no longer recognize.
A relationship that changed even though the person is still alive.
A family you thought you would have.
A future that suddenly looks different.
Sometimes you know exactly what you’ve lost.
Sometimes you can’t even put the loss into words.
And sometimes the hardest part is that other people don’t recognize it as a loss at all.
You may be told:
“At least you have other children.”
“You can always try again.”
“It was probably for the best.”
“You’re better off without them.”
“It’s just a pet.”
“You can get another job.”
“At least you’re healthy otherwise.”
“You need to move on.”
These statements may be intended to help.
But they can leave you feeling even more alone.
Because knowing that something could have been worse doesn’t make your loss less real.
Grief isn’t limited to losing someone.
Grief can arise whenever something meaningful changes, ends, disappears, or becomes impossible to have.
Grief is the response to loss.
It can involve sadness, but grief is not simply sadness.
Grief can include:
You may move between these experiences quickly.
You may feel okay one day and devastated the next.
You may feel grief and relief at the same time.
You may miss something while also knowing that you wouldn’t want to return to the life you had.
Grief is not always logical.
And it doesn’t always follow a predictable timeline.
There is no universal number of stages you have to move through before you’re “done” grieving.
Sometimes grief becomes less about learning to live without something and more about learning how to live with what happened.
Before continuing, consider:
Death is one of the most recognizable forms of grief, but even grief after death isn’t as straightforward as people sometimes assume.
You may grieve a parent, partner, child, sibling, friend, grandparent, colleague, or another person who mattered deeply to you.
You may also grieve someone with whom you had a complicated relationship.
A death can bring relief and grief.
Love and anger.
Connection and regret.
You may grieve the person who died while also grieving everything that will never happen with them.
You may think about:
Sometimes the loss changes your identity.
You are no longer someone’s daughter in the same way.
No longer someone’s husband.
No longer a parent to the child you imagined growing old with.
No longer the friend who could call that person whenever you needed them.
Death can change not only who is missing from your life, but who you understand yourself to be.
For many people, losing a pet is losing a member of the family.
Pets can be companions, attachment figures, sources of comfort, and part of the structure of everyday life.
They may be there when you wake up.
They greet you when you come home.
They sit beside you when you’re having a difficult day.
They may have been present through relationships, moves, pregnancies, illnesses, career changes, children growing up, and other major chapters of your life.
They are a consistent source of unconditional love and may be your most secure or safe relationship.
They don’t care if you’re tired. Cranky. Depressed. They are just grateful for your presence.
Their absence can therefore be enormous.
You may not only miss your pet.
You may miss:
Pet loss can also involve difficult decisions.
You may be grieving while simultaneously questioning whether you made the right choice.
If euthanasia was involved, you may experience guilt, second-guessing, or thoughts like:
“Did I do it too soon?”
“Could I have done more?”
“Did I let them down?”
Making the decision to end suffering can be an act of love while still being an incredibly painful experience.
And pet grief can be disenfranchised grief—grief that isn’t always fully recognized or supported by society.
People may expect you to return to normal quickly because “it was just a pet.”
But you know it wasn’t.
It was a relationship.
It was a daily presence.
It was part of your life.
Pregnancy loss can be a particularly complicated form of grief.
You may be grieving a pregnancy, a baby, a future, a hoped-for family, or an identity you had already begun to inhabit.
You may have imagined:
When a pregnancy ends, the loss can involve all of those imagined futures.
And yet people may not know what to say.
You may hear:
“You can try again.”
“At least it happened early.”
“You’ll have another baby.”
But another pregnancy cannot replace the pregnancy you lost.
And another child cannot erase the relationship you imagined with the child who died.
You may also experience complicated emotions if you become pregnant again.
Joy and fear can coexist.
Hope and grief can coexist.
You may find yourself grieving a previous pregnancy while trying to protect yourself from becoming attached to another.
Pregnancy after loss can be its own complicated grief experience.
There is no requirement to feel grateful enough, hopeful enough, or positive enough.
Your grief deserves space.
Infertility can involve a form of grief that is difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced it.
You may be grieving something that has never existed in the physical world.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real to you.
You may have imagined:
How many children you would have.
When you would become a parent.
What pregnancy would be like.
What your family would look like.
Who your children would become.
What your life would feel like.
With infertility, grief can become repetitive.
Another negative test.
Another treatment.
Another appointment.
Another failed cycle.
Another pregnancy announcement.
Another birthday.
Another reminder that time is passing.
You may find yourself grieving not just a baby, but the future you thought was waiting for you.
Infertility can also affect identity, relationships, sexuality, finances, friendships, and your relationship with your own body.
And because the loss may not be visible to others, you may feel pressure to carry it quietly.
Divorce is a loss even when ending the relationship was the right decision.
You may grieve the person.
You may grieve the relationship you hoped it would become.
You may grieve the family structure you expected.
You may grieve your home.
Your routines.
Your social life.
Your financial security.
Your role within the family.
The future you planned together.
You may even grieve while feeling relieved.
That’s possible.
Grief does not mean you made the wrong decision.
You can know that a relationship needed to end and still mourn what you lost.
Divorce can also be particularly complicated when children are involved.
You may still see your former partner.
You may need to communicate regularly.
You may attend the same events.
You may share parenting responsibilities.
The relationship has ended, but the person hasn’t disappeared.
This is one reason divorce can involve ambiguous loss.
Something has ended, but it hasn’t completely gone away.
Sometimes what you’re grieving is yourself.
Perhaps you became a parent (link to life transitions page) and no longer recognize the person you were before.
Perhaps you came out, changed your understanding of your gender or sexuality (link to 2SLGBTQIA+ page), or began living more authentically and had to let go of an identity that once organized your life.
Perhaps you left a religion, community, culture, or social environment that once gave you a strong sense of belonging.
Perhaps you’ve changed in ways that other people don’t understand.
Identity change can involve both liberation and grief.
You may be becoming more yourself while simultaneously mourning who you used to be.
You may miss parts of an earlier version of yourself even though you don’t want to return to that life.
You may grieve relationships that changed when you changed.
You may grieve the sense of certainty you once had.
You may grieve the future you thought you were going to have.
This doesn’t mean the change was wrong.
It means change can involve loss even when the change is ultimately healthy.
Chronic illness (link to chronic illness page) can create grief that doesn’t have a clear ending.
You may be grieving your health.
Your energy.
Your independence.
Your ability to work.
Your physical abilities.
Your spontaneity.
Your previous routines.
Your relationship with your body.
Your sense of certainty about the future.
You may find yourself thinking:
“I used to be able to do this.”
“Why can’t I just do what everyone else does?”
“What will my life look like now?”
Chronic illness can also create a particularly complicated form of grief because the loss may be ongoing.
There may be good days and bad days.
Periods of improvement and setbacks.
Other people may not understand why you cannot simply “push through.”
You may even grieve the version of yourself who could make plans without having to calculate your energy, symptoms, accessibility needs, or recovery time.
And because your illness may not be visible, you may also experience the loneliness of having to repeatedly explain what you’re experiencing.
Work is about more than income.
For many people, careers provide:
Losing a job can therefore involve much more than financial stress.
You may have been laid off.
You may have been forced to leave because of illness or burnout.
You may have retired earlier than expected.
You may have changed careers.
You may have lost a business.
You may have experienced an injury or illness that prevents you from doing the work you once did.
You may have achieved the career you worked toward for years only to discover that you no longer want it.
Any of these experiences can involve grief.
Sometimes you’re not just grieving the job.
You’re grieving the person you were when you had that job.
One of the most difficult forms of grief is ambiguous loss.
Ambiguous loss occurs when something meaningful has been lost but there isn’t a clear ending or resolution.
The person may still be physically present but psychologically or relationally different.
Or something may be psychologically present but physically absent.
This can happen in many circumstances:
Ambiguous loss can be particularly painful because there may be no clear moment when the grieving is supposed to begin.
There may be no funeral.
No ceremony.
No card.
No socially recognized milestone.
Other people may not understand why you’re grieving.
You may not even understand it yourself.
You simply know that something is missing.
Grief can be especially difficult when the loss is invisible.
People tend to know what to do when someone dies.
They send flowers.
They attend a funeral.
They bring food.
They check in.
But what happens when you’re grieving:
There may be no obvious ritual.
No socially recognized ending.
You may also feel like you don’t have permission to grieve.
You might think:
“Other people have it worse.”
“I should be over this by now.”
“At least nobody died.”
“I chose this.”
“I should be grateful.”
“People don’t understand why this is affecting me so much.”
These thoughts can make grief even more isolating.
You don’t need to prove that your loss was significant enough to deserve grief.
If something mattered to you, losing it can matter.
Sometimes grief looks like anger.
Sometimes it looks like anxiety.
Sometimes it looks like numbness.
Sometimes it looks like being extremely busy.
You may find yourself throwing yourself into work.
Taking care of everyone else.
Avoiding conversations.
Trying to “stay positive.”
Exercising constantly.
Drinking more.
Scrolling more.
Sleeping all the time.
Or refusing to think about what happened.
These responses don’t necessarily mean you aren’t grieving.
They may be ways of surviving grief.
You might also experience physical effects:
Grief affects the whole person.
It isn’t simply an emotion you need to think your way out of.
You may expect grief to gradually get easier.
Sometimes it does.
But grief is often more like waves than a straight line.
You may feel okay for several days and then suddenly become overwhelmed by a song, smell, date, photograph, conversation, memory, or seemingly out of nowhere.
A holiday may bring grief back.
A birthday.
A pregnancy announcement.
A child’s milestone.
An old workplace.
A familiar place.
A change in your health.
A new relationship.
A promotion you would once have celebrated with someone.
These moments can remind you of what has changed.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “back at the beginning.”
It means you encountered another reminder of the loss.
Grief can change over time without disappearing completely.
The goal isn’t necessarily to forget.
It’s to develop a life in which the loss has a place without having to occupy every place.
Grief can be painful without being unhealthy.
Grief is a normal part of the human experience, not a mental illness.
There is no single timeline that determines whether you’re grieving “correctly.”
However, you may want additional support if grief is making it very difficult to function or if you feel increasingly stuck, isolated, hopeless, or disconnected.
You might notice:
You don’t need to wait until grief becomes a crisis before seeking support.
Therapy can also be appropriate simply because you don’t want to carry it alone.
Grief therapy (link to grief page) isn’t about getting you to “move on.”
It isn’t about convincing you to look on the bright side.
And it isn’t about forgetting what you’ve lost.
Therapy can provide a place to understand what the loss means to you and how it has changed your life.
Depending on your experience, therapy may involve:
There is no requirement to “let go” of someone or something you still love.
Sometimes healing involves finding a different relationship with the loss.
One of the most important things to understand about grief is that there is no hierarchy of loss.
Your grief doesn’t become less legitimate because someone else experienced something worse.
You don’t have to compare your pain.
You don’t have to justify it.
You don’t have to wait until someone else recognizes what you’ve lost.
And you don’t have to pretend you’re okay because the loss was expected, chosen, invisible, or difficult to explain.
You can grieve a relationship you chose to leave.
You can grieve a pregnancy that ended before you met your baby.
You can grieve a child you never got to have.
You can grieve your pet.
You can grieve your health.
You can grieve your career.
You can grieve a version of yourself.
You can grieve a future that will never happen.
Grief is often the price we pay for caring deeply about something.
If I stopped asking whether I have a “right” to grieve and simply acknowledged that this mattered to me, what would I want to say about my loss?
You don’t need to wait until you are completely overwhelmed.
Therapy may be helpful if:
You don’t have to know whether what you’re experiencing “counts” as grief.
You can start by saying:
“Something has changed, and I’m having a harder time with it than I expected.”
That’s enough.
You don’t need to arrive at therapy knowing exactly what kind of grief you’re experiencing.
You might simply say:
“Someone died, and I’m struggling.”
“I lost my pregnancy and I don’t know how to process it.”
“I’ve been dealing with infertility and I’m exhausted.”
“My marriage ended, and I thought I’d be okay.”
“My health has changed and I don’t recognize my life anymore.”
“I lost my job and I feel like I lost myself.”
“I lost my pet and people don’t understand why I’m still devastated.”
“Something changed in my relationship, but I can’t explain why it feels like a loss.”
“I know I need to move forward, but I don’t know how.”
You don’t need to have the words figured out before you begin.
Finding the words can be part of the work.
At Monarch Psychology, we understand that grief isn’t limited to death.
We work with people experiencing grief related to death, pet loss, miscarriage and pregnancy loss, infertility, divorce, chronic illness, career loss, identity changes, relationship changes, and other forms of ambiguous loss.
Sometimes the loss is obvious.
Sometimes it is complicated.
Sometimes the person or thing you’re grieving is still technically present, which can make the experience even harder to understand.
Our work isn’t about telling you how quickly you should move on.
It’s about creating space to understand what happened, what it means to you, and how you want to move forward while still honouring what mattered.
You don’t have to minimize your experience because someone else doesn’t understand it.
You don’t have to turn your grief into a lesson.
And you don’t have to figure out how to live with it alone.
Whether you’re grieving someone who died, a pregnancy that ended, a pet, a relationship, your health, a career, an identity, or a future you thought you would have, your experience deserves space.
You can bring the grief exactly as it is.
If you’re unsure who to work with, you can book a Therapist Matching Consultation, where our director speaks with you directly. We’ll talk about what you’re looking for and help match you with the therapist best suited to your needs and preferences.
Yes. Grief can occur after many types of losses, including divorce, infertility, miscarriage, pet loss, chronic illness, career changes, identity changes, estrangement, relationship changes, and the loss of an imagined future.
Death is one form of loss, but it is not the only one.
Absolutely. Pets can be deeply significant attachment figures and members of our families. Losing a pet can involve grief related to companionship, daily routines, emotional support, identity, and the relationship itself.
Pet loss can also be difficult when other people minimize the loss or expect you to recover quickly.
Ambiguous loss describes situations where something meaningful has been lost but there is no clear ending or resolution.
For example, you may still have contact with someone after a relationship has fundamentally changed, or you may be grieving a future that you once expected but can no longer have.
Because there may be no obvious ending, ambiguous loss can be particularly difficult to process.
Yes. Infertility can involve grief related to pregnancy, parenthood, family plans, identity, time, relationships, and the future you imagined.
Even when the loss is not visible to others, it can be deeply significant.
Absolutely. Miscarriage and pregnancy loss can involve profound grief and may also bring anxiety, guilt, anger, fear, or complicated feelings about future pregnancies.
Therapy can provide space to process the loss without minimizing what happened.
Knowing that a relationship needed to end does not eliminate grief.
You may still be grieving the person, the relationship, your family structure, your home, your routines, or the future you imagined.
Relief and grief can exist at the same time.
Yes. Chronic illness can involve grief for health, independence, abilities, routines, work, relationships, and expectations about the future.
Because chronic illness may be ongoing rather than a single event, the grief can also be ongoing and change over time.
Work often provides more than income. It can contribute to identity, purpose, community, confidence, routine, and belonging.
Losing a career can therefore involve significant grief, particularly when your work was an important part of how you understood yourself.
There is no universal timeline for grief.
Grief can change over time, but important dates, reminders, anniversaries, transitions, and new experiences can bring feelings of grief back.
Healing does not necessarily mean forgetting or reaching a point where you never feel sadness again.
Yes. Relief can coexist with grief, love, sadness, anger, or guilt.
For example, someone may feel relief after a prolonged illness ends or after leaving a difficult relationship while still deeply grieving what was lost.
Having a feeling doesn’t automatically mean you wanted the loss to happen.
Your experience doesn’t need to meet someone else’s definition of loss for it to matter.
Some forms of grief are socially recognized, while others are minimized or invisible.
If something meaningful changed or ended for you, it is reasonable to need space to process that experience.
Not necessarily.
Grief is a natural human response to loss, and many people move through grief with support from family, friends, community, cultural practices, or other resources.
Therapy is one option when you want additional support, feel stuck, are struggling to function, or simply don’t want to carry the experience alone.
Maybe the goal isn’t to move on.
Maybe it’s to move forward while carrying what mattered with you.
To remember without being consumed.
To acknowledge what was lost without losing everything that remains.
To make room for grief alongside love, meaning, connection, and hope.
Some losses change the shape of your life permanently.
That doesn’t mean your life cannot still hold meaning.
You don’t have to stop caring in order to heal.
You don’t have to forget in order to move forward.
And you don’t have to make your grief smaller to make other people more comfortable.
You can grieve what was lost and still build a life that comes next.
