Grieving People Who Are Still Here
By Temple Franklin — Mind Body Spirit Hygiene Tools
There is a grief no one prepares you for — the grief of missing someone who is still alive. They are out there in the world. Breathing the same air. Maybe only a few hours away. And still, the distance between you can feel as wide as death — without any of the permission death gives you to mourn. I know this grief. I have sent love into a silence and waited, and waited, for something to come back. I have marked the days that were meant to be shared. I have held my phone like it might change its mind.
There is a name for this
There is a name for this, dear one: ambiguous loss. It is the grief of a goodbye that never happened. No service. No casserole. No clear ending — only an ache that has nowhere to land, because the person is gone from your life but not gone from the earth. And it is uniquely cruel, because it asks you to hold two things at once that do not want to be held together: grief and hope. You mourn what is missing AND you keep a candle burning for what still might be. Most grief eventually lets you set it down. This one keeps the door cracked open, and the draft of it touches you every single day.
The pull to harden
For a long time, the not-knowing nearly hardened me. I could feel the pull to slam the door, to call it finished, to let the hurt curdle into something cold — because cold, at least, doesn't ache. But I have learned, slowly, that I get to grieve without going bitter. I can keep my heart open without leaving it unprotected. I can love someone, allow them their distance, and still refuse to abandon myself in the waiting.
What I do now
So here is what I do. I let myself feel the missing — all of it. I am allowed to be sad. I am allowed to long. AND I GET TO keep being the kind of woman who leaves the porch light on — not as a demand, but as a quiet truth: my love is still here, with no conditions and no deadline. I keep my own spirit tended. I lean on my Divine Team when my arms get tired of holding the hope. And I let the door stay open — not because I am owed anything through it, but because love that only stays when it is returned was never the love I wanted to give.
If you are grieving someone who is still here
If you are grieving someone who is still here — a child, a parent, a friend, someone you can picture so clearly it hurts — hear this: your grief is real, even without a funeral to make it official. You are allowed to miss them. You are allowed to hope. And you are allowed to live a full, breathing life in the meantime. Keep your own light tended, Lovely. Leave the porch light on if you choose to — then go warm yourself by your own fire. Welcome home. With love — Temple.
If you are carrying a loss like this, my book was written for you — real tools for women in the messy middle, learning to grieve with an open heart and still come home to themselves. Real tools. Real women. In the messy middle. This is post #3 in Temple's Journey. The series began with The Only One Rowing (the marriage chapter) and continued with The Losses No One Brings a Casserole For (disenfranchised grief).
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Coming Home to Myself
I caught my reflection one ordinary afternoon and did not recognize the woman looking back. A tender read on the slow loss of self — and the small, almost silly steps that brought her home.
The Losses No One Brings a Casserole For
Disenfranchised grief — the losses the world doesn't recognize. A marriage. A career. A home. The woman you used to be. A tender read on naming what was real.
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