Learning to Grieve: How the Small Losses Prepare Us for the Big Ones

Grief isn’t only reserved for death.

We encounter it in quieter, less obvious ways throughout our lives: the friendship that drifts away, the job that no longer fits, the house we say goodbye to, the baby clothes we pack away for the last time. These moments are real and worthy of our attention. They carry the ache of change, the closing of a chapter, the shedding of an identity.

In many ways, these smaller griefs are rehearsals.

Not rehearsals in the sense that they make us emotionally immune—nothing can fully prepare the heart for the death of someone or something we love—but rehearsals in the sense that they offer us opportunities to practise. To tune in to how we move through loss. To notice what helps and what doesn't. To learn how to sit with discomfort, to seek out rituals that ground us, and to find the people who will hold space without rushing to fix us.

But all too often, we bypass these invitations. We tell ourselves it’s “not a big deal,” or “someone else has it worse.” We power through. We numb. We stay busy.

And in doing so, we miss something vital.

We miss the chance to grow our capacity to grieve. To recognise that grief isn’t something to fear, but something to make room for. If we allow ourselves to truly feel the smaller goodbyes, we’re less likely to feel so untethered when the bigger ones arrive. We begin to build a map, one made of memory and resilience and knowing.

Grief is not a mountain to conquer, but a landscape to navigate. These small losses? They are our first glimpses of the terrain.

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A New Word for the “Smaller Griefs”

English doesn’t offer us much in the way of language to validate these in-between griefs. “Sadness” or “disappointment” doesn’t quite touch the depth, and “grief” often feels too heavy or reserved only for death.

So, what if we gave it a name?

My suggestion: Tenderings

“Tenderings” carries a softness. It evokes something delicate and unfolding—those moments where our hearts are a little more raw, where life asks us to loosen our grip on what once was. It suggests something gentle but significant, a feeling that deserves tending.

In a way, tenderings are emotional seedlings. They might not seem large from the outside, but inside, they stretch our hearts in meaningful ways.

Having a word like this allows us to recognise and name the experience. And naming is powerful. It creates space for acknowledgment, for conversation, for ritual. Just like the Inuits have many words for snow, or the Japanese use natsukashii to describe the bittersweet ache of nostalgia, perhaps we need a word for this emotional nuance too.

Maybe with a word like tenderings, we’d be more likely to pause. To sit. To honour what we’re letting go of.