There can be many losses that trail from a primary loss. For example, perhaps by losing your partner, you also lost ties to a social group, lost the planner of the family, lost the person who you relied on to create the events that brought your collective world together. These secondary losses might be deeply felt by you but not widely understood or acknowledged by those outside of your experience.

When the grieving process begins before the loss is actualized. It is the grief that starts when the knowledge of an impending loss is gained. It can happen while preparing for a life change, seeing a loved one prepare for a life change, or feeling the slow shift of a relationship. This can also manifest from an event such as a life changing medical diagnosis or learning that you or someone you know is dying.

Grief that occurs when a group of people such as a society, family or community sustain shared losses. Some examples of this might be grief from the pandemic, climate change, school shootings, mass shootings, racism, homophobia, sexism, loss of reproductive rights, etc.

When grief cannot be or is not openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported, it is disenfranchised grief. This could manifest from infertility, miscarriage or abortion, the loss of someone in a relationship that is not traditionally acknowledged or accepted by society, moving into a long term health care facility, or the loss of our environment due to climate change. It can also felt when we lose a loved one to suicide, drug overdose or assisted death.

The felt loss, grief and mourning that occurs when someone dies or suffers who you may not have known personally.

Related to a death, the loss of which is acknowledged by society.

This is a loss where there is either a physical absence and a psychological presence, like the loss someone feels if they are estranged from someone they care about; or when there is a physical presence and a psychological absence, like the loss someone would experience when a parent has dementia and is no longer who they have known them to be. Putting a child up for adoption, being a foster parent, the shift of a relationship, divorce, depression, and having a loved one who has an addiction are all other ways that ambiguous grief can show up.