Taking Inventory

The Grief We Don’t Talk About — Week 1

When James Van Der Beek died, something cracked open in me. Not just sadness, something bigger. A recognition. I realized how much grief I had been quietly harboring, for years, without ever really stopping to look at it.

I think I knew on some level that there were different types of grief, because I had felt them. The sharp kind. The hollow kind. The wave that keeps running over you when you least expect it. But I didn’t know they had names. I didn’t know they had their own shapes, their own healing paths. I just knew something heavy was there and I kept moving anyway. Typical Kristin autopilot.

What shifted for me was watching the rest of the world grieve publicly, not just James, but a dozen people we had lost in the span of a few months. Online psychologists and therapists started naming what people were feeling: parasocial grief, cumulative grief, disenfranchised grief. And I watched people in comment sections collectively exhale. Like: oh. There’s a word for this. I’m not losing my mind.

I wasn’t either. And neither are you.

• • •

So I did something I hadn’t done before. I stopped. I took inventory. Not of the obvious losses, I already knew those. But of everything else. The grief I had been carrying in corners. The losses that didn’t have funerals. The things I had never once called grief because I didn’t have permission to.

And I was floored by how much was there.

Some of it I still can’t name precisely. I just know the feeling, that hollow, weighted thing sitting somewhere between my chest and my stomach. And I think that’s okay. We don’t have to perfectly categorize everything we carry. But I do think there is something powerful about at least turning toward it. Looking at it. Saying: yes, that’s real, that counts, that happened to me.

That’s what this series is about. Not fixing grief. Just finally being willing to see it clearly.

• • •

If you, like me, have been feeling the weight of something you haven’t quite named yet, I want to offer you what helped me: a place to start. These prompts aren’t meant to be answered all at once. Sit with one. Come back to another tomorrow. Let them work slowly.

Grief doesn’t need to be rushed. It just needs to be seen.

• • •

Identify

Before we can work with grief, we have to be willing to find it. Start here.

— Make a list of your losses, and don’t limit yourself to death. Jobs. Relationships. Places. Versions of yourself. Eras of your life. What has ended that you haven’t let yourself grieve?

— Is there something you’ve been sad about that you’ve told yourself you “shouldn’t” be sad about? Write it down anyway.

— When did grief first enter your life? What was the first loss you remember feeling, even if you didn’t have the word for it then?

• • •

Name

Naming something takes away some of its power to quietly run the show. Try to get specific.

— Look at what you wrote above. Can you name the type of loss for each one? A death, a relationship, an identity, a time period, a version of yourself, something else entirely?

— Is there a loss on your list that still doesn’t have a name? Can you describe what it feels like in your body instead? Where do you carry it?

— Which loss on your list has been with you the longest? Have you ever actually grieved it, or have you just been living alongside it?

• • •

Feel

This is the part most of us skip. We identify, we analyze, and then we move on before we’ve actually let ourselves feel it. Stay here a little longer than is comfortable.

— Pick one loss from your list. Sit with it for a few minutes without trying to fix it, explain it, or put it in context. What comes up?

— What does your grief feel like physically? Sharp, hollow, heavy, a tightness, a wave? Notice where it lives in your body.

— Have you ever given yourself full permission to grieve this loss, or have you been managing it instead? What would it look like to actually let yourself feel it?

• • •

Process

Processing isn’t the same as moving on. It’s just learning to carry it differently.

— Is there a loss you’ve been carrying alone that deserves to be witnessed, spoken aloud, or acknowledged by someone else? What would it mean to let someone see that grief?

— What story have you been telling yourself about one of your losses? Is that story true, or is it one you adopted because it was easier than the real one?

— What would it feel like to say: this loss was real, it mattered, and it changed me? Can you offer yourself that acknowledgment right now, without minimizing it?

• • •

The Mica Lens

Aletheia means truth. And the truest thing I know about grief is that it doesn’t go away when we ignore it. It just goes underground and runs things from there.

Taking inventory isn’t about drowning in everything you’ve lost. It’s about finally seeing clearly what you’ve been carrying, so you can decide how you want to carry it going forward.

You are allowed to grieve all of it. Every last form it takes.

I’ll be back next week with the grief most of us feel the most ashamed of. Until then, be gentle with yourself. This is real work.

With you in all of it,

Kristin