Invisible Loss is an acute inner emotional response stemming from a seemingly normalized experience.
Its current outward restricted emotional response has been regulated by western society and culture, it currently has no allotted words.
When we express our invisible losses we are able to process a past traumatic experience, we can make meaning out of it and gain awareness of our self and our life.
It does not necessarily stem from a traditional loss.
It is the result of an intense emotional experience that had no awareness or permission to integrate with everyday life.
It was not considered for reflection by the self or a social group therefore not validated for its authenticity and real existence.
It has existed as an emotion that was never expressed with language that can describe it with accuracy.
It is often misunderstood and referred to as a secondary type of loss or ambiguous.
It is often assumed that we know what this kind of loss is as professionals track it only through the limited linguistic perspective that they have from their patients or themselves.
Articulating and tracing this type of loss in your life can lessen the unnecessary suffering that takes place due to the lack of language and validation. Uncovering this type of loss doesn’t take away the significance of other losses.
On the contrary, it aids in the whole reentry landscape of our life.
We exist within bigger collective structures.
What is invisible to us is invisible only because it is invisible to the group outside of the self.
Invisible to the collective also means invisible to the self.
Learning to speak the language of Life Reentry, which stems from understanding the hardest days of your life, will help you in managing the present in ways that can feel validating. Validation is the one thing we are searching for everywhere. In every relationship. In every choice we make.
Christina Rasmussen is the author of Second Firsts, Where Did You Go? and the upcoming book Invisible Loss. She is the founder and creator of the Life Reentry Institute and Foundation.
She coined the term “The Waiting Room” (a stuck place between two lives before and after a loss) and in 2014 discovered the presence of a type of loss that was unseen and unarticulated while running her Life Reentry groups.
She named it Invisible. Her mission with this free library resource is to name every Invisible loss and bring validation to every person who needs it. She hopes that this library will help people witness themselves and find words for emotions that feel trapped with no language.