My Journey Through Loss: Honouring My Son’s Memory & the Grief of Lost History
My Journey Through Loss: Honouring My Son’s Memory & the Grief of Lost History
Grief can be confusing and lonely anytime.
But there are some quiet, hidden griefs that don’t often get talked about openly…
Let’s pull back the curtain on one of them, shall we?
We sort of learn to anticipate (although not look forward to) the grief that shows up in the years after someone dies. The birthdays… holidays… anniversaries… the memories we’ve shared…
The moments we expect to hurt.
And then… there are the ones can creep up unexpectedly…
Or can be invisible to the people around us.
The ones we never got to make.
I call it “lost history.”
And I want to talk about it.
What Is Lost History?
The term “lost history” came up for me during a trauma-informed peer support training years ago, and it lodged itself in my head - and my chest - because it deeply resonated.
It’s the ache that doesn’t come from the past, but from the future that was taken away.
For me, that lost history includes the wedding my son never had…
The children he never got to raise…
The inside jokes we never created…
And the conversations we’ll never get to finish.
Many of you know this pain too.
Maybe your story involves a divorce, a diagnosis, a life-altering injury, or a dream that was stolen from you.
And if you’ve ever grieved a life you were supposed to have – this week’s blog and podcast episode are for you.
Because grief isn’t always about what was.
Sometimes it’s about what never got to be.
As humans, our brains are wired for story.
It spends a considerable amount of it’s time simulating the future - thanks to something called the default mode network - a part of our brain that helps us imagine, predict, and plan what’s next.
But when something happens that causes us grief – that story that our brain has created gets interrupted.
The future we planned for doesn’t exist anymore.
But… our brain still keeps trying to find it.
That’s why it can feel disorienting.
And incredibly painful.
We expect to grieve what was.
We’re rarely prepared to grieve what isn’t going to get to be.
This kind of grief often falls into a category called “disenfranchised grief” - grief that isn’t acknowledged, recognized, or openly mourned.
There are no casseroles.
No cards.
No conversations around how to grieve a baby never born, a wedding that never happened, a career you never got to finish, or a version of yourself that you didn’t get to live.
And whether or not others acknowledge or understand it…
It still matters.
Here are a few gentle ways I’ve learned to process and honour lost history - and maybe they’ll help you too:
- Name what was lost.
Not just the person or the event, but the hopes and dreams tied to them. - Write a letter to the future that never happened.
It could be to your child, your former self, or the version of life you thought you’d be living. - Practice both/and thinking.
You can grieve what was lost and build something meaningful moving forward. - Allow meaning to grow in the cracks.
Your future might be different than you had pictured - but different can still be beautiful.
And most importantly: you are not alone.
There is space in the grief journey for sadness… for anger… for nostalgia… for hope…
And for the quiet wonder of what might still be possible.
A Gentle Journal Prompt to Explore
“What future did I lose… and how can I honour that grief with compassion instead of silence?”
You don’t have to answer it today.
But when you're ready, that question might unlock something that’s been waiting to be seen.
Need Support?
If this resonated, I’ve created two gentle, free resources that might help you through whatever grief you’re carrying:
- Insights for Navigating Grief – tips, validation, and compassion
- The Essential Grief Toolkit – simple tools to help you cope day-to-day.
You can download them at https://transformativejourneys.ca/johannas-toolboxes
If you have been impacted by a workplace tragedy, you can find support at www.threadsoflife.ca
💜 If this story spoke to you, please share it with someone who might be quietly carrying their own lost history. Every kind of grief deserves to be seen - even the stories that never got to happen.
