No words.

Nobody knows.

Not even you.

It is not seen.

It is not spoken.

And it is not described ever.

By anyone.

It lives in an invisible space, in an invisible hidden thought world that is only accessed by you.

But even you…. you….walk into that space not knowing its presence.

It is even invisible to you.

When the world around us cannot see a part of us, we cannot see it either.

The world is our mirror and it is witnessing us every day.

When the witness can only see a part of you, you spend the rest of your life living a partial experience.

What I am talking about is your invisible loss.

The losses in your life that you never spoke about, and nobody ever mentioned.

And no I am not talking about big invisible losses, even though, they are of course included. I am talking about every day losses that get ignored because your world around you underestimates the hold they have in your life.

They are alive inside of you.

Kicking your behind.

Yep. I had to just come out and say it.

When we can’t see our biggest influencer, we are influenced by this unseen force that shadows us, shakes us, and moves us in directions we don’t understand.

Everyone talks about midlife crisis as the reason for their troubled lives because they don’t see that they are actually grieving.

You, me and billions of people are grieving every day and the therapists of the world have called it depression and midlife crisis.

HA!

I want to go knock on their door and tell them that they are looking in the wrong place for years now.

The 21st century has brought with it a different kind of grief. A grief that moves in without you knowing its arrival. (Click to Tweet!)

And this grief never moves out until you die.

Not because it can’t, but because we can’t try to heal something we don’t know is there.

So how do you know where to look, and how to find this invisible loss?

I will ask you today to take one step.

One simple step.

Grab a pen, paper or just your notes on your iphone.

And write down the first thought that hits you when you hear the words invisible loss.

What is that thought?

That thought has the clue of the invisible grief you have been feeling.

It could be a friend disappearing on you without a warning.

It could be the constant ignoring by a peer at work.

It could be your marriage not having the passion it once had however much you love your spouse deep down, it is missing that spark.

The list of invisible losses is vast and long.

You need to find yours.

Once you do, share it with someone as it needs a witness.

Fast. It has been unseen for way too long.

I see you. Remember this. I see you, I see all of you.

And I will help you to get the world to see all of you.

Every day, every experience and every part of you.

With eyes,

Christina

Image courtesy of Andrea Pramuk.

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Christina

Christina

Christina Rasmussen is an author, speaker and social entrepreneur who believes that grief is an evolutionary experience required for launching a life of adventure and creative accomplishment.

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4 Comments

  • Lorna Goltra says:

    My invisible loss is my family… All grown up, all doing pretty OK since Dad died… My loss is that core group which defined me my whole adult life… Being Mom to 4 kids… It’s all so different now….
    The other is my son who hates me… He has thrown me away… Ouch…. Invisible in that to the outside world it is nothing much. To me…. A big part of my soul, my heart…. It’s crushed .

  • Amy O'Connor says:

    I am a 35 year old widow, twice. Never in a million years did I think I’d be able to say that once at this age, but 2 times, just doesn’t even make since. I’m obviously a single mom of 2 of the most amazing girls on the face of this earth. They have been through and dealt with things most adults never have to go through. They lost their dad July 24th 2011, by his own hands. I had lived the most emotional roller coaster there ever was and when we finally spilt I said never again!! But I guess God had better plans for me because he blessed me with the most amazingly perfect man I have ever met! We had the perfect life, something neither or us ever thought existed! Not one day in four year did we fight or argue, or even disagree, we could talk about anything. We became best friends, we ate lunch and dinner together everyday and he loved my children as his own. He actually told everyone the little one was his bc he came into her life when she was 9 months old, so she knew no different! But after four perfect years, a brand new beautiful house, 4 weeks away from our wedding, something we both said we’d never do again, and a family vacation to Disney for our honeymoon planned, the unthinkable happened. I came downstairs on a Sunday morning for us to get ready for church and he was dead in the downstairs bathroom. It was and still is the worst day of my. My whole world completely changed!!! I went from a life of hell, to a life you only read about, to it all being gone in a blink of an eye! Our faith in God has only brought us closer to him, because without him there is no way we could have made it thorough it, and thank God for my family and the major support group we have. I pray for everyone going through this kind of loss and if you ever just need some one to listen I am always here! People tell me I’m the strongest woman they’ve ever met, I disagree, I’m so weak I can’t stand on my own, but with Christ I can make it through anything!!!!

  • Aleksandra S. says:

    My invisible loss was hope.

    My love was diagnosed with cancer, stage 4, at the age of 28. We had been living together for 4 years. He died shortly after his 31st birthday. The moment he died …the world stopped and I literally forgot to breathe. I was 26. He left me choking in a world in which I seemed to have no place anymore. That was 12 years ago. Stumbling over your book “second firsts” let me think about what kind of person I became in the meantime.. As I am writing this, tears are streaming down my face and once again I am wondering how many tears can a person cry during his/her lifetime. But these tears now are also tears of warmth, of love and of compassion. They lack the despair or blackness that I felt. I changed irreversibly and morphed into another version of myself. And I am very grateful for that.
    I witnessed very bad things during his sickness and much of it was actually more related to human weaknesses rather than his illness. I had turned into a cynic, who did not expect much from the people around anymore. There were too many disappointments. Remaining in a world which seeemed to have no place in it for me anymore, made me question myself, my identity. I wasn’t a “widow”, but someone who had the life experience of a 60 year old woman trapped in the body of a 26 year old. I felt so alien. As a consequence I left my old job, went to Uni got my degree and I started dedicating time consciously to people. I take it I reinvented myself. All of that was made by “silly little steps”. And looking back I see how far I actually got. It helped that my new environment didn’t know much about me as there were anyway only very few people left from my past (a dying person seems to thin out the people surrounding you) that was easily done. I could be whoever I wanted to be and that was great and re-energising and brought back colour into my life. There was hope again. I had not realised how much I missed this feeling. We were told back then not to hope as he was in a final stage, but what I realised when he died was that I did! Every single day, subconsciously, I kept hoping for a miracle. My mind was in control and I “knew” there was no hope and still it hit me like a ten-ton truck when he died. I should’ve known, right? That day I decided to try not to hope anymore. In hindsight one of the worst decisions I made as it cost me possible friends and love. But guess what! Silly attempt. Hope seems to be second nature to human beings and although it hurts when hopes are disppointed, it’s so extraordinary energising when they are fulfilled.
    It’s only 4 years ago that I started talking about him, as I thought that doing that would throw me back into this abyss my soul had turned into when I lost him. And maybe because I thought people wouldn’t want to listen. But I was wrong.
    Little by little I realised how much I actually love human beings and their endless potential for good things and for bad things. Little of the old grudges I held are still a part of me, I admit sometimes I am still struggling, but I am lenient with myself here. There is one thing that lets me set out and hope every day for new adventures in my life and that is, that really everything is possible!!! Every new beginning is just a thought away.
    The enhanced capacity for grief is correlated with a higher capacity for love and some people might say that I am impatient and intense. But from my perspective we have only little time to get to know ourselves and those we love during our lifetimes. We should make use of every minute. I am scared as shit but I also feel so alive! And I am very excited to see the next steps of this journey I set out on. My heart goes out to all of you. And it is full of hope!

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