When Tess White sits with someone who has just lost a spouse of forty years, or a daughter who has lost her mother, or a caregiver whose loved one has finally died after years of devoted care, she often hears a version of the same thing. They’re not only grieving the person. They’re grieving themselves.
“With all of these things, your identity is wrapped up in the person that died,” says Tess, a grief counselor at HopeHealth. “So not only are you losing that person, but you’re feeling like you’re losing a piece of yourself.”
It’s one of the most common — and least-talked-about — dimensions of grief. And it’s the starting place for Life Beyond Loss: Discovering You, a support group Tess developed and now facilitates at HopeHealth.
> A new “Life Beyond Loss” six-week series for young adults (18-35) launches on June 18! Learn more here.
What grief does to identity
Relationships don’t just fill our lives — they shape who we understand ourselves to be. When someone central to our world dies, it can leave a question behind that feels impossible to answer: ‘Who am I now?’ That was something Tess noticed over and over in her one-on-one work as a grief counselor, even as each person’s grief was entirely their own.
“For many people, when we lose a loved one, it can feel like a huge part of our identity has been stripped away,” she says. The loss often reaches further than anyone expected.
“We all have past identities, all these different pieces of ourselves — maybe as an artist or a sibling or a professional,” Tess says. “Sometimes these past selves seem lost, or pushed aside. But they’re still in us. When grief changes you, how do you start to rebuild your past identities, or maybe learn about different strengths or passions that you didn’t know were there?”
This isn’t a failure of grief. It’s part of it. And recognizing that can be, for many people, a quiet relief.
Finding your way back to yourself: Where to start
There is no roadmap through grief, but are many paths through. Many start with gentle questions.
- Notice what lights you up — even faintly. Think back to past versions of yourself that felt alive or energized. A long-abandoned hobby. A kind of work you used to love. A place you always felt most like yourself. Ask: does that still feel like something? If it does, consider it an invitation. “Start small and see where it leads you,” Tess says.
- Pay attention to envy. It sounds counterintuitive, but Tess sees it as a useful signal. “Every emotion serves a purpose,” she says. When you feel envious of someone — their ease, their sense of purpose, their creative life — it’s often pointing toward something you want to cultivate in yourself. Get curious about what, specifically, draws your attention.
- Follow what you’re already seeking. What have you been searching lately? What books or articles have caught your eye? These small, quiet interests can point toward who you’re becoming. “What is something you’ve always been curious about?” Tess asks clients. “What could that lead to? What might that look like — while also holding true to a part of you that is always linked to your loved one?”
- Expect detours. Rebuilding identity after loss isn’t a straight line. “Grief is a learning process,” Tess says. “You’re going to bump up against things that don’t fit or don’t feel right, and that’s also really helpful information.”
The grief that opens older wounds
Part of what makes identity loss in grief so disorienting is that a major loss rarely arrives alone. It can surface older grief, older wounds, older questions about who we are and where we belong.
“In life, our different losses can be tied together,” Tess says. “A big loss can open up the vessel to other losses you’ve experienced, or adversities you’ve faced. It all bubbles up to the surface. If you are able to look at that and revisit some of those wounds, you gain resilience and healing.”
But that work is hard to do in isolation. A community can help.
> Read: When grief feels lonely: How one young woman created community after loss
You don’t have to figure this out alone
HopeHealth offers free grief support groups open to anyone in the community who has experienced a loss — including two virtual groups specifically designed for this kind of exploration. Life Beyond Loss: Discovering You currently offers two groups — one for adults of all ages, and a second, launching soon, which will be especially for young adults navigating bereavement. Both are facilitated by grief counselors and meet regularly, offering a structured but open space to process loss alongside others who understand it firsthand.
Every other week, Tess leads these groups through a combination of guided reflection, journal prompts and open conversation. Sessions might explore self-compassion, emotional resilience, or simply what it means to feel like yourself again.
There’s no prescription for how participants should feel or how quickly they should move.
“I believe that to heal, we need quality human interactions and connections,” Tess says. “Because grieving in isolation is really hard. You do not need to figure this all out yourself.”
What she witnesses in the group keeps her doing this work.
“We get to be in this space where we feel less alone, and we get to witness and be a part of other people’s healing,” she says. “When I see somebody have an ‘a-ha’ moment based on what somebody else said, it is beautiful.”
That, she says, is what’s possible when grief doesn’t have to be carried alone.
“When we walk through grief,” she says, “we all deserve somebody by our side.”