In This Article
Disenfranchised grief is the bereavement scholar Kenneth Doka's name for mourning that the surrounding social world does not openly acknowledge or support.
Doka named the concept in 1989. The classic examples are the death of a non-marital partner, of a former spouse, of a pet, of an estranged family member, or of a colleague the bereaver was secretly close to. The loss is real; the surrounding circle, however, has no script for grieving it and often no awareness that it has happened at all.
The five conditions Doka named
Doka identified five conditions under which grief gets disenfranchised: the relationship is not recognized (a same-sex partner in a homophobic family, a long-term affair), the loss is not recognized (a pre-clinical pregnancy loss, the death of a person with dementia who has been gone for years), the griever is not recognized (children, people with cognitive disabilities, ex-spouses), the death itself is stigmatized (suicide, overdose, AIDS-era deaths), or the way of grieving sits outside what the culture treats as legitimate (very public, very private, very long, very brief).
Why it does not heal like other grief
Ordinary grief moves on the supports of public ritual: the funeral, the bereavement leave, the cards, the casseroles, the year-later check-in. Disenfranchised grief has none of those. The bereaved person often grieves alone, frequently in environments where the loss is treated as not-a-real-loss, and the absence of social recognition itself becomes a second wound on top of the first.
What helps
Doka's clinical recommendation is recognition first, ritual second. A friend who simply names the loss out loud, I am so sorry your dog died, that is a real grief, has done a substantial piece of the work. Where the surrounding culture refuses to acknowledge the loss at all, peer-support groups (pet loss, pregnancy loss, suicide-loss survivors) often do for disenfranchised grief what a community funeral does for socially-recognized grief: they make it real in front of other people.
Where it shows up around VibeLovely
Disenfranchised grief is the lens behind The Desk letters about losses the writer is not sure they are allowed to grieve.
References
- Doka, K. J. (Ed.). (1989). Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. Lexington Books.
- Doka, K. J. (Ed.). (2002). Disenfranchised Grief: New Directions, Challenges, and Strategies for Practice. Research Press.
- Attig, T. (2004). Disenfranchised grief revisited: discounting hope and love. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 49(3), 197-215.
- Hospice Foundation of America. Disenfranchised grief: when no one understands your loss. hospicefoundation.org
- American Psychological Association. Grief and loss. apa.org/topics/grief
