When we hear the word grief, our minds often turn immediately to funerals, condolences, black clothes, and tears shed at the edge of a grave. We associate grief almost exclusively with death. But grief is far more fluid, far more subtle, and far more common than that. It slips into our lives in countless ways—when a relationship ends, when a dream slips through our fingers, when a version of ourselves we once cherished quietly fades away.
Grief, I’ve come to realize, is a shapeshifter. It doesn’t only arrive when someone dies. It walks beside us when chapters close, when possibilities vanish, when identities dissolve. It haunts the hallways of our lives not as a singular event, but as a series of small, private funerals no one else attends.
The Unnamed Griefs
We don’t always call them griefs. Sometimes we label them “disappointment,” “regret,” or “moving on.” But the body knows the truth. It feels the hollow ache of something that once was and is no longer.
The end of a friendship that was once your anchor. The loss of a job that defined your sense of purpose. The child you imagined having but never did. The dream you worked toward for years only to discover it was out of reach. These losses rarely come with rituals of mourning. There is no obituary for a broken engagement, no condolence cards when a college acceptance letter doesn’t arrive, no official acknowledgement when the person you thought you’d be at 30 simply isn’t who you became.
And yet, they leave us with the same raw edges, the same longing for what is gone. They deserve to be named for what they are: grief.
The Grief of Ended Relationships
The grief of a breakup, whether romantic or platonic, is particularly sharp. Someone who once knew the contours of your daily life—the way you take your coffee, the sound you make when you’re about to laugh—is suddenly absent. Their absence echoes, not just in your routines, but in your very sense of self.
We don’t often give this grief the gravity it deserves. Society tells us to “move on,” to download a new app, to “find better friends.” But grieving a relationship is about more than losing a person; it’s about losing the world that existed between the two of you. Inside jokes, shared rituals, the ease of a familiar presence—all of it vanishes, leaving a strange silence in its place.
The Grief of Lost Selves
There are also the selves we’ve outgrown. Versions of us that lived vividly once and are now gone. The fearless teenager, the ambitious twenty-something, the hopeful dreamer who thought certain doors would always be open.
Sometimes, late at night, I grieve the self who believed life would unfold a certain way. I miss her certainty, even though I no longer share it. Growing older means carrying funerals within us—the mourning of possibilities that once felt inevitable.
We rarely acknowledge this, but it’s real: the grief of watching ourselves change, of letting go of identities that no longer fit, of realizing we can’t go back.
The Grief of Unlived Futures
Not all grief is backward-looking. Some of it gazes forward, mourning futures that will never arrive. The career you almost had, the city you almost moved to, the love you almost chose. Every fork in the road creates a ghost of the path not taken.
Sometimes those ghosts linger, hovering around us in quiet moments. They are not regrets exactly, but reminders of how many lives we might have lived. There is grief in acknowledging that we can only live one, and that countless others must remain unlived.
The Quiet Griefs
The hardest griefs to carry are the quiet ones—the ones that cannot be spoken aloud without awkwardness. Who wants to admit they’re grieving the end of a hobby that once defined them? Who wants to confess they still ache for the confidence they had in their twenties, or for the chance they didn’t take in graduate school?
But grief doesn’t measure itself against what the world finds valid. It arises wherever love or longing has attached itself. It attaches to friendships, to dreams, to versions of self. And when those attachments break, grief follows, silent but insistent.
Making Peace with the Shapeshifter
So how do we live with grief in all its disguises? How do we make peace with the shapeshifter?
The first step is naming it. To say, Yes, this is grief. Not just sadness, not just frustration, but grief. Naming gives dignity to the experience. It reminds us that the ache we feel is valid, that our mourning has weight, even if no one else can see it.
The second step is gentleness. We cannot rush grief out the door, no matter its form. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one or the loss of a dream, grief demands patience. It needs space to breathe, to move through us at its own pace. Allowing ourselves to sit with it—not just once, but as often as it returns—is an act of compassion.
The third step is choosing what to carry forward. Every grief reshapes us, but not all of it must remain heavy. With time, some griefs soften into memory, becoming part of our story without overwhelming it. Others may never fully fade, but they teach us to live alongside them.
Grief as Teacher
There is a strange alchemy in grief. It strips away illusions, leaving behind what is essential. Grieving a lost dream can clarify what truly matters. Grieving an ended relationship can reveal how deeply we are capable of loving. Grieving a former self can teach us tenderness toward the person we are becoming.
In this way, grief is not only a thief; it is also a teacher. It reminds us of our own capacity for attachment, for imagination, for hope. It shows us that to live fully is to risk losing often—and that loss, paradoxically, is proof of life’s richness.
The Rituals We Need
Because non-death grief often goes unacknowledged, it helps to create our own rituals. Light a candle for the friendship that ended. Write a letter to the self you once were. Cook the meal you used to share with the partner you loved. Build small ceremonies of closure, not because they erase the pain, but because they honour it.
Rituals give grief a container, a way to be expressed instead of hidden. They say: This mattered. This was real. This deserves to be marked.
Conclusion: Living with the Shapeshifter
Grief will visit us many times in life and not always dressed in mourning clothes. Sometimes it comes wearing the mask of lost futures, sometimes as faded dreams, sometimes as selves we’ll never be again. It is a shapeshifter, and it will continue to slip into our lives in forms we may not immediately recognize.
But recognizing it is the first act of healing. Naming our griefs—big and small, loud and quiet—allows us to carry them with more grace. We may never banish them entirely, but we can walk with them gently, allowing them to shape us without defining us.
Grief is not just about death. It is about life—all the ways it changes, all the doors it closes, all the selves it asks us to leave behind. And in acknowledging this, we give ourselves permission to mourn fully, to honour what is gone, and to make peace with what remains.