When You’re Carrying An Invisible Grief

This past weekend, my wife and I just moved to a new home for the 9th time since 2022.

You ever heard the term, “ambiguous loss”?

It describes that kind of loss that defies closure, that can be hard to explain, not only to others but even to yourself.

In the past 5 years – since that worldwide pandemic stole our idyllic Ireland wedding scheduled for April, 2020 – Silvy and I have experienced something like 20 major life upheavals that can be challenging to talk about with others. Some we don’t even try to talk about. Not because we want to hide something or feel shame, but simply because the loss can be challenging to articulate, to truly name, and a lot of people, sometimes even close friends, just don’t know how to empathize.

Whatever the loss, if there isn’t a dead body or a burned down house to point at, it’s too tempting to bypass the pain, insist on solutions, or simply dismiss the loss as not real.

For example:

– I became fully estranged from my father, yet who’s still very much alive.

– We lost the dream of a baby, one that was never even conceived.

– We bought our first home on an oak-tree lined street in Texas that we soon discovered we couldn’t build a life in, or sell (as the market imploded), and instead it became a 4-br-house-sized anchor I still carry on my back.

– When fire ravaged Los Angeles earlier this year, we lost yet another home despite not yet having one here that even could go up in flames (the fires hit as we were house-hunting, sending us fleeing back into an extended temporary living situation).

I could go on.

Do you see?

No dead bodies. No burned down house. Heck, we even still own a dope-ass house. We just can’t live in it.

We have friends who lost actual homes in the LA fires. We have friends who’ve lost actual babies to miscarriage and grown children to either disease or tragic accident.

It’s easy to ask, “what right do we have to grieve?”

A few days after moving in (i.e. earlier this week), Silvy and I both experienced a profound exhaustion. Our bodies have been holding the tension of ambiguous grief and repeated upheaval for years now. I think moving into this home, which we intend to stay in for a few years, is a signal to our nervous systems that we can finally rest.

We finally have our own refuge once again.

Although we’re still processing the impact of our journey these last few years, I have great empathy for people displaced by natural disaster, economic impoverishment, political/social instability.

I get that Silvy and I are privileged in ways so much of the world is not. It is not lost on my that even as we have been through so much, we are incredibly fortunate for the life we have.

As Silvy and I get ready to write our first book together, I am excited for the lessons of this experience to find their way into our work.

For we have gone through all this both as a couple, and as individuals, as well. We have at times experienced painfully conflicting needs and desires, as well as wildly divergent perspectives and visions for how we each are certain things should go.

Yet here we are, having recently celebrated our 10th anniversary (September 30), not just alive and kicking, but ready and eager to get back to rebuilding our lives, both as individuals and as a couple.

A wisdom I have learned is that Life unfolds in seasons.

For the past few years, we’ve been in a heavy winter season of upheaval and grief.

Surely there is more of that to come, but for now at least, our own personal winter is breaking and the promising signs of a beautiful spring are beginning to shoot out through the melting frost.

♦◊♦

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