“I lost that person that I was, before all this.”

These words describe the impact of a non-death loss.

We encounter so many losses throughout our lives, yet very few are actually acknowledged. Often, we may dismiss our own feelings about the loss because there seem to be more important, serious, or ‘real’ deaths happening that require our attention. In reality, it is just as important to acknowledge the non-death losses when we feel their impact. Sometimes grief related to a non-death loss or transition could be mislabeled as depression. Giving ourselves time to identify what has been lost is a good way to get started. Some non-death losses could be related to: mobility, loss of an ability, infertility/loss of being a parent, our sense of identity, a significant role, or even our previously held beliefs about the world and what we imagined life would be.