Something didn’t happen to you. It could have been a mother’s warm embrace that never happened because she was too busy drinking. A marriage that didn’t have a “happily ever after” because it is now ending. A child that was still born instead of being vibrant and healthy. A friend that was not there for you when you needed them the most, leaving you without support.
You lost something, and your hopes and dreams about what could have been are now gone. Any one of these situations and many more are reasons to be hurt and angry. The things that didn’t happen but should have, are worth mourning. It is a loss and, like a death, it must be mourned so that you are able to move through the pain and eventually come out the other side stronger. It may be difficult to understand or accept that something should have happened, but didn’t. To dismiss those feelings like so many of us do, however, is much worse. Worse because those underlying, buried feelings are still there and now you will be acting out of hurt instead of acting out of healing. It’s a problem, yes, but what do you do?
- Journal. It is impossible to let your mind wander around these old hurts and heal yourself, so putting them out onto paper can be the best way for your mind to outline the circumstances logically, and in doing so, close the gaps in the story. This can give you the ability to truly let it go.
- Talk to someone who gets it. It should be someone who has gone through this journey before, a therapist maybe. It must be someone who knows this delicate journey, because if they haven’t gone through it themselves, it is easy to steer you back into the pain.
- Self-Care! Read our blog here to learn more about self-care. This is crucial because mourning is a very exhausting journey, and one must give back to themselves in order to remain present in their lives. It is too easy to become overwhelmed, exhausted, and just stay there. If you take care of yourself, it is much more likely that you will not quit and you will emerge on the other end. Isn’t that the point?
- Read related materials. There are a lot of books on grief and loss. Just because you didn’t experience a death (or maybe you did), doesn’t mean the process is any less painful. Reading materials can help you learn about the typical journey.
- Remember: it’s not about forgetting! Forgetting the journey you went through is not what needs to happen. It’s about learning how to cry in the middle loss, learning what you can from it, and then, when you are ready, helping others through their own mourning process.
- Pay it forward. There is a reason we go through the terrible things of life. You went through it, you were brave enough to look at it head on and call it out of the darkness, and now you can help others like you who don’t know the steps. Can you imagine a world where more people helped each other like that? I can, and it’s beautiful!
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think by commenting.
7 comments on “Mourning the Loss of What Could Have Been”
This is an old post for sure, but it helped me tonight as I'm working on mourning something that didn't happen many years ago. I appreciate this post and it definitely gave me validation that mourning is okay and necessary, even if someone didn't die.
Hey Grace,
I'm so glad you found validation for your mourning! Thank you for your comment and for taking good care of yourself.
I am mourning the loss of my father÷in-law, whom everyone who knew him loved and I wanted to get to know better, be around more. He was my last chance at a real father in my life. I know he is better off. I know now I should have expressed how much it would have meant for me to go with to see him, instead of staying home so we didn't have to pay to kennel the dogs. I always thought there would be time later, after we paid debt off. Then when he got sick it was important for his kids to be with him. But then, it was too late for me to make good memories with him. He was dying. I should have made it more of a priority. Now the memorial 8s coming up and my daughter says it is not about me. I am grieving the loss of my opportunity to be closer to him. No one gets that. They were all as close to him as they wanted to be. He is not in pain any longer and I am glad for that. I just hate the leaving part. All the wishes and could have been. I just want to be allowed to mourn without judgment that I am only an in-law and I am being selfish and greedy, making it about me. My daughter is in her mid-twenties and I know she doesn't get it yet. She thinks people should think and feel logically. She doesn't understand that some peoples brains just work differently. My husband understands me, but he doesn't grieve. He cried a little, a couple of days. Then he locked it away so he could go on with life, work, doing. He is speaking at the memorial. My daughters are seating people. I know it is silly, but there wasn't a chore given to me, or the son-in-law either. See, we aren't family, really. I guess mostly I mourn the family I never had, and the hope I had of acquiring that family when I married. It didn't happen. I have a wonderful family, two daughters and because they are each married, two sons. But they are both very much mamas boys, so I know they mostly tolerate me, I am the in-law. I just wish people would stop categorizing who is really family. What is wrong with me wanting to be on the inside of the family ring?
Hey Pam,
Thank you for sharing some of your pain! Your longing to feel cherished, like you truly belong in the family, makes a lot of sense to me. It's hard enough to lose someone you love, but it becomes especially painful when that loss automatically triggers insecurities around belonging as well. A life event that is very disorienting suddenly feels impossible to navigate when things get double layered like that. I'm so sorry to hear it!
Met a man online. I know red flags. But, I thought just talking wouldn't hurt. He professed to tell me he loved my profile etc. We got to know each other or so I thought. Never really trusted him. He dropped Love bombs. More red flags. After talking everyday for 3 weeks I thought it was nice to have someone who Cares about me. Then he asked me to get a "Steam" card for him. He laid the sad, guilt trip on me. I refused to send him money. Was he scamming me along?
Now, I grieve for what might have been.
Hey Elaine,
That must feel awful! Whether or not he was intending to scam you, your experience was still that of being scammed by him, and that feels terrible. Period. Getting dropped from "I think you really care about me" down to "seems like you never cared all along" is a really painful fall. I'm so sorry to hear that happened.