04/30/2025
Feeling like you don’t belong anywhere is in grief. If you feel disconnected from others, from yourself, from the world in general, if you don’t recognize your life anymore — you are not alone. Grief is a profoundly disorienting and isolating experience.
After a life-altering loss, the seemingly ordered universe is split open into a big yawning chasm, and no reality makes sense anymore. For a time, we are unhinged from the cultural forms we’ve laid down in human life. Things we agree to as a culture — like pieces of paper as fair trade for groceries, or lunchtime happening at noon — are revealed as empty symbols, unrelated to anything intrinsically...real.
Grief strips life down to its irreducible essentials. In that visceral state, your distance from the “normal” world can feel insurmountable. There’s an uncomfortable truth here: you are not like other people. Not right now.
The world has been split open. Things “ordinary,” non-grieving people do as a matter of course will not always make sense, or feel meaningful, to you. Things you enjoyed doing Before may now feel hollow, or make you feel worse because they highlight how much your life has changed.
Whether it lasts a moment, or feels interminable, confusion and disconnection is very common. It does tend to ebb and flow, in relation to other stressors in your life, emotionally heavy tasks you have to complete, and how well you’re eating, staying hydrated, and sleeping.
This is why we go back to tending your physical body as bedrock: supporting the body can help reduce the signs of grief’s effects on your mind. If you’d like some help with this, there are tools and exercises in my guided journal, , for keeping track of & tending your physical self-care. Find it wherever you buy books.
More info & ordering links at https://refugeingrief.com/books
How about you? Do you now or have you felt completely disconnected from your own life and/or the rest of the world? Let us know in the comments.
