Episode 9: Grief Isn’t Just About Death

Content note: This episode includes brief themes of relationship abuse. No graphic details are shared.

When we hear the word grief, most of us think about death.

But grief can show up whenever something meaningful ends, changes, disappears, or becomes different from what we thought it would be.

A relationship.

A friendship.

A career.

Our health.

A dream.

A future we had already started imagining.

Sometimes the losses that are hardest to understand are the ones we chose—or the ones we knew needed to happen.

In this episode of I’m Amanda, I’m Listening, Amanda shares the story of leaving her first marriage at twenty-one. There was abuse in the relationship, and she knew leaving was necessary. She expected freedom and relief.

Instead, alongside those feelings, she found herself grieving.

She was grieving the future she thought she was building, the version of adulthood she believed she had already begun, and the painful belief that the end of the marriage meant she had failed.

Together, we’ll explore why grief does not require regret, why necessary endings can still hurt, and how we can begin separating the fact that something ended from the verdict we may have created about ourselves because of it.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover

• Why grief is not limited to the death of someone we love.
• How we can grieve relationships, careers, health, friendships, dreams, identities, and imagined futures.
• Why choosing an ending does not take away your right to grieve it.
• How relief and sadness can exist at the same time.
• Why “this ended” and “I am a failure” are not the same statement.
• How necessary endings can still involve real loss.
• Why you do not have to be grateful for something that hurt you in order to recognize what you learned from surviving it.
• How changing the question from “How did I fail?” to “What do I know now?” can create room for a different understanding of the experience.
• Why grief does not have to be rushed into meaning, gratitude, or a lesson.

Reflection Questions

As you head into your week, spend a few moments with these questions:

• What loss have I been telling myself I shouldn’t still be grieving?
• What have I decided that ending says about me?
• What do I understand about myself now that I didn’t understand before?

One Small Step

Think about one loss you may have minimized because you believed you weren’t supposed to grieve it.

Then write two sentences:

I lost...

and

That mattered to me because...

You don’t have to justify the loss.

You don’t have to decide that you’re grateful for it.

You don’t have to figure out what it means yet.

Sometimes the first step is simply allowing yourself to say:

This was a loss. And it mattered to me.

Ask Amanda

Maybe you’re dealing with a loss that doesn’t fit neatly into the kinds of grief people usually talk about.

Maybe you left a relationship you knew needed to end.

Maybe a friendship changed.

Maybe your health, career, or future looks different from what you expected.

Or maybe you simply know something hurts and you don’t even know what to call it yet.

That’s what Ask Amanda is for.

You don’t need the perfect question.

Just tell me what’s going on.

Tell me what you’re carrying.

You can submit your question through the Ask Amanda link below, and it may become part of a future podcast conversation.

Resources

Looking for the resources from today’s episode?

I’ve gathered everything in one place—including the free Overwhelm Reset, the Ask Amanda question form, my weekly email, and more.

You’ll find it all here:

https://bit.ly/atplinks

One link. Everything you need.

Stay Connected

If this episode helped you put words to a loss you haven’t fully acknowledged, I’d love for you to follow the podcast, leave a review, or share this conversation with someone who may need it.

And remember:

Grief does not require regret.

You can know an ending was necessary and still acknowledge what it cost you.

Small steps. Real growth.