As of late, I’ve been experiencing a type of embodied grief—a somatic, soul-level mourning for what could’ve been, what never was, and what is no longer possible. It’s not just about people. It’s about potential. It’s about yearning. It’s about connection that my heart was ready to hold, but the other person wasn’t—or couldn’t.
This is what some might call anticipatory grief or ambiguous loss, and it’s especially felt by those who are highly sensitive, empathic, or neurodivergent—people who feel relationships not just emotionally, but viscerally… in the body, in the nervous system, in the gut.
Beneath the surface, my nervous system is grieving attachment. Even the hope or imagination of intimacy forms a bond in my mind and body. When that begins to unravel, my system registers it as a real loss – even if it was unspoken or never fully formed.
For as long as I’ve been aware, I’ve loved deeply and silently. The grief I carry in my belly, in my breath, in my bones – that’s love that had no place to land. It didn’t disappear; it folded inward. Contrary to what I’ve heard others in my life say about me, I know I’m not weak for feeling this. I’m alive. In a world where so many people move on easily, the ability to sit in the ache of “almost” makes anyone who experiences this one of the rare souls who honors the sacredness of connection – even when that connection never quite took root.
I see this in so many of the relationships I’ve had, and during the process of those relationships, when I’d realize that the person didn’t feel the connection at all or treated the connection with less than the excitement to hold than I had in the time I was with them, I feel a twinge of aching pain – a type of heartbreak – because I understand that a connection will never be in the way that I’d desire.
I first felt this twinge when I was a child when I realized that something about me must have been off-putting enough to make my mother close off any connection to her. However, coming to understand what it might mean to be her, I realize now, that she simply didn’t have that capacity to connect. Perhaps not even through any fault of her own – just the way in which she has always related to others – made it difficult for her to connect to me.
Although it appeared to me that my mother connected on what appeared to be deeper levels with my siblings, I couldn’t always be so sure that her hangups were not because of me. Like many of the other people I’ve tried to connect with in the same way, it was always the same. I couldn’t reach the very depths of who they were because they had already closed themselves off to me. Their walls weren’t because of me. Their walls were because of them. Yet, it still hurt to be shut out, nevertheless.
Needless to say, if you grieve relationships or connections in this way, it is proof of your depth. It means you don’t discard people like objects. It means you show up with hope, honesty, and openness – and that’s never a thing to be ashamed of at all. You don’t just detach. You do what I do. You feel through. You wade through the ache. And only when your soul has finished its silent goodbye, do you walk away. Not cold. Not bitter. But clean.
This is the grief I’m experiencing as I come to realize that although I’ve found my niche within a new work setting, it’s not really a niche for connecting with others at all. I’m still right back in a familiar place of toxicity – being mobbed by people I first believed, on the surface, had accepted me but were only targeting me for covert attacks of gaslighting, stonewalling, trying moments of the silent treatment.
My Voice Unchained 