Grieving the Loss of the Life You Expected

When you lose a loved one, you grieve. You have a funeral to honor their memory and to provide some kind of support to those who remain, to share the sorrow of the loss. When you lose your job or your home or your marriage, you are pretty much left to deal with that on your own. We don’t have culturally-sanctioned ways to acknowledge those losses, those huge changes in your life and impact on your present and your future. Eventually, you may determine that this loss was not the worst thing to happen — that you then found a better job, or built a different home, or married a better partner. But some losses are just really painful.

When someone loses a child, that is one of the hardest things in life to grieve. “Parents are not supposed to outlive their children.” “I would give anything if it could have been me in that accident, not my child.” But what if the thing you have lost is your imagined life, the future you expected but now you need to re-define: the child who would grow up to do this or that, or who would have the kind of life you wanted to provide, or even would be able to sit at the table and have a meal with you? What if the loss is your own imagined future: the career you thought you’d have, the relationship you wanted, the love of your own children that you expected?

What if you have that kind of loss?

Somehow, you are supposed to buck up, to just deal with the reality of the situation (once you actually realize what it is). You are supposed to love your children, no matter what they say or do, even if they can’t stand to be in the same room as you. You are supposed to love your husband, even if he chews or breathes in a way that drives you crazy. You are supposed to love your job (and be grateful that you are working), even if your work environment is unbelievably tense because of the clicking and crunching going on around you.

Do you ever get to grieve the loss of the future you dreamed and imagined was yours? Do you even have the right to say something about that loss?

When my client and I had this discussion recently, there were lots of tears. There is sorrow in accepting what IS, when you really can’t (at least at the moment) make it go away, make the clock turn back to better times. There is a concept in DBT called “Radical Acceptance.” It has to do with the dichotomy of totally accepting what is, while concurrently continuing to try to make changes to improve the situation. In my experience as both a therapist and as a human being, I find that it is easier to take steps forward, to make whatever changes are possible, when we start where we are, where we REALLY are – which may be that we start by grieving the loss of the imagined life that we currently do not have. It’s the tagline of my practice, Lemon-Aid Counseling: Living the Life You Have, Even if it is Not the Life You Wanted.