What do you do when you’re grieving something that hasn’t actually ended?

When you’re sick and don’t know if you’ll get better. When someone you love is struggling with addiction and you don’t know who they’ll be on the other side of it. When you’ve lost a pregnancy, a future you were counting on, or even the person you used to be.

There’s grief in all of that. But it’s a strange kind of grief because there’s no clean ending to point to. No funeral. No clear before and after. Sometimes, there isn’t even an answer.

That’s the territory Marissa Renee Lee explores in her new book, Waiting for Dawn: Living with Uncertainty.

Marissa is also the author of Grief Is Love, a book I’ve long appreciated for the way it challenges the idea that healing requires us to “move on” from the people we’ve lost. Her new book takes that work somewhere different and deeply personal.

After losing her mother and experiencing pregnancy loss, Marissa developed long COVID. Suddenly, she was living in a body she couldn’t predict, with symptoms she couldn’t control and no way of knowing what her future would look like.

She calls what followed “gray grief”: the grief of living with a loss that has no clear ending.

That idea really stayed with me because so much of grief is exactly that. Even after a death, we can grieve our old identity, the future we assumed we’d have, and the version of ourselves who existed before our lives changed.

I know I did.

In this conversation, Marissa and I talk about what happens when you can’t fix what’s happening and you can’t know what comes next. How do you live there without allowing fear to take over? What does hope look like when you have no evidence that things are going to turn out the way you want them to? And who are you when the things you thought defined you begin to fall away?

We also come back to something Marissa wrote about so beautifully in Grief Is Love: continuing bonds. She shares the small ways her mother is still part of her family’s life, and we talk about why loving someone doesn’t end because they died.

And perhaps most importantly, we talk about hope. Not pretending everything is going to be okay. Hope when you genuinely don’t know.

It’s one of the things I found most moving about Waiting for Dawn, and something I think anyone who has spent time in that awful space between what was and whatever comes next will understand.

In this episode, we talk about:

● What Marissa means by “gray grief” and why she wrote Waiting for Dawn

● What long COVID taught her about living without answers

● Grieving your health, identity and the future you thought you were going to have

● The difference between hope and pretending everything will be okay

● What fear does to us when uncertainty goes on and on

● Why caregivers and partners are grieving too

● Why Marissa rejects the idea that we need to “move on”

● How she continues her relationship with her mother after her death

● What I learned about losing my own identity after my son died, and slowly discovering who I was becoming

● The two words Marissa returns to when everything else feels uncertain

Some losses give us a clear before and after. Others leave us waiting in the dark for an answer that may or may not come.

You don’t have to wait alone.

Content note: this episode includes a brief mention of a family member’s death at the hands of an abusive partner.

Don’t forget to follow Marissa and check out her books, Grief Is Love and Waiting for Dawn: Living with Uncertainty. You can find her at marissareneelee.com and as Marissa Renee Lee on Instagram  and Substack. She also has a grief retreat coming up this November in the Hudson Valley, with details on her website.

And if you’re looking for support, connection, or a place to feel less alone, my book, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, and The Grief Healing Collective are here for you. If something in this episode spoke to your heart, share your story or send your questions to cryingoutloudpod@gmail.com.

None of us are meant to carry this alone.

And if you want to explore more of how our brains, bodies, histories and emotional patterns shape the way we love and connect, come find me on my other podcast, The Language of Love. Every week, I talk with leading experts and share what I’ve learned in more than 30 years as a therapist about relationships, intimacy and healing. You can find The Language of Love wherever you’re listening to Crying Out Loud.