An effect of trauma

Ambiguous loss

Grieving someone or something without the loss ever fully resolving. The person may be missing, incarcerated, addicted, estranged, or given up, physically gone but the situation still open, or physically present but no longer really there. Either way there is no funeral, no confirmed ending, and no point where grief is allowed to run its normal course.

Most grief has an event to organize around, and this kind does not. The person might come back. You might find out what happened. Nobody agrees whether it is over. People who have not lived it tend to ask why you have not moved on yet, without understanding there was never a clear point to move on from. This is not you failing to grieve correctly. It is grief doing the only thing it can do when the loss itself will not hold still.

It can sound like

“I do not know if this is finished or if it is still happening.” “I cannot grieve something that has not been confirmed as over.” “I keep waiting for news that never comes.” “Other people expect me to have moved on from something that never actually ended.”

If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.

Experiences this often follows

Effects do not come from nowhere. These are some of the experiences that people who carry this one often describe. You do not need to have been through any of them for what you feel to be real.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

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