When we hear the word grief, many of us immediately think of death.
We picture funerals, sympathy cards, and the loss of someone we love. While bereavement is one of the most profound experiences of grief, it is far from the only one.
Yet many people tell themselves they "shouldn't" be grieving because nobody has died.
The reality is that grief is about much more than death.
Throughout our lives, we experience countless endings. Some we choose. Others are forced upon us. Even positive changes can involve loss.
You might grieve after:
None of these experiences involves death, yet each can fundamentally change how we see ourselves and the world around us.
Grief is not always something we "get over." Sometimes, significant losses become woven into the way we experience ourselves and the world around us.
In person-centred therapy, the concept of existential touchstones recognises that certain experiences invite us to reflect on fundamental aspects of being human, such as our relationships, identity, freedom, meaning, uncertainty, and mortality (Mearns and Cooper, 2005). Experiences of grief—whether through death, separation, illness, migration, adoption, or another significant life transition—can bring these questions into sharper focus.
For some people, earlier experiences of loss continue to echo throughout life. Someone who moved frequently as a child may notice that goodbyes remain especially painful in adulthood.
An adoptee may grieve relationships, culture, language, identity, history, or unanswered questions, even while having no conscious memories of the original separation, illustrating that we can greive things we do not explicitly remember.
This does not mean we are destined to remain trapped by grief. Rather, it recognises that loss can become part of our personal story. As we make sense of our experiences over time, grief may continue to shape us, not because we have failed to heal, but because what was lost mattered.
Many losses are not only about what has happened - they are also about who we believed we were
After divorce, someone may grieve the future they expected to share and the life they imagined.
Following chronic illness, a person may grieve the body they once trusted.
After moving countries, someone may grieve the familiarity, community, language, and sense of belonging they left behind.
Someone who loses their career may find themselves asking, "If I'm not this person anymore, then who am I?"
These losses are deeply personal because they often involve our identity, our relationships, and our hopes for the future.
However, identity is not fixed. Throughout our lives, we develop ideas about who we are, where we belong, and what our future might hold. Significant losses can challenge these assumptions, leaving us to reconsider who we are, where we belong, and what comes next.
This is one of the reasons grief can feel so unsettling. We are not only adapting to what has happened; we are also trying to understand who we are in light of it.
One of the most difficult aspects of non-death losses is that they are often invisible to others.
Friends might say:
"At least you can have another baby."
"You're young—you'll find someone else."
"You chose to move overseas."
"Everything happens for a reason."
Although these comments are usually well-intentioned, they can unintentionally minimise the person's experience.
Psychologist Dr Kenneth Doka introduced the concept of disenfranchised grief—grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially accepted, or publicly mourned. When people feel their loss "doesn't count," they may question whether they have the right to grieve at all.
When grief does not feel "allowed", it can affect the way we relate to both ourselves and others. It can become difficult to be around people when you feel unseen in your pain, or when your loss is repeatedly minimised. Over time, this lack of recognition can leave people feeling isolated, misunderstood, and reluctant to share what they are going through.
It can also affect the relationship we have with ourselves. We may begin to question whether our feelings are valid, tell ourselves we "should" be over it by now, or compare our grief to that of others. Rather than listening to our own experience, we start judging it.
One of the things I have come to appreciate through my work is that recognising grief outside of bereavement does not diminish the pain of losing someone through death.
Grief is not a competition.
We do not need to compare losses to determine whether someone deserves compassion.
Two people can experience entirely different losses while both carrying genuine sorrow. What matters is not whether society considers the loss significant, but whether it mattered to the person experiencing it.
Many people spend months, or even years, trying to push away feelings they believe they shouldn't be having.
Yet grief has a way of making itself known.
It may appear as sadness, anger, numbness, anxiety, irritability, exhaustion, or even a deep sense of disorientation.
Rather than asking whether your loss is "big enough" to justify grief, it may be more helpful to ask:
What has changed?
What have I lost?
What am I trying to hold on to?
These questions often open the door to greater self-understanding and self-compassion.
There is no right or wrong reason to grieve.
Whether you are mourning a loved one, a relationship, your health, your home, your culture, or a future you once imagined, your feelings deserve acknowledgement.
Healing does not necessarily mean forgetting what was lost. Often, it involves learning how to carry that loss while continuing to move forward in a way that honours both your past and your present.
If your grief feels overwhelming, persistent, or difficult to navigate alone, grief counselling can provide a safe, compassionate space to explore what your loss means to you. You do not have to wait until someone dies before seeking support for grief.
Grief is not evidence that something is wrong with us. More often, it is evidence that something mattered.
I wore mehendi on my wedding day.
That doesn’t feel like it should be a powerful statement, or even one that carries much emotional weight. Anyone looking at me would probably assume it was nothing out of the ordinary. If they were familiar with South Asian wedding traditions, they might even assume there had been a whole pre-wedding celebration - surrounded by family members, mothers, bridesmaids, and aunties - where intricate designs were applied to our skin while everyone celebrated together.
Except I didn’t have that.
I’m adopted from Nepal. My family are white, British, spread out across the world, and some of them are no longer here.
And that’s okay. If there’s anything I’ve learnt through my counselling journey, both as a client and as a therapist, it’s that everyone has a different story.
This is a small snapshot of mine, which I hope to share because I believe honest conversations about adoption are important.
For those unfamiliar, mehendi (or mehndi) is a traditional form of body art used across many South Asian, Middle Eastern, and North and East African cultures. The paste made from the henna plant is applied to the skin in intricate designs and is often used during weddings and celebrations.
In many South Asian weddings, mehendi is part of a larger cultural ritual - a joyful gathering where family and friends celebrate together before the wedding day.
For many brides, it’s simply part of the process. For me, it was an intentional decision that carried considerable emotional weight.
While my body carries a South Asian origin, culturally, I often feel far removed from it. I don’t speak the language. I didn’t grow up immersed in South Asian traditions. I wasn’t raised celebrating the cultural practices that might have connected me to that part of the world.
For much of my life, I have felt, culturally at least, more white-British than anything else, from the culture I was adopted into rather than the one I was born into.
There’s a particular kind of uncertainty that can come with transracial and intercountry adoption.
You can look like you belong to a culture while simultaneously feeling like an outsider to it. Your appearance suggests one story, while your lived experience tells another.
And the truth is, even if I don’t feel culturally South Asian in many ways, that part of my story still exists.
My story didn’t start at the point of my adoption. My body carries a history that began somewhere else; genealogy from another place, a different family, someone who carried and birthed me, ancestors both alive and returned to the ground.
I questioned whether I had the right to include something that I hadn’t grown up with. I wondered how it might be perceived by others, particularly by people who are culturally South Asian and for whom these traditions are deeply rooted in family, community, and history.
But I also wondered how it might be perceived by my white family, both adoptive and in-laws.
I worried there might be confusion or judgment in displaying a traditionally South Asian practice within a wedding that was otherwise largely Western.
But I desperately didn’t want to give it up either.
Throughout my life, my relationship to myself, my body, my ethnicity and my culture - or even South Asian culture more broadly - has evolved. I went from feeling and wanting to be completely disconnected, to slowly incorporating small but meaningful symbols: the flag, the kukri, the momos, and wanting to learn more about where I come from.
While there might be criticism that these are surface-level connections, I would argue that adoptees have to start somewhere. The way adoptees connect with culture - particularly if we were relinquished very young - will always be different from those born into it.
And again, different is okay.
Regardless, I was ready to incorporate this piece of tradition into my wedding day.
And I’m so glad I did.
In counselling, questions of identity often arise in similar ways.
People navigating adoption, migration, or cross-cultural lives frequently find themselves holding multiple identities that don’t always fit together easily. There can be grief for what was lost, questions about where one belongs, and pressure to explain a story that doesn’t have simple answers.
It can also become especially complex when approaching major life events like weddings.
What traditions will you include?
What parts of yourself will you honour?
What does your wedding say about who you are?
And if you are in an intercultural relationship, other questions are often part of the process:
Where will we have the wedding?
Which cultures do we honour?
Do we have two weddings?
While I’m not a wedding planner or a wedding expert, I do understand that weddings, birthdays, holidays, and other significant life events can have a powerful emotional impact. Therapy can provide a space where these questions don’t have to be resolved immediately. Issues can have the space to be explored.
Identity is rarely a fixed destination, and more often than not, it continues to evolve as we learn more about ourselves and grow.
For many people, healing begins not by finding perfect clarity, but by allowing space for complexity.
For some, that might look like reconnecting with culture.
For others, it might mean redefining what belonging looks like.
For me, it meant wearing mehendi on my wedding day.
Gratitude has its place, but it shouldn’t be a muzzle."
— Nadiya Hussain
That quote stopped me in my tracks. It put words to something I’ve felt — and tiptoed around — my whole life.
While Nadiya Hussain, a British chef, author, and TV presenter, was speaking about her experience as a Muslim woman and daughter of immigrants, her words deeply resonated with me as an adoptee.
Because here’s the truth:
I’m not grateful for my adoption.
There. I said it.
I am grateful for many of the good things my adoptive parents gave me, such as abundant love, care and support. But I don’t believe I should be more grateful than a non-adopted child is to their parents. They were also looking to grow their family, and we generally don’t usually expect biological children to feel indebted for simply being born.
And yet, for many adoptees, gratitude feels like a script. One we’ve been expected to follow, even when it doesn’t fit.
So many of us were raised on stories that framed adoption as a second chance at life. A “better” life. A lucky break.
As I wrote in a previous blog, after the Korean Intercountry Adoption Scandal broke, we’ve seen similar patterns across almost every country that adopted out children in large numbers. Scandals have revealed forged paperwork, families misled or coerced, children taken without consent — from street kidnappings to so-called ‘baby factories’ operating on the black market.
And yet, adoptees are still often framed as the fortunate ones.
This belief erases the truth that some adoptees are harmed - even abused - by the very people who were supposed to keep them safe. Just last week, Olivia Griffin, an intercountry adoptee from China to the United States, was awarded almost 30 million USD to help her rebuild her life after surviving harrowing abuse by her adoptive parents.
When adoptees are considered “lucky” by default, it makes it even harder for survivors of abuse in adoptive families to speak up or seek help. The stigma of “biting the hand that fed you” runs deep.
For many of us, we may live our whole lives without knowing the truth; without knowing whether we were taken from a family who wanted to keep us, without access to our adoption papers, and without acknowledgement from the countries we left.
So when people call us “lucky,” they’re usually only seeing the part of the story that begins after adoption. They don’t see the loss, the grief, or the haunting possibility that we were never meant to be adopted at all.
The “lucky” narrative doesn’t account for:
Adoption isn’t just a gain. It’s also a loss. And we need space to acknowledge that.
Sometimes I’ve felt a deep sense of guilt for allowing myself to feel sad about the things that I’ve lost. Especially because my adoptive family are good people. They’ve loved me, supported me, and tried their best.
But even the best intentions can’t erase the grief of losing your first family, even if you never knew them.
They can’t make up for the sense of disconnection.
Or the internal conflict of being raised in a culture that doesn’t fully see or understand you.
So being told “you should be grateful” invalidates that grief. It makes it harder to talk honestly about what adoption costs some of us. And it can create deep shame when your inner world doesn’t match the script you’re expected to follow.
If gratitude is something we’re forced to feel, or told we should feel, it stops being gratitude at all. It becomes performance.
I’ve met adoptees who feel grateful, and I’ve met adoptees who feel the exact opposite. And all of it is valid.
There is no one way to feel. There is no single adoption experience.
But the moment we expect gratitude from adoptees, especially when it comes at the cost of their voice, their grief, or their questions, we’ve gone wrong.
Gratitude should never be the price of being loved.
One of the most damaging things adoptees can experience is the silencing of their story.
When you’re not allowed to talk about your first family.
When you’re discouraged from asking where you came from.
When you sense that your sadness makes other people uncomfortable, so you stop speaking altogether.
That silence can become internalised. You start to believe your pain is a problem. You second-guess your feelings. You try to be the version of yourself that makes everyone else feel okay.
And that’s not fair.
It’s not fair to carry that weight alone. It’s not fair to be asked to erase parts of yourself to fit someone else’s narrative. It’s not fair to be told your gratitude matters more than your grief.
And we know this affects adoptees mental health. We know that adopted people are 4x more likely to attempt to end their life than non-adopted people.
We know that adoptees, just like everyone else, need space to feel seen and heard.
If you're an adoptee and any of this resonates - the pressure to feel grateful, the silencing, the internal conflict - I want you to know you’re not alone.
You deserve space to explore those feelings without judgement.
As a fellow adoptee and a qualified therapist, I offer therapy that understands the complexity of adoption.
If you're ready to unpack some of this, I’d love to walk alongside you. Feel free to book a session below.
I am adopted, and last week it was my birthday.
For a long time, I didn’t talk to people about the negative parts of being adopted, of being relinquished through abandonment and growing up with no information about my first, or biological, family.
The reality is though, that I am both a transracial and intercountry adoptee, and this has had and continues to have a huge emotional impact on my life and my identity.
However, even a fairly neutral statement like above is often in direct conflict with the commonly accepted and superficial narrative that society and the general population have of adoption. Many consider adoption a ‘cut and paste’ exercise into making a family; a beautiful opportunity to ‘save a child’ from poor or difficult circumstances. A happy ending, not to be spoken about further.
Historically, there has been little consideration given to the birth or first family, or to the ongoing difficulties adoptees face after their adoption. In fact, it was not uncommon for adoptees who spoke out about their struggles to be ostracized and shamed, a common reply being that 'they were ungrateful to their adoptive parents' and should consider themselves 'lucky to have a family'.
However, the reality of adoption is that it is nuanced, complex, lifelong, and always has loss at its core. For a new family to be created, there is always a loss of an original one.
For me, birthdays now bring up conflicting and bittersweet emotions.
As a child, I happily celebrated and looked forward to my birthdays. I have very loving parents who always put the utmost effort into giving me wonderful memories. It is true that when I think about my early birthdays, I recall happily choosing cakes, excitedly opening presents, playing party games and being surrounded by my friends and my family. In some ways, I could not have wished for happier memories.
Growing up I tried not to think about my adoption, desperately trying to reject the ‘thing’ that made me different to my family and my peers and really, pretty much everyone that I knew.
However, after many years of personal therapy, I no longer try to escape from the fact I was adopted, and I feel a lot more connected to my first mother. I see her as an integral part of my story and myself. I understand that I came from somewhere - specifically - someone. Someone that I was completely dependent on for 9 months or so... I listened to their heartbeat day after day, they were all I felt and were my entire world, and then suddenly they were gone forever.
So now, each year, I spend a portion of my birthday wondering about the well-being of that person, who they were or are, and if they think about me. It’s a strange type of painful longing. Nancy Varrier in her 1993 book calls the separation of mother and child shortly after childbirth a ‘primal wound’.
Like many adoptees, especially those who are internationally adopted, I will likely never know details about my life and my story that others take for granted: When and where was I born? Do I look like my birth mother? Do I have other siblings? Do my birth parents miss me? What is my medical history? Am I from a big family? What is my ancestry? Where does my family fit in my birth culture?
On my birthdays, or around the time I was born (because my birthday is estimated) I find it hard to imagine that there isn’t someone, somewhere out there thinking of me and what became of my life. Out of any time during the year, it is, after all, the most likely.
Every adoptee will have different feelings about their adoption, their first family, themselves, and their birthdays. We all have different personal histories, different experiences, and different upbringings. Some will be able to celebrate their birthdays happily while others will struggle.
A Google Search with the terms ‘adoptees and birthdays’ will show top results from adoptees blogging about their emotional difficulties. From the website Reddit, the top suggestion is ‘Do most adoptees hate their birthdays too?’. Facebook groups I am a part of comprised of transracial adoptees from all over the world often have posts by adoptees about their difficulties with birthdays and not meeting the societal expectations of wanting a celebration.
The difficulty can then come if people around them, such as work colleagues, friends or adoptive family insist there should be a celebration and the adoptee should be grateful, smiling and happy for the duration. For a lot of adoptees, birthdays can represent a day of loss and trying to force someone to repress and ignore their feelings generally leads to mental harm.
Already adoptees have a higher risk of suicide, depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders than those who are not adopted. A 2021 survey by Adoption UK revealed there are double the number of adoptees between the ages of 16 and 25 involved in the mental health system than those who are not adopted.
Keeping the above in mind, it is therefore incredibly important that adoptees find safe spaces where they can acknowledge and process their grief, pain or trauma instead of having it dismissed or denied.
These are just a few coping strategies that may prove helpful:
Ultimately, I hope that every adoptee can find the space they need to be with their feelings, on their birthdays and every other day of the year.
Of course, some adoptees may not struggle through their birthdays at all, and find their birthdays a completely happy experience of celebrating their history and life. This is, of course, also completely valid and absolutely nothing to feel guilty about either.
Adoptees may struggle with birthdays or any other significant milestones or family gatherings. Please be accepting of this and understanding of adoptees who may need time and space to process the complexity and trauma of adoption.
Perhaps if you have adoptees in your life, have adopted children, adopted friends, or work with adoptees in a professional setting – please take a moment to ensure you are not invalidating the grief of adoptees or oversimplifying their story.
Like most aspects of life, things are not black and white but comprised of many shades. I can personally be simultaneously grieving the loss of my first mother, while also very happy to speak to my adoptive mother. I can feel longing and sadness for my lost name, language, culture, and ancestry, while also being grateful for the privileges associated with my adopted nationality.
Adoption is not simple, and for some of us neither are our birthdays.
