When I received a call from my late partner’s job, a coworker of his said to me, “I need to speak to his family. They must be so heartbroken.”

She asked about his relatives and dismissed that the woman she was speaking to was also grieving.

Over time, especially in the beginning, those words were all I heard: “How is his family?”

And I thought, “But I’m family. What about me? I’m hurting too.”

Being an unmarried widow doesn’t make you less valuable. But it can feel that way. I’m unsure why people assume we should “move on” and consider ourselves “lucky.”

How do you “bounce back” and “get over it” when what has been lost cannot be replaced? I can replace money, a home, broken glass, or paint on the chipping wall. But I cannot replace a human life, and the connection we wove together.

So, I want to share with you what my late grandmother, a woman who became widowed in her early 60s, taught me. She helped me normalize the pain of being an unmarried widow. Here’s what she said:

“I know how you feel. You don’t expect to lose someone so soon.”

My late grandmother said it will always be hard to lose someone you love. Whether married, dating, or engaged, no one wants to lose a soulmate, and the pain of no longer having the person you adored is hard on anyone.

“I still think about your grandfather all these years.”

Grandma said there wasn’t much difference between an unmarried widow and a married widow. We both cherished the same thing: our person, and we both wanted the same thing: to live life with them forever.

She survived her husband by almost 25 years, and when she died at 85-years-old, she was still talking about him. She said she knew what it meant to meet someone and be sad that you no longer have them.

“A (wo)man who views you as theirs is special. It’s nice to have someone.”

My grandmother would talk about how my grandfather treated her. And because I’d often recount stories of my beloved, she’d share stories from when she and her husband weren’t yet married. I didn’t think about it then, but what she was doing was placing herself in my shoes. Meeting me where I was. She didn’t talk about all the love that grew during their marriage. She talked about the love that was present before it. And Grandma continued expressing that marriage doesn’t make a loving relationship. People who love each other do.

Ways to Acknowledge Your Loss When Others Dismiss It

Gain radical acceptance: We cannot change what other people think about us or our grief. We can share our stories and hope to educate them, but we cannot change them. It’s not your job to convince people of your grief’s worthiness. This may be hard to accept. However, once we do, we find relief. Grief is hard enough. Please don’t exhaust yourself trying to gain someone’s approval of your feelings. You deserve better.

Honor your loss: When our loss is dismissed, the “cure” (and I use that word lightly, friend) is to honor it. Acknowledge how you feel. You can do this by talking to a friend, sending me an email, journaling, or doing something in memory of your person. Having others dismiss your pain doesn’t mean you should too. Feel it. See it. You’re going through a real experience, and that deserves genuine care.