Walking Through the Valley: Finding Meaning in All Forms of Loss

When the fabric of your life suddenly tears—whether through death, divorce, job loss, or any fundamental change that disrupts who you thought you were or where you thought you were going—it can feel like wandering into an endless darkness. I know this valley all too well: the contours of grief that stretch into infinity, the fog that clouds everyday moments, the weight that presses upon your chest even when you’re trying to simply breathe.

Grief is not just an emotion; it’s a journey, a process, and sometimes, a brutal teacher. What I’ve come to understand through my own experiences and in supporting others through their losses is that grief isn’t limited to death. We grieve broken dreams, ended relationships, lost health, career changes, children leaving home, friendships that fade, and the thousand small deaths that shape a human life. Grief is the response to any significant loss—anything that changes our understanding of ourselves or our world.

Expanding Our Understanding of Loss

While most of us associate grief with bereavement—the death of someone we love—grief can accompany any event that disrupts our sense of normalcy or challenges our identity. The Cleveland Clinic defines grief as “the experience of coping with loss” that can accompany “any event that disrupts or challenges our sense of normalcy or ourselves” (Cleveland Clinic, 2025).

Consider the many forms of loss that can trigger grief:

The death of a loved one or pet
Divorce, separation, or the end of a significant relationship
Loss of health due to illness, disability, or aging
Job loss, retirement, or career changes
Infertility, miscarriage, or reproductive challenges
Children leaving home (empty nest syndrome)
Loss of a home, financial security, or lifestyle
Friendship endings or geographic moves that separate us from community
The diagnosis of a serious illness in ourselves or someone we love
Loss of physical or cognitive abilities
Shattered dreams, goals, or expectations that don’t materialize
Loss of innocence, safety, or worldview following trauma
Changes in someone we love due to addiction, dementia, or mental illness

Each of these losses represents a form of death—the death of what was, what we expected, or what we hoped would be. As HelpGuide notes, “Any loss can cause grief,” and it’s essential to understand that “whatever your loss, it’s personal to you, so don’t feel ashamed about how you feel, or believe that it’s somehow only appropriate to grieve for certain things” (HelpGuide, 2025).

Understanding the Landscape: The Kübler-Ross Model Across All Losses

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross originally developed her five-stage model while working with terminally ill patients, but these stages have since been applied to many forms of loss and change. The stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—provide a framework for understanding our emotional responses to any significant disruption in our lives (Kübler-Ross & Kessler, 2005).

Denial: The initial shock and disbelief that serves as a protective buffer when unwelcome news first hits. “This can’t be happening.” Whether it’s a cancer diagnosis, a pink slip, or the discovery of a partner’s infidelity, denial helps us cope with information that threatens to overwhelm us.
Anger: The outrage at the unfairness of it all, often directed at others, ourselves, or circumstances beyond our control. “Why is this happening to me?” This might manifest as rage at an ex-spouse, fury at a former employer, or anger at our own body for betraying us.
Bargaining: The desperate negotiation in which we attempt to reverse our loss or regain control. “If only I had…” or “Maybe if I…” We might bargain with God, try to win back an ex-partner, or obsessively research ways to reverse a medical condition.
Depression: The profound sadness that settles in as reality becomes unavoidable. “I can’t bear this.” This might look like mourning the life we thought we’d have, grieving our former identity, or feeling overwhelmed by an uncertain future.
Acceptance: We should not be happy about our loss, but acknowledge reality and find ways to move forward. “I’m ready to live with this new normal.” This might mean rebuilding after divorce, adapting to a new health reality, or creating meaning from career setbacks.

It’s crucial to understand that these stages aren’t linear checkboxes to mark off. We might cycle through several stages in a single day or revisit stages we thought we’d completed months later, triggered by an anniversary, a familiar song, or an unexpected reminder of what we’ve lost.

Beyond the Stages: The Search for Meaning in All Forms of Loss

While the Kübler-Ross model gives us vocabulary for the emotional landscape of loss, Viktor Frankl’s work offers something equally valuable: a pathway forward through any form of suffering. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist who developed logotherapy, proposed that our primary drive is not for pleasure or power but for meaning.

In “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Frankl wrote about how finding purpose in the most horrific suffering enabled survival in Nazi concentration camps. His insights apply to any form of loss we might face. Frankl identified three ways to find meaning in life: through work, through love, and through suffering (Frankl, 1959/2006).

When we face any significant loss—whether it’s the death of a relationship, the loss of our health, or the shattering of our life plans—we’re often confronted with what Frankl called an “existential vacuum.” This profound emptiness and loss of direction can occur whether we’re grieving a person or the person we thought we were.

In this void, we have the opportunity to choose meaning. This doesn’t minimize our loss or suggest that everything “happens for a reason,” but instead acknowledges our capacity to determine what our suffering will mean to us and how we will carry it forward.

Creating meaning through work: Perhaps you channel your experience with infertility into supporting others facing similar struggles, or your job loss leads you to discover a more fulfilling career path. Your loss becomes the catalyst for meaningful contribution.

Creating meaning through love: Maybe your divorce teaches you about your capacity for resilience and leads to deeper, more authentic relationships. Your experience of loss deepens your ability to connect with and support others.

Creating meaning through suffering: Your illness, financial setback, or family crisis becomes a teacher, showing you strengths you didn’t know you had or clarifying what truly matters in life.

The Road Forward: Insights from M. Scott Peck

In “The Road Less Traveled,” M. Scott Peck offers wisdom that applies to all forms of loss and change. Peck begins with a stark but liberating truth: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths” (Peck, 1978/2003). Once we accept this reality—rather than expecting life to be easy, fair, or predictable—we’re better equipped to face its inevitable challenges and losses.

Peck emphasizes several principles that serve as companions on any grief journey:

Discipline: All forms of grief require emotional and spiritual discipline. Whether we’re processing a death, divorce, job loss, or health crisis, we must delay the gratification of quick fixes and easy answers, accept responsibility for our healing process, dedicate ourselves to the truth of our experience, and balance confronting our pain with continuing to live.

Love as Action: Peck’s perspective on love is that love is not a feeling but an activity and investment (Peck, 1978/2003). In any form of grief, we continue to express love through remembrance, extending ourselves for others’ growth, and eventually, opening our hearts again despite the risk of future loss.

Grace: Sometimes our healing comes not through our own efforts but through unexpected gifts of insight, connection, or peace that seem to arrive just when needed—whether it’s an unexpected job opportunity after a layoff, a new friendship after a move, or a moment of profound acceptance amid illness.

Navigating Different Types of Grief

Anticipatory Grief

Sometimes we begin grieving before the actual loss occurs. This might happen when we know someone is dying, when we’re facing an inevitable life change like retirement or children leaving home, or when we recognize that a relationship is ending. Anticipatory grief can allow you to prepare for your loss, resolve any unfinished business, or say your goodbyes (HelpGuide, 2025).

Disenfranchised Grief

Some losses aren’t socially recognized or supported, making our grief feel illegitimate. This might include grieving the end of an affair, the loss of an abusive parent (where we think we “should” be sad but instead feel relief), a miscarriage, or a pet’s death. Society may not validate these losses, but they are real and deserve to be honored.

Ambiguous Loss

Sometimes we lose someone who is still physically present but psychologically absent due to dementia, addiction, or severe mental illness. We grieve the person they used to be while navigating a complex relationship with who they’ve become.

Cumulative Grief

Multiple losses occurring close together can compound our grief, making it difficult to process any single loss completely. This might happen during major life transitions when we deal with job changes, moves, health issues, and relationship shifts.

Finding Your Path Through the Valley

Drawing from these frameworks, here are insights for navigating any form of grief:

Validate Your Experience

Your grief is legitimate regardless of what you’ve lost. Whether it’s a death, divorce, job loss, health crisis, or shattered dream, your feelings deserve acknowledgment. Don’t let others minimize your experience or rush your process.

Recognize Grief in Disguise

Sometimes we don’t recognize we’re grieving because the loss wasn’t a death. Feeling sad, angry, or lost after a job change, move, or relationship ending is normal. These are grief responses, and they deserve the same care and attention we’d give to bereavement.

Honor Your Unique Process

Your grief fingerprint is as unique as you are. Some people need to talk, others to be silent. Some need community, others solitude. Some find comfort in rituals, others in activity. There is no “right way” to grieve any type of loss.

Connect with Sources of Meaning

Ask yourself: What can this loss teach me? How might this experience help me grow or serve others? What values or strengths is this crisis revealing? What matters most to me now? As Frankl suggests, meaning can transform suffering from merely endured to purposeful.

Practice Radical Self-Compassion

Grief can bring waves of unexpected emotion—guilt about feeling relieved after a complicated relationship ends, anger at ourselves for not preventing a loss, fear about an uncertain future. These feelings are not failures but natural responses to significant life changes.

Seek Appropriate Support

Not everyone can handle the reality of grief, regardless of its source. Find those who can sit with you in your pain without trying to fix or rush you through it. Professional counselors who understand loss, support groups for your specific type of grief, and spiritual advisors can offer invaluable guidance.

Give Yourself Permission to Grieve

We live in a culture that’s more comfortable with certain types of grief than others. Allow yourself to grieve whatever you’ve lost, even if others don’t understand. Your loss matters because it mattered to you.

The Unexpected Gifts of All Forms of Grief

While there is nothing positive about loss itself, the journey through grief, regardless of its source, can yield unexpected gifts:

Deeper compassion for others facing similar losses
Clarified values about what truly matters in life
Increased resilience and confidence in your ability to survive difficulty
Greater appreciation for what remains in your life
Stronger connections with others who understand your experience
Personal growth and self-discovery that might not have occurred otherwise
Spiritual development and a more profound understanding of life’s meaning

Living with Integrated Grief

The goal of moving through grief isn’t to “get over” your loss but to integrate it into the new person you’re becoming. Whether you’ve lost a person, a relationship, health, a job, or a dream, that loss becomes part of your story. The question isn’t how to forget or minimize what you’ve lost, but how to carry it forward to honor its significance while allowing you to continue growing.

Psychologists now speak of “continuing bonds” rather than “letting go”—the idea that we don’t sever connections with what we’ve lost but rather transform them. This applies to all forms of loss. You might carry forward the lessons learned from a failed relationship, the values instilled by a job that shaped you, or the perspective gained from a health crisis.

Conclusion: Grief as Universal Teacher

Loss is the price we pay for having loved, hoped, dreamed, and invested ourselves in life. Every connection we make, goal, and identity we embrace carries within it the seeds of potential loss. This isn’t a flaw in the system—it’s the system itself.

Grief teaches us that we are resilient enough to love despite the risk of loss. It shows us what matters most when everything else is stripped away. It connects us to our deepest humanity and others who have walked similar paths.

As Frankl observed, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances” (Frankl, 1959/2006). This freedom applies to every form of loss we might face.

Peck reminds us that growth comes through confronting life’s difficulties, not avoiding them (Peck, 1978/2003). Every loss we face—death, divorce, illness, job loss, or shattered expectations—offers the opportunity for transformation.

The journey through grief isn’t about returning to who we were before our loss. It’s about discovering who we can become because of it. Honoring what we’ve lost while choosing to continue growing creates meaning from suffering and transforms our pain into purpose.

Whatever form your grief takes, remember that it is both an ending and a beginning. It marks not just what you’ve lost, but who you’re becoming in response to that loss. And in that becoming lies both the challenge and the promise of being fully human.

Kevin Brough – Ascend Counseling & Wellness – Ascendcw.com – 435.688.1111

References

Cleveland Clinic. (2025, March 19). Grief: What it is, symptoms, and how to cope. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24787-grief

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1959)

HelpGuide. (2025, March 13). Coping with grief and loss: Stages of grief and how to heal. HelpGuide. https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss

Kessler, D. (2019). Finding meaning: The sixth stage of grief. Scribner.

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.

Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Scribner.

Peck, M. S. (2003). The road less traveled: A new psychology of love, traditional values, and spiritual growth (25th anniversary ed.). Touchstone. (Original work published 1978)

Tyrrell, P., Harberger, S., & Schoo, C. (2023). Kubler-Ross stages of dying and subsequent models of grief. StatPearls Publishing.