The Losses No One Brings a Casserole For
By Temple Franklin — Mind Body Spirit Hygiene Tools
When someone dies, the world knows what to do. The casseroles come. The cards arrive. People say, "I'm so sorry for your loss," and they mean it, and there is a gathering where everyone agrees on one thing: this mattered. This was real. But some of the heaviest losses I have ever carried came with no casserole. No card. No one standing in my kitchen saying they were sorry.
The losses that came with no card
There was the end of a marriage — not just a person, but a whole life. The family table. The community. The future I had pictured in such detail I could almost touch it. There was work I built and loved, that simply stopped when the world shut down. There was the home, and the place I had lived for more than forty years — streets my body knew by heart. And there was the quietest loss of all: the woman I used to be.
There is a name for this — and learning it set me free
For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me for grieving so hard over things that "weren't supposed to" count. Nobody holds a service for a marriage. Nobody sends flowers when a business closes or when you leave the only place you've ever known. But there is a name for this, dear one, and learning it set me free: disenfranchised grief — grief the world doesn't recognize, so it never makes room for it.
The quiet violence of toxic positivity
And here is the cruelest part. When no one around you treats your loss as real, you start doing it to yourself. You rush your own heartbreak. You tell yourself to get over it, be grateful, look on the bright side. That is the quiet violence of toxic positivity — and we don't only receive it from others. We whisper it to ourselves.
The turn came when I stopped waiting for permission
I let the losses be losses. I said the truth out loud, even when I was the only one in the room: This mattered. This was real. I am allowed to grieve it. I am allowed to be scared. I am allowed to be angry. I am allowed to grieve a life, a self, a future — even the ones no one else counted. And both are true. I lost more than I could ever fit on a card. AND I GET TO build something new on the other side of it. I don't say that to rush the grief — grief is not a problem to solve, it is a love to honor. I say it because naming my losses is what finally let me set them down.
Reclaimed, not rescued.
In the end, I brought my own grief the casserole no one else thought to bring. So if you are grieving something the world has no card for — a marriage, a friendship, a dream, a body that changed, a version of yourself you miss — hear me: it counts. It was real. You are not dramatic, and you are not behind. You are grieving, and you are allowed. Bring yourself the casserole, Lovely. Sit down at your own table. Honor what was real. Welcome home. With love — Temple.
If grief like this is sitting in your chest right now, my book was written for you — real tools for women in the messy middle, learning to honor what was lost and come home to themselves. Real tools. Real women. In the messy middle. If you want to read where this journey began — start with The Only One Rowing, post #1 in Temple's Journey.
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