Key Themes: ambiguous loss; grief work; loss; transitions; radical acceptance; renewal
This reflection explores the unseen losses, shifting roles, and transitions—and the new pathways waiting to be explored in a new life season.
Losses in Times of Transition
Later life transitions often arrive quietly. Roles, relationships, or purposes that once defined us begin to shift. Children leave home, careers change, friendships drift, vitality ebbs, and identities evolve.
Psychologists describe this as a liminal space—a threshold where we are invited to release what was and lean into what is still becoming.
Ambiguous Loss
We tend to think of grief only in terms of death. But loss comes in many forms: closing chapters, passing seasons, and the selves we once were that we can’t return to. Ambiguous losses typically lack rituals to mark them, yet the grief is real. They leave us suspended between nostalgia, regret, and anticipation of an uncertain future.
Pauline Boss, a pioneer in the study of ambiguous loss, describes it as grief without closure—losses that are unclear, incomplete, or ongoing.
Taming the Echoes of Loss
New seasons of loss often awaken older, untended ones. Shifting relationships, and life transitions can resurface dormant grief unexpectedly, leaving a layered, sometimes overwhelming sorrow.
Unprocessed grief doesn’t stay buried. It lives in the body, in the psyche, and in the way we brace ourselves against future heartache. And yet, turning toward losses with compassion and curiosity can be part of the healing process.
Grief’s Paradox: Loss and Renewal
Kübler-Ross and Kessler remind us:
“Grief is the healing process of the heart, soul, and mind; it is the path that returns us to wholeness.”
This wholeness isn’t the one we knew before because grief shatters us, leaving us raw and unmoored before it re-shapes us. Yet, when we learn to hold its paradox—a key task in the second half of life—we can weave loss into more intentional living.
In the quiet aftermath of loss, the soul whispers: You’re still here. Your journey’s not finished yet. How will you make this time count?
Gradually, in subtle, quiet ways we begin to live from a deeper, braver place, with more courage, more aware, more aligned. In doing so, we honor not only those we’ve loved and lost, but also our spent seasons, our earlier selves, and the shifting roles we carry.
Pathways of Renewal
Psychologists note that our middle years can be a call to rediscover the deeper self behind the roles we hold. To peel back layers of expectation and meet the self that is more than parent, partner, or professional.
Parker Palmer vividly describes it as a life ‘hidden beneath the surface.’
Up until midlife, many of our identities have only partially found expression. Beyond the scripts we’ve lived, there is a richness of self waiting for attention and integration.
This shift doesn’t happen automatically. It asks for practices of release, reflection, and reorientation—what researcher Kristin Neff calls the essence of self-compassion.
Radical Acceptance
Loss invites us into radical acceptance: holding the and/yet truths of life.
We may feel sadness about children leaving home—and relief that they are stepping into independence. We may grieve fading vitality—and welcome the wisdom that only lived years can bring.
Radical acceptance allows us to gently release what is passing and becoming curious about what is emerging. In this way, ambiguous loss becomes not just an ending but also an opening.
Practices for Healing and Renewal
There is no single right way—letting go, or grieving losses is as unique as the lives we live. What matters is finding practices that resonate:
- Rituals of Closure — Symbolic farewells, unsent letters, or personal rituals to mark change.
- Boundary Work — Re-evaluating relationships and roles that no longer feel mutual or life-giving.
- Reframing Regrets — Exploring regrets as signals of our deeper values rather than self-condemnation.
- Creative Practices — Drawing, sculpting, painting, nature walks, or music to give form to what can’t always be spoken.
- Envisioning the Evolving Self: This can be powerful to not only process what’s passing but also envision your future self. Ask: Where do I see myself in five or ten years, having journeyed through the midlife terrain? What qualities, relationships, or ways of living do I want to grow into?
- Therapeutic Support — Sharing our invisible grief with a counselor, partner, or trusted friend can bring ambiguous to the surface, give it a voice and space for healing.
- Narrative Therapy: Piecing together the puzzle
Transitional life losses—whether visible or ambiguous—doesn’t have to close us off. It can deepen us.
As Frances Weller writes in The Wild Edge of Sorrow:
Grief is a landscape that we inhabit. When we attend to it fully, it can teach us about belonging, love, and the depth of our connection to life itself.
By leaning into these quiet losses and transitions with curiosity and compassion, we allow space for renewal, self-discovery, and the emergence of new pathways in this next life season.
🌿Reflective Prompt
- Which quiet, subtle loss have you carried silently?
- What practices might help you honor what is passing to create space for what’s emerging?