Grieving the Self You Haven’t Met Yet
There’s a grief no one really prepares you for.
It doesn’t come after a loss you can name. It doesn’t have rituals or casseroles or sympathy cards. No one asks how you’re doing, because, on the surface, everything looks fine.
But inside, you know something’s missing.
Something quiet. Something tender. Something hard to articulate.
It’s the grief of the self you haven’t met yet.
The version of you that never had enough space to fully arrive.
The one who got set aside while you held everything together for everyone else.
The one who existed in flickers — in daydreams, in glimpses, in brief moments before someone needed something again.
Maybe you’ve felt her before — in the quiet that rises when you’re alone for a rare hour, or the sudden ache that comes when someone asks, what do you want for yourself?
Maybe you’ve spent years being who you needed to be — for your family, your work, your roles, your responsibilities — and somewhere along the way, forgot how to hear the parts of you that weren’t being asked for.
Maybe it’s only now, in midlife, that you’re beginning to notice the gap.
The ache for a version of yourself you never fully became.
The unspoken longing for the life you didn’t live — not because you weren’t capable, but because you were busy surviving.
And that ache… it’s grief. Quiet, invisible, valid grief.
Not because something went wrong.
But because you’re human. And somewhere deep inside, you’re still holding a hope for the woman you haven’t quite become yet — but still might.
We often talk about burnout like it’s purely exhaustion. But so often, it’s this:
Grief for the self who’s been muted. Hidden. Delayed. Postponed.
And the most painful part?
You might not even be sure who she is. You just know you miss her.
You miss feeling like yourself — even though you’re not sure what that means anymore.
You miss desire — even though you don’t know what you want.
You miss joy — even though you can’t quite remember how it felt.
You miss being inside your own life, not just managing it.
And that’s not something for a quick fix or a rushed to-do list.
That’s something only nurturing can touch.
Only time.
Only honesty.
So what do we do with this grief?
We don’t solve it.
We honor it.
We let it speak.
We let ourselves write the letters we didn’t know we needed to write.
We let our tiredness be a message, not a flaw.
We stop asking how to fix ourselves and start asking how to meet ourselves — here, in this middle part of life, where things are not broken, but simply asking for attention.
And in doing that, maybe we begin to create space — not to become someone new, but to finally become ourselves.
The version of you that’s been waiting in the wings, quietly.
Not perfect. Not fully formed. But real. Ready. Whole in her own unfinished way.
And that’s not the end of something.
It’s the beginning.
Our Midlife Coaching Sessions
If you’re wondering how to reconnect with yourself when you feel like you’ve forever lost your way, let’s talk.
Learn more about how our midlife coaching sessions can give you the time and space to hear yourself again.
Midlife can be a challenging time for women as we navigate through a multitude of changes.
As things – sometimes it feels like all the things – shift in this midpoint, so too does how we see ourselves, how we think about our lives, and how we consider what’s next. Discover how our midlife coaching sessions can help you.
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