Queer Grief Perseveres, But So Do We
Grief is a universal experience, yet the way we process and carry it is deeply personal. However, for the LGBTQ+ community, grief often takes on layers of complexity that extend beyond the typical mourning process.
Queer grief isn’t just about loss—it’s about navigating a world where societal rejection, strained family dynamics, and systemic inequality compound the pain. From the loss of chosen family members to the grief of what could have been in a more accepting world, queer grief is a tapestry of sorrow interwoven with resilience, love, and the constant fight for visibility and belonging.
Understanding the Types of Grief
Grief is a multifaceted emotional experience that varies widely from person to person. While the American Psychological Association notes that grief symptoms typically improve within six months to two years, the journey is far from linear. To better understand the complexities of loss, experts often classify grief into six distinct types, each reflecting different emotional and situational nuances:
- Anticipatory Grief: This type occurs when individuals begin mourning a loss before it happens, often in situations involving terminal illness or expected endings.
- Abbreviated Grief: Some may process loss quickly, especially if they’ve done significant emotional work beforehand, often following anticipatory grief.
- Delayed Grief: In this case, emotional reactions to loss may not surface immediately, sometimes manifesting months or even years later.
- Inhibited Grief: Here, individuals suppress or repress their grief, often due to societal pressures or a lack of tools to navigate these emotions.
- Cumulative Grief: Experiencing multiple losses simultaneously can compound the mourning process, making it uniquely challenging and overwhelming.
- Collective Grief: This occurs when a community or group grieves together, often in response to shared tragedies like natural disasters or social injustices.
In addition to these types, the five-stage model of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—provides a framework for understanding the emotional phases many people experience. However, as researchers emphasize, this model is not linear, and individuals may skip, revisit, or experience stages in a different order.
When Grief Becomes Complicated
Grief is inherently complex, but for some, the process can become prolonged or particularly challenging. This is often referred to as complicated grief, which can disrupt daily life and prevent individuals from finding closure. According to the Cleveland Clinic, warning signs of complicated grief may include:
- Feeling as though a part of yourself is lost or has died, even a year after the loss.
- Struggling to accept that the loss occurred.
- Avoiding reminders of the loss entirely.
- Experiencing persistent emotional pain that interferes with daily living.
- Feeling emotionally numb, lonely, or as if life lacks meaning or purpose.
- Having difficulty engaging with friends, enjoying activities, or making decisions for the future.
Several specific grief types can contribute to these complications:
- Absent Grief: This occurs when an individual shows no outward signs of mourning, often because they are stuck in denial and unable to begin processing the loss.
- Ambiguous Loss: This type of grief arises when there is a lack of closure, such as when someone is presumed dead but their body has not been found. It also includes grieving a loved one who is alive but out of reach—examples include deportation, incarceration, or even breakups that leave unresolved emotions.
- Traumatic Grief: When grief is intertwined with trauma, it often stems from horrific and unpredictable events like natural disasters, accidents, or violent deaths. These situations can lead to conditions such as PTSD, compounding the emotional toll.
- Disenfranchised Grief: This occurs when society does not validate or recognize the loss as significant or worthy of mourning. Examples include losing a same-sex partner or experiencing losses considered taboo, such as deaths by suicide or drug overdoses. This type of grief can be deeply isolating, as it denies individuals the support they need to heal.
The Unique Weight of Queer Grief
Grief is a universal experience, one that transcends gender, sexuality, and identity. Yet how we process grief is deeply personal, shaped by our individual circumstances and the communities to which we belong. For the LGBTQ+ community, grief is often layered with unique challenges, including stigma, prejudice, and systemic discrimination, leading to a concept known as queer grief.
According to Alim Kheraj in a Gay Times article, LGBTQ+ individuals have faced disenfranchised grief throughout history—losses that society fails to validate or recognize as significant. A poignant example of this is the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s, which devastated an entire generation of gay men. In the United States, societal fear and government inaction compounded the tragedy, isolating those affected. Media stigmatization and family rejection left many without support, with partners and chosen families often excluded from hospitals and funerals. This forced many to grieve privately, unable to express their pain or find closure.
While advancements in medicine have transformed HIV into a manageable condition and the representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in media has improved, these gains do not erase the persistent fears of stigma and rejection. Today, LGBTQ+ individuals continue to face threats, including rising violence and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, which exacerbate feelings of vulnerability and loss.
Queer grief is not just about the loss of loved ones but also the cumulative sorrow tied to rejection, societal pressures, and the fight for equality.
Understanding Queer Grief
While there isn’t a standardized definition for queer grief, its presence is undeniable and explored through various studies and discussions. At its core, queer grief stems from the unique challenges and societal pressures LGBTQ+ individuals face throughout their lives, beginning at a young age.
According to Grief Recovery Center, the root of much queer grief lies in society’s heteronormative framework—the assumption that everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise. This cultural structure isolates queer individuals, forcing them to make a painful choice: come out and risk rejection, discrimination, or even violence, or stay in the closet, unable to fully express their true selves. For many, this leads to a profound sense of loneliness and loss that begins in childhood, compounded by societal messages that being queer is something shameful.
The LGBTQ+ experience is riddled with grief-worthy moments, often tied to the fear and uncertainty of living authentically. Many queer individuals grapple with the fear of losing their families and friends if they reveal their true identities. Others carry the weight of growing up feeling different but unable to articulate why. Living as a queer person in a heteronormative world means constantly navigating spaces where safety is uncertain and hate is a real threat.
These struggles are emotionally taxing, leaving many with feelings of loss—not just for relationships or opportunities, but for the safety, acceptance, and ease that might have been possible in a more inclusive society. Queer grief is a reminder of the resilience required to navigate this world, as well as the importance of understanding and addressing these unique emotional burdens.
The Lifelong Weight of Queer Grief
Even after coming out and embracing authenticity, many find themselves grieving the childhood they were denied—the love and support they deserved but did not receive. This sense of loss, compounded by the societal pressures of growing up in a heteronormative world, often leaves scars that linger into adulthood.
Derek Lowell Corns’ 2022 thesis titled Disenfranchised Grief in Queer Companionship and Chosen Family underscores the inevitability of grief in queer lives, ranging from family rejection to the loss of friends within the LGBTQ+ community to tragic circumstances like suicide or murder. Many queer individuals also grieve the loss of adolescence—a period when fear, secrecy, or confusion often overshadowed joy and self-discovery.
Historical and legal barriers have added to this grief. Before same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015, same-sex partners often lacked the rights afforded to heterosexual couples, particularly in healthcare decisions and bereavement. Survivors of same-sex relationships frequently faced exclusion from funerals or end-of-life arrangements by disapproving families, further isolating them in their grief.
Even in modern contexts, societal stigma can hinder the grieving process. LGBTQ+ individuals may encounter judgment, discrimination, or erasure when mourning a partner, whether it’s in the workplace, where bereavement leave policies may not be inclusive, or in social settings, where their love is invalidated.
Breakups within the LGBTQ+ community can also carry a unique weight. The smaller dating pool often leads to deeper feelings of isolation and hopelessness after a relationship ends. While straight individuals might find solace in a larger, more readily available pool of potential partners, queer people often feel a heightened sense of loss. This dynamic also explains why many LGBTQ+ individuals maintain friendships with exes; in a community where finding like-minded individuals is already challenging, preserving connections becomes a means of fostering support and companionship.
These intricate dynamics blur the lines of intimacy and relationships within the queer community, as highlighted by scholars. Ex-partners may become close friends, and chosen families often step in to fill the void left by biological families or societal rejection.
Grief Recovery Center goes on to assert that the weight of these cumulative grief experiences often leaves queer individuals in a state of emotional survival. Years of repressing emotions to cope with societal challenges can make it difficult to process grief when it arises. For many, this means carrying a lifetime of compounded grief, interwoven with fleeting moments of joy, love, and resilience—a complex, heavy burden that defines the queer experience for many.
Second Adolescence: A Framework for Queer Liberation
For LGBTQ+ individuals, the journey to healing from the grief of growing up in an anti-queer world often involves addressing deep wounds rooted in shame and societal rejection. As Adam James Cohen, a licensed psychotherapist, wrote in Psychology Today, many queer people internalize shame from feeling different and missing out on key developmental experiences during adolescence. These gaps in psychosocial development, coupled with the trauma of anti-queerness, often leave queer adults feeling stunted or underdeveloped compared to their cisgender, heterosexual peers.
Cohen introduces the concept of a “second adolescence,” a developmental stage LGBTQ+ adults often navigate after coming out. This framework acknowledges the disruptions to identity development caused by anti-queer environments during youth and provides a path for healing and liberation.
Reclaiming What Was Missed
The first step in a second adolescence involves addressing experiences missed during the initial adolescent years. For many LGBTQ+ adults, this means engaging with formative milestones—first kisses, dates, relationships, sexual experiences, and the freedom to authentically express one’s identity. Reclaiming these experiences can be a vital step in developing self-acceptance and fulfilling the potential for psychological and social growth that was stifled in youth.
Equally important is reckoning with the grief of those missed opportunities. Acknowledging and processing feelings of loss from an adolescence shaped by denial, fear, and shame allows individuals to move forward while honoring their past struggles.
Unlearning Internalized Anti-Queerness
The second task in navigating a second adolescence is addressing internalized anti-queerness. Growing up exposed to harmful anti-queer messages often leads to the internalization of shame-based beliefs about gender, sexuality, and relationships. These beliefs can linger into adulthood, influencing decisions and fostering self-doubt.
Healing involves unpacking these internalized messages, understanding their origins, and recognizing how they continue to shape one’s thoughts and behaviors. This process includes gradually unlearning limiting beliefs and replacing them with affirmations of self-worth, validation, and pride in one’s identity.
Second adolescence provides a framework to not only address the wounds inflicted by anti-queer systems but also to build a life rooted in authenticity, joy, and self-compassion. By engaging in this twofold process—reclaiming missed experiences and dismantling internalized anti-queerness—LGBTQ+ individuals can foster a sense of liberation and healing. For many, this journey is not just a process of recovery but a celebration of becoming whole.
Addressing Grief from an Anti-Queer World
For many LGBTQ+ individuals, a critical part of healing involves grieving the experiences missed during adolescence in an anti-queer world. This process requires deep introspection and self-compassion to honor the pain of the past while creating space for growth and liberation.
Reflecting on the Past
Begin by reflecting on what life was like for your younger self. This could involve journaling or speaking your thoughts aloud to give form to your emotions. Explore questions such as:
- What was life like for my younger self during childhood and adolescence?
- How did they perceive themselves, and were they aware of their queerness or sense of difference?
- What experiences do I wish they could have had, and what do I wish they could have been spared?
- How does seeing today’s queer youth with opportunities I lacked make me feel?
By exploring these questions, you can better understand the grief tied to your younger self’s experiences and begin to process it.
Visualizing and Connecting with Your Younger Self
A powerful tool for healing is visualizing your younger self. Imagine them clearly—what they’re wearing, their expressions, how they spend their time, and their interests. Allow yourself to feel the weight of the pain they carried.
This visualization isn’t just about observing; it’s about connecting. Pay attention to the emotions that arise and honor them without judgment.
Communicating with Compassion
Take the time to address your younger self directly. This can be done by writing a letter or imagining a conversation with them. Start by acknowledging their struggles and validating their feelings. For instance:
- “It wasn’t fair that the world made you feel this way.”
- “You deserved love and acceptance, just as you are.”
Empathize with their pain and share what you wish could have been different. Offer reassurance and support, emphasizing their inherent worth.
As you conclude, leave your younger self with parting words—perhaps gratitude for their resilience or a promise to live authentically in their honor.
Seeking Professional Support
While these exercises can help begin the healing process, they won’t eliminate grief entirely. Working with a licensed therapist experienced in grief and LGBTQ+ issues can provide additional tools and guidance for navigating this complex emotional work.
Grieving for the experiences denied to your younger self is challenging, but it’s essential for creating space for a more joyful, authentic future. Embracing this discomfort is a step toward honoring your past and healing your present.
The Path to Healing
Queer grief is heavy, complicated, and deeply personal. It stems from the lies we’ve been told by others—and the lies we’ve told ourselves in response. Growing up in an anti-queer world often means internalizing negative messages about our worth, turning them inward, and believing the falsehood that our existence is somehow lesser. But these beliefs are not the truth.
The truth is this: we are good, kind, and beautiful people. To heal, we must confront those ingrained messages, as uncomfortable as it may be. Doing this work—unpacking the grief, challenging the negativity, and letting go of what no longer serves us—creates space for growth, joy, and a brighter future.
Whether that healing leads to healthier relationships, a deeper spiritual connection, or a renewed passion for life, it begins with a commitment to ourselves. As Cohen reminds us, “Healing is a process, a gradual unpacking. Start slow and small. And do it for Little You.”
By confronting queer grief, we honor our past, embrace our present, and create room for the future we deserve.
And remember: every day is all we have, so you've got to make your own happiness.
For more information on this topic, listen to Episode 71. Queer Grief.
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