Some grief is loud. There’s a funeral. Flowers. Sympathy cards. A closed casket and open wounds. People show up with casseroles and stories and tears that make sense to everyone in the room.
But then there’s the other kind of grief. The quieter kind. The one that has no rituals, no acknowledgment, no clean ending. It’s the kind you feel when the person you needed… just never showed up. Even when they were right in front of you.
This is about that kind of mourning.
The kind where you’re grieving a parent who’s still alive.
Or who recently passed, and left behind more confusion than closure.
It’s Okay to Grieve What You Never Got
Maybe your parent was emotionally distant. Maybe they were abusive. Maybe they loved you the only way they knew how, but it never felt like enough.
Maybe they missed your childhood while being consumed by their own pain, their addictions, their narcissism, their absence. Maybe they provided everything you needed on paper—a roof, clothes, food—but you went to bed every night starving for connection.
And here you are, an adult, carrying a grief that’s hard to name. You’re not just mourning who they were—you’re mourning who they never became.
You’re Not Ungrateful for Feeling This Way
This is one of the hardest parts of this kind of grief. The guilt.
But they did their best.
But they had it harder than me.
But they didn’t hit me.
But at least they stayed.
It’s okay to hold compassion for your parent and acknowledge your pain. You can understand their limitations without minimizing what you went without. This isn’t about blame—it’s about truth. Your nervous system doesn’t care if they had good intentions. It remembers the yelling. The silence. The walking on eggshells. The constant sense that love was conditional.
You’re allowed to grieve that.
Grief Doesn’t Need a Death Certificate
Sometimes the person you’re grieving is still alive. Sometimes they’re still in your life—still calling, still asking for things, still acting like nothing ever happened. And it messes with your head.
Because how do you mourn someone you still see at holidays? How do you process loss when the thing you lost was never tangible?
You do it like this:
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You acknowledge the absence that shaped you.
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You name the ways you adapted to survive their love or lack of it.
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You let yourself feel the anger, the sorrow, the longing—not to drown in it, but to stop pretending it isn’t there.
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And eventually, you accept that your story is real, even if they never validate it.
Mourning Doesn’t Require a Relationship
Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is walk away. Or set boundaries so firm they feel like concrete. You don’t have to stay close to grieve. You don’t have to fix things to heal.
Letting go of the hope that they’ll finally change—that they’ll become the parent you always wanted—is a kind of death in itself. A necessary one.
Grief doesn’t just come after loss. It makes space for peace. And letting go of hope is often the first step toward building a different kind of life—one where your worth isn’t tied to someone else’s ability to love you.
Create the Closure They Never Gave You
You might never get the apology. The explanation. The moment where they finally see you and say, “I’m sorry. I should have done better.”
So don’t wait for it.
Write the letter they’ll never read.
Say the words you wish they’d said to you—to your inner child.
Be the safe adult you never had.
And if you’re a parent now yourself: break the cycle. Give your children what you never got—not perfectly, but consciously.
That is how you mourn a parent who wasn’t what you needed.
By naming it.
By feeling it.
And by deciding that the story gets to end differently with you.