Sep 18, 2026 · 24 min · 10 segments
!https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/show/100544/370_Grieving_Non-Death_Losses.jpg Some losses come without funerals, sympathy cards, or even acknowledgment, yet they still leave us grieving what we…
Nicole LangmanGuest
Saundra Dalton-SmithHostI think sometimes it's also hard for people who maybe are grieving something that they had never actually had.
Maybe they wanted to get married and they didn't never found the one or they wanted to have children and for whatever reasons couldn't.
Or maybe they had a vision of what their future would look like, their career, their whatever, their successes, and it never happened.
Where does that fit into this picture of grieving losses? Because they never really had it.
So it's not necessarily a loss, so to speak, but it's still something I think that people grieve.
And so that hope for a dream that doesn't come to fruition, like you said, I thought I would be married by this time and I'm not, or I thought that this, I would have these children by now and I'm not, I don't.
And so those types of losses, the lost dreams are actually quite devastating for us and they can create hopelessness.
And what ends up happening when we're connected to that longing innate is we start noticing what other people have.
And I often talk about this story when I first was about eight months out of after my husband had left, my daughter and I went on just a mother-daughter trip to Mexico and I was sitting on the beach and all I could see were couples.
And so while I had lost my marriage, I'd also lost the dream for my children, for how my life would look like, what retirement would look like, an old age would look like.
I think sometimes it's also hard for people who maybe are grieving something that they had never actually had.
Maybe they wanted to get married and they didn't never found the one or they wanted to have children and for whatever reasons couldn't.
Or maybe they had a vision of what their future would look like, their career, their whatever, their successes, and it never happened.
Where does that fit into this picture of grieving losses? Because they never really had it.
So it's not necessarily a loss, so to speak, but it's still something I think that people grieve.
And so that hope for a dream that doesn't come to fruition, like you said, I thought I would be married by this time and I'm not, or I thought that this, I would have these children by now and I'm not, I don't.
And so those types of losses, the lost dreams are actually quite devastating for us and they can create hopelessness.
And what ends up happening when we're connected to that longing innate is we start noticing what other people have.
And I often talk about this story when I first was about eight months out of after my husband had left, my daughter and I went on just a mother-daughter trip to Mexico and I was sitting on the beach and all I could see were couples.
And so while I had lost my marriage, I'd also lost the dream for my children, for how my life would look like, what retirement would look like, an old age would look like.
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