The Grief You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Sarah Gilbertson
May 1
2 min read

There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t come with a clear ending. No dramatic goodbye. No single moment you can point to and say, "that’s when everything changed."

But still, something shifted.

For many women in midlife, that grief is quiet, cumulative, and often invisible. You might be grateful for your health. Your family. Your life on paper. And still feel like something is missing.

You’re not ungrateful. You’re not broken. You’re just changing.

Naming the Grief We Don’t Talk About

This isn’t always the kind of grief that comes with loss of a loved one. It’s the grief of:

Losing a sense of ease in your body
Feeling less resilient than you once were
Navigating menopause, illness, surgery or injury
Watching your energy shift and your confidence blur
Realising a part of your identity no longer fits

It’s grief for the version of you who didn’t question her strength, her clarity, or her direction.

And the hardest part? We often feel we don’t have the right to grieve. We tell ourselves we should be grateful. We compare. We dismiss. We push it down.

Gratitude and Grief Can Coexist

Gratitude is powerful. But it’s not a cure-all. You can sip your morning coffee, surrounded by everything you love, and still feel the ache of something lost.

As Brené Brown writes in Atlas of the Heart, emotional maturity is about holding two truths at once. And as Deb Dana reminds us in Anchored, safety isn’t the absence of pain—it’s the ability to sit beside it without becoming overwhelmed.

When we make space for both—grief and gratitude, strength and softness, readiness and rest—we create the conditions for reconnection.

Midlife woman walking quietly through nature, pausing mid-step in a woodland setting, reflecting on personal change and emotional recovery. — Some moments ask us to keep walking. Others invite us to pause, breathe, and notice what’s quietly shifting

The Body Remembers

The body often holds these stories before the mind can name them. A tightening in your chest. A reluctance to move. A quiet fatigue that doesn’t match the pace of your day.

In my coaching, I work with women who are trying to come back to themselves—not through performance, but through presence.

We explore somatic practices that support the nervous system. We talk about how you feel —and how you feel in your body—not just how you function. We begin to rebuild trust—first in the body, then in the self—with each quiet, intentional breath.