Grieving the Life You Thought You’d Have: Ambiguous Grief
When most of us hear the word grief, we automatically think of death. The loss of a loved one is one of life’s most shattering experiences, and Western culture is wired to respond. From funerals and condolence cards to food delivered to your door, our society has specific rituals for mourning a death.
But grief has many faces and can live quietly in the background of our lives, emerging as spontaneous tears on a long drive home, a heaviness in the chest that doesn’t quite make sense, or an aching “what if” that uncomfortably returns at three in the morning.
This is ambiguous grief — a form of mourning that doesn’t come from the death of a person, but from the loss of something we imagined, expected, or deeply hoped for.
What is Ambiguous Grief?
The psychologist Pauline Boss, who first coined the term ambiguous loss, explains it as:
“Ambiguous loss is the most stressful kind of loss. It defies resolution and creates long-lasting confusion about who is in or out of a particular family or relationship.”
Ambiguous grief doesn’t only apply to missing persons or loved ones physically present, but psychologically absent (such as dementia). It also extends to the losses that are invisible to the outside world:
The identity you once carried and no longer do.
The marriage that ended or the one that never came.
The child you longed for but couldn’t have.
The career you worked toward that never quite unfolded.
The friendships or family ties that quietly dissolved.
Unlike bereavement, ambiguous grief often goes unrecognised. There’s no ritual, no social script, no shared roadmap. And because of this invisibility, it feels profoundly isolating.
Examples of Ambiguous Grief in Everyday Life
Ambiguous grief takes many forms. If you are in midlife, you may recognise yourself in some of these:
Loss of identity: Retirement, illness, divorce, or menopause can leave you wondering who you are now without the roles that once defined you. Menopause, in particular, is often a time of great upheaval that affects not just women but their partners as well.
Loss of fertility or parenthood: Rarely acknowledged, infertility is a profound loss that affects 17.5% of the global population. We celebrate our friends and family as their children arrive in the world, while a little piece of us dies inside.
Career dreams deferred: Many of us were taught to play by the rules and get a "good" job. Unfortunately, those often turned out to be careers that provided a good paycheck but didn't feed our souls and left us wanting more. Proof? A 2020 UK survey by Aviva found that 60% of workers felt they were in the “wrong job,” experiencing deep regret and grief over careers that never unfolded.
Relationship endings: Divorce, once spoken in hushed tones, is now so common that rates in the EU, UK and USA hover at nearly 50%. However, the grief surrounding it often remains private. Separation and divorce can also leave a lasting loss of financial security and ruminating thoughts of “what if?”
Empty nest: Every fall, as kids leave home and head off to university or jobs, social media explodes with parents posting their grief of being "empty nesters", which, depending on the parent-child attachment, is sometimes comparable to bereavement.
Each of these losses can shake the foundations of how we see ourselves and our place in the world.
Why It Hurts So Much
What makes ambiguous grief so difficult is not just the loss itself, but the lack of acknowledgement. Researchers refer to this as disenfranchised grief — grief that isn’t socially validated.
As grief expert Dr Kenneth Doka explains: “Disenfranchised grief is grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned.”
Yet the nervous system doesn’t distinguish between death and non-death losses. Neuroscience research shows that the same brain circuits that process attachment pain during bereavement are activated when we lose essential roles, relationships, or imagined futures.
Disenfranchised grief can be particularly profound in midlife as adults in their 40s and 50s often report grief for “lost possible selves” — futures that no longer feel attainable — which can trigger sadness, regret, and identity crises.
How Therapy Can Help
The good news is that all types of grief can be processed and worked through. Therapy offers a compassionate space to explore these hidden losses, name them for what they are, and begin the gradual process of integration.
At The Place Retreats Bali, clients often arrive carrying silent griefs — griefs they’ve never felt permitted to voice. In therapy, naming these losses is often the first step of healing. We help clients process their grief through various approaches, such as:
Integrative Therapy, where we listen to the stories of your body, intellect, and wisdom, and help recount and reframe the story of what was lost and what remains.
Trauma therapies (like EMDR) which involve releasing unresolved emotional pain that lingers from ambiguous loss.
Mindfulness and somatic practices where clients learn to sit with what is real in the present moment, rather than endlessly replaying what might have been.
Above all, therapy provides validation. It reminds you that grief over a life imagined is as real as grief over a life ended.
Creating Rituals for “Hidden” Griefs
One of the challenges of ambiguous grief is that society doesn’t offer rituals. There’s no funeral for the career that never unfolded, no memorial for the child you couldn’t have, no ceremony for the relationship or marriage that ended.
But symbolic rituals can be created to honour loss. Perhaps that means writing a letter to the version of life you once imagined and then burning it in a ritual fire. Maybe it looks like marking this transition with friends, support groups, or therapists.
As Dr Kenneth Doka discusses in Rituals in Grief and Mourning: Meaning Making and the Therapeutic Process, “Rituals give us a way to symbolically acknowledge a loss and begin the process of integration, even when the world does not recognise that loss.”
These acts don’t erase pain, but they create a safe space for it and offer recognition where none exists.
Learning to Let Go
Ambiguous grief rarely has closure. As Pauline Boss reminds us, “Ambiguous loss has no ending. The challenge is not to find closure, but to learn how to live with it.”
If you find yourself grieving the life you thought you’d have, know that your grief is real, but this doesn’t mean staying stuck in sorrow. It means learning to live in the present moment as we let go of our attachment to an imagined future or past.
When we accept that every moment in our life is part of a path that we have to move through in order to grow, it creates space for life to unfold with new meaning, growth, and harmony.
Above all, the greatest peace is found by naming the grief, accepting it as part of our life experience and letting it go.
How The Place Retreats Bali Can Help
Ambiguous grief can be heavy, but you don't have to do this alone. At The Place Retreats Bali, an award-winning, luxury intensive residential psychotherapeutic centre, we can help you process that grief—and teach you how to let it go.
At The Place Retreats, our team designs tailor-made retreats focused on mind, body, and spiritual healing in a safe, supportive environment. All of our work is confidential, affirmative, and nonjudgmental, welcoming of all races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, political beliefs, and nationalities.
Every retreat includes:
Three individual, specialised therapist sessions per week
A weekly session with our in-house psychiatrist
Daily Yoga and Meditation Classes
Two Healing Therapy Sessions per week, such as Japanese Acupuncture or Medical Qigong
Three Balinese/Thai or Esalen Massages per week
And many more experiences while you heal in blissful Bali!
The Place Retreats Bali is a truly unique place to heal your grief and rediscover yourself. If you'd like more information on how a grief retreat can help you, contact us to schedule a free 15-minute consultation with a member of our team.
