Identity loss after grief or trauma can leave you feeling disconnected from who you used to be. It doesn’t happen all at once – it unfolds quietly, in the space between who you were and who you’re becoming.
A few days from now, it will be my mum’s 14th heaveniversary. Fourteen years since everything changed. Not just my world, but me. When I lost her, I didn’t only lose a parent. I lost my role model. The kind of woman who didn’t announce her strength – she lived it. Life handed her more than most: divorce, baby loss, cancer. And still, she carried on. No complaints. No pause. She just… lived through it.
For a long time, I tried to become that version of strength. I tried to be useful, resilient, to keep going – no matter what. And maybe that’s why, when I lost her, I didn’t just lose my mum. I lost the mirror that told me who I was supposed to be.
Fourteen years later, grief still finds me in unexpected places. Quietly. Suddenly. Without warning. It slips in when I hit a milestone I want to share with her. When something beautiful happens, and she isn’t there to witness it. When I got married, I wondered how I would walk down the aisle without the person who had shaped me. I used to believe I wouldn’t survive without her. And yet, here I am. Living. Breathing. Continuing. But not unchanged – because survival changes you. Loss, I learned, doesn’t just take people; it reshapes the person who remains.
Read also ‘A Letter to My Dear Mum in Heaven‘
When identity loss begins
And just as I was learning how to live with that loss… life shifted again. Five years ago, my accident changed everything. Again. Not in one defining moment – but in the slow, disorienting unravelling of who I thought I was. Because identity doesn’t disappear all at once, does it? It loosens – through hesitation, exhaustion, the quiet shock of not recognising yourself.
For years, I knew exactly who I was. The reliable one. The one who shows up. Work didn’t just give me a role – it gave me shape. And when my body stopped cooperating, when pain replaced certainty, I didn’t just lose a job. I experienced identity loss. I lost the version of myself that the world recognised.
Read also ‘The Weigh You Carry – What if This Is Grief?‘
Grieving the person you used to be
And maybe you’ve felt that too? That strange, quiet disorientation of still being here – but no longer fitting into your own life the same way. Have you ever grieved someone you used to be? Because we talk about grief as if it belongs only to death. But what about the losses that don’t come with funerals? The loss of your old life. Your old body. Your old certainty. The loss of the person you were before everything changed. No one prepares you for that. No one tells you that one day, you might stand in front of a mirror and realise – you recognise your face, but not the life behind it.
What happens when you can no longer perform in the way you used to? When you need help, instead of offering it? When you slow down instead of pushing through? When the role you’ve always played… no longer fits? Who are you then?
Read also ‘Disenfranchised Grief: What if Your Pain Has a Name?‘
Healing isn’t returning
For a long time, I thought healing meant returning. Returning to who I was before my mum died. Before the accident. Before everything changed. But life doesn’t offer returns, does it? Only transitions and becoming. And becoming doesn’t always feel like progress. Sometimes it feels like a loss. Sometimes it feels like letting go of a version of yourself you loved. So let me ask you this: What if healing isn’t about getting back to who you were, but learning to live as someone new?
These days, I still don’t have all the answers. But I am starting to see this differently. Maybe the woman I used to be isn’t gone. Maybe she’s folded into someone softer. Slower. More aware. Someone who is learning – very slowly – that worth isn’t something you prove. It’s something you carry.
If you’re in the in-between
I recently shared some of these reflections on identity loss in the Get Griefy Magazine – Women’s Issue, alongside other voices speaking on the kinds of grief we don’t always name. And I felt so grateful – not just to be included, but to be part of a conversation that says: This matters. This counts. And this kind of loss is real, too (you can read my contribution on p. 43).
Fourteen years without my mum. Five years since my accident. So many versions of me in between. Still grieving; still becoming. Still here. And lately, I’ve been sitting with one question – the kind that doesn’t demand an answer, just honesty: If you are no longer who you used to be… Who are you now?
Read also ‘What if You’re Grieving What’s Still Here? Understanding Ambiguous Loss‘
Redefining identity after loss
If that question feels heavy for you – if you’re standing somewhere between who you were and who you’re becoming, unsure how to name the space in between – you’re not alone. This is the kind of loss we rarely talk about. Identity loss – the quiet unravelling, the in-between. I see it. I live it. And I work with it.
As a certified Grief Educator and Grief Coach, I support individuals navigating not just the loss of others, but also the loss of self, roles, and life as they knew it. I’m also currently writing a book about the losses we often don’t name – the ones that don’t come with sympathy cards or condolences, but still reshape us just the same.
So let me ask you, “What would it feel like to not go through this alone?” If you’re here, in this in-between…you don’t have to hold it all by yourself. Sometimes, being seen in the middle of becoming…changes everything.
As always, I’d love to hear your reflections. Have you experienced this kind of grief? What helped you through it?
Till the next blog post,
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