What If It’s Not Depression - It’s Grief?
A closer look at the invisible losses weighing you down
Picture this.
You’re sitting in your car in the grocery store parking lot. You’ve already cried once today - in the laundry room, quietly, so no one would hear. You’re staring out the windshield, trying to convince yourself to go inside and grab lentils and chicken nuggets and dry shampoo. But everything just feels... heavy. Like you’re moving through wet concrete. You’re not sure if you’re tired or sad or just deeply over it.
You wonder, Am I depressed? Burned out? Hormonal?
Maybe. But maybe - just maybe - what you're actually feeling is grief.
You’ve Been Told Grief Looks a Certain Way
Black clothes. Casseroles. A funeral. Some tears, followed by “moving on.”
That’s the version of grief our culture recognizes. But it’s just one slice of the story.
Grief isn’t always loud. It doesn’t always have a clear beginning or end. It doesn’t require a eulogy or sympathy cards or an obituary. It can look like numbness. Or restlessness. Or snapping at your kids when you’re not even mad.
And sometimes? It looks a whole lot like depression.
Research shows that unprocessed grief activates the same neural pathways as major depressive episodes.
Your brain can’t always tell the difference between a literal loss and a metaphorical one. But your body keeps score. It remembers every goodbye you didn’t have time to say. Every identity you had to shed. Every dream you quietly buried.
The Many Faces of Grief (Yes, Yours Counts)
You might not think of it as grief, but:
The version of you that got left behind after becoming a parent? That’s a loss.
The friendship that faded when your values shifted? Loss.
The way your body no longer feels like home? Still loss.
The time before the diagnosis, the divorce, the burnout, the baby, the betrayal? Yup. Loss.
We call these things “life changes” or “phases,” but they come with grief, whether we acknowledge it or not. And when we don’t? That grief gets stuck. It folds into the corners of our muscles and our mood and our movement through the day.
Because we’ve been taught to rush past it. To stay productive. To be grateful. To “let it go.”
But grief doesn’t work like that.
Disenfranchised Grief: The Loss No One Sees
There’s a name for this kind of invisible grief: disenfranchised grief. It’s what happens when your pain doesn’t get recognition. When there’s no ritual, no language, no “acceptable” way to mourn what you’ve lost.
It shows up in moments like:
Feeling like you “shouldn’t” be upset about your birth story because you have a healthy baby.
Grieving a toxic parent who’s still alive.
Crying over a job you left “by choice.”
Missing the version of your life you thought you’d have by now.
It all matters. Even when no one else sees it. Even when it’s complicated.
And if no one ever named it as grief? Let’s do that now.
You are allowed to grieve what never happened. What should’ve happened. What did happen but changed you forever.
We’re Not Just Carrying Our Own Grief
Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room: collective grief.
We’re not just grieving our own lives - we’re grieving for the world, too. The pandemic, climate chaos, war, social injustice, entire systems failing people we love. You can feel powerless and overwhelmed and still carry on like nothing is wrong - because life keeps moving.
But your nervous system notices. It doesn’t care if the grief is “yours” or the world’s. It registers it all.
No wonder you feel so tired. You’re carrying more than just the mental load. You’re carrying the emotional weight of being alive right now.
When We Don’t Feel It, We Store It
There’s this idea that “time heals all wounds.” But honestly? Time just buries them if we’re not careful.
Unprocessed grief doesn’t disappear. It gets internalized. And for many people, it shows up as:
A constant sense of flatness or detachment
Brain fog that no amount of sleep seems to fix
Body aches with no clear cause
An inability to find joy, even in things you used to love
It gets tangled in your nervous system and hijacks your capacity for presence.
Not because you’re broken. Because you’re grieving - and no one ever told you how.
Naming It Is the First Step
Grief stacks. One ignored loss builds on top of another until even small things - like dropping your coffee or a forgotten lunch kit—feel crushing.
You don’t need a permission slip to grieve the “little things.” You don’t need a diagnosis to validate the weight you’re carrying.
You just need to name it.
Because when you name grief, you can start to move with it - not around it.
6 ways you can process grief:
Cry on purpose
Write it down
Make art about it
Scream-sing in your minivan
Light a candle and give it a name
Talk to someone who gets it (and doesn’t try to fix you)
There’s no perfect way to process grief. But doing nothing? That’s when it lingers.
So, What Now?
If any part of you read this and thought, Wait… is this me? - then you’re not alone.
You don’t have to wear your pain in silence just because no one else saw the loss.
Whether you’re grieving the parent you never had, the baby that never came, the life you thought you’d be living by now, or the freedom you lost when you became everything to everyone - your grief matters.
And healing doesn’t mean “getting over it.”
It means learning to hold it differently.
So next time you feel low and wonder what’s wrong with you, ask yourself instead:
What have I lost that I haven’t had the chance to grieve?
You might be surprised at what surfaces.
And when you’re ready to move through it—with support—you don’t have to do it alone.
✨ Nurtured Minds Wellness offers 1:1 therapy and seasonal retreats at Wizard Lake, Alberta, created for exactly this kind of work.
For being held while you process.
For reconnecting to your nervous system.
For remembering who you are—grief and all.
We’d be honoured to walk with you.
