The Five Gates of Grief: An Invitation to Mourn What Matters

Grief and mourning are often treated as something that should be brief, private, and eventually resolved. We are given timelines. We are encouraged to be resilient. We are told, directly or indirectly, to move on.

But grief does not work that way.

In my work as a therapist, I understand grief as a natural and necessary response to love, attachment, and loss. It is not a pathology. It is not a failure of coping. It is one of the ways we remain human in a world that often asks us to numb, distract, or harden ourselves.

One of the frameworks I find most meaningful comes from Francis Weller, particularly his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow. Weller describes five gates of grief, offering a broader and more honest map of what we mourn in our lives. This model moves grief out of isolation and places it in relationship with culture, community, and the living world.

Gate One: Everything we love, we will lose

This is the form of grief most people recognize. The death of a loved one. The end of a relationship. The loss of a companion animal. The disappearance of a place or way of life that mattered deeply.

This grief is sharp because it follows love. There is no way around it. To love fully is to risk loss. In therapy, this gate often carries tears, longing, regret, unfinished conversations, and the ache of absence.

Rather than asking how to get rid of this pain, I am more interested in how to tend it. How to let grief move, breathe, and be witnessed so it does not harden into isolation or despair.

Gate Two: The places that have not known love

This gate points toward the grief of unmet needs. The care we did not receive. The safety that was inconsistent or absent. The childhood experiences that were too much, too soon, or not enough.

This is often a quieter grief. It can be harder to name because it lives beneath shame, self-blame, or minimization. People tell themselves it was not that bad. Others had it worse.

And yet the body remembers.

This gate is especially present for people with trauma histories, relational wounds, or experiences of marginalization. Grieving what never happened can be as important as grieving what was lost.

Gate Three: The sorrows of the world

This gate opens us to collective grief. The pain of living in a world shaped by violence, oppression, climate collapse, genocide, and ongoing injustice.

Many people carry this grief silently. It may show up as anxiety, burnout, numbness, or rage, without a clear story attached. This is not weakness. It is attunement.

In a culture that prioritizes productivity and individual success, there is little space to mourn together. This gate reminds us that much of our distress is relational and communal. We were never meant to carry it alone.

Gate Four: What we expected but did not receive

This gate holds grief for dreams that did not materialize. Identities that were constrained. Futures that were promised but never accessible.

For queer, trans, and gender expansive people, this may include grief for versions of life that were foreclosed by rejection or erasure. For others, it may involve careers, families, or ways of being that were never truly available, despite effort and hope.

Naming this grief can be deeply liberating. It allows people to stop blaming themselves for outcomes shaped by forces far beyond individual control.

Gate Five: Ancestral grief and the grief we carry for others

This final gate acknowledges that grief is not only personal. We carry sorrow that belongs to our ancestors, our families, and our cultural lineages.

Unspoken losses, migrations, displacements, and survival strategies are often passed down through bodies rather than stories. This grief can appear without a clear narrative, as heaviness, vigilance, or longing.

Working with this gate invites humility and curiosity. It asks us to listen not only to our own stories, but to the larger currents we are part of.

Grief and Mourning as a doorway, not a diagnosis

What I appreciate most about this model is how it expands grief beyond a single event. It places our pain in context. It reminds us that grief is woven into love, justice, history, and belonging.

In my work, I approach grief somatically and relationally. That means paying attention to how grief lives in the body, how it shapes the nervous system, and how it longs to be witnessed rather than fixed. Grief often moves more freely when there is safety, rhythm, and connection.

We do not heal by getting over grief. We heal by allowing it to move through us, by honoring what it protects, and by letting it deepen our capacity for care.

Grief is not the opposite of joy. It is one of its companions. When we make room for grief, we make room for meaning, tenderness, and a more honest relationship with being alive.

If grief is present in your life right now and you are seeking support, you can learn more about my approach to grief counseling or life transitions therapy.