9. April 2026

By Jenny Kuemmel | Momma Drama & Trauma

There is a kind of grief that no one really prepares you for.

It is not just the loss of a person.
It is not just the end of a relationship.

It is the loss of a life you believed in.

The future you pictured.
The home you imagined.
The moments you thought were guaranteed.

And when that future disappears, it does not happen all at once.

It settles in slowly.

In quiet moments.
In empty spaces.
In the realization that things will never look the way you thought they would.

The Story

When everything first happened, I went straight into survival mode.

My mind was not focused on emotions at first. It was focused on one thing.

How am I going to take care of my kids?

I had spent years helping build a business and raising our family. I had not worked outside of that world in over 20 years. And in a matter of moments, everything I thought was stable was gone.

That reality hit me immediately.

But the deeper part of it, the emotional part, that came later.

I had believed we were going to figure it out. I thought we were just going through a hard season. We had been through hard seasons before, and we had always found our way back to each other.

That is what I thought we were doing.

But we did not come back this time.

And that is when the grief started to change.

It was not just about losing him.
It was about losing everything I thought we were building together.

I started to see it in moments that felt small but carried so much weight.

My kids’ birthdays.
Holidays.
Family photos.

I remember decorating for my child’s 16th birthday and putting on a smile because I wanted it to feel normal for them. But inside, I knew it would never be the same again.

We were not going to celebrate as a family anymore.

That reality sat heavy.

Not just for me, but for my kids.

And then there were the quiet moments.

The ones you do not expect.

Sitting at events and not sharing those experiences together.
Looking around and realizing your family will never be in one place in the same way again.

Those were the moments that stayed with me.

The Emotional Truth

The hardest part for me was not losing him.

It was grieving the future I thought we were going to have.

It was letting go of the life I believed we were working toward.

There was a moment that broke me in a way I cannot fully explain.

He told me that his affair partner was his soulmate.

After 24 years together, hearing those words made me question everything.

It made me question our entire relationship.
It made me question my worth.
It made me wonder if anything we built had ever been real.

It felt like everything I believed in was taken from me in one sentence.

And that's the part people don't always talk about.

When something like this happens, it does not just affect your present.

It reaches into your past and makes you question it.

It reshapes how you see everything.

Educational Insight

Grieving a future is a real form of loss.

It is often referred to as ambiguous grief or future grief.

It happens when you are not just mourning what was, but what could have been.

This kind of grief can feel confusing because there is no clear ending point.

You are grieving:

the life you expected
the identity you held
the sense of safety you believed in

It often shows up in waves.

One moment you feel like you are okay.
The next moment something small reminds you of what was supposed to be, and it hits all over again.

This is a normal part of the healing process.

There is nothing wrong with you for feeling this way.

Solutions and Guidance

If you are in this place right now, here are a few things that helped me move through it.

1. Let yourself grieve the future
Do not minimize it. Do not tell yourself you should be over it. Losing a future you believed in is a real loss.

2. Stop trying to rush the healing
This is not something that resolves quickly. Healing happens in layers and it takes time.

3. Focus on what is in front of you
At first, I could not think too far ahead. I had to focus on what I needed to do for myself and my kids in that moment.

4. Allow small shifts to happen
Healing does not come in one big moment. It comes in small changes. Small realizations. Small steps forward.

5. Start coming back to yourself
Even before I fully understood my worth, I started to ask myself what I needed. That was the beginning of everything changing.

Recommended Support

If you are walking through something similar, here are a few resources that may help.

Books

The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James and Russell Friedman
It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken by Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola

Podcasts

Momma Drama & Trauma
On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Support Tools

Journaling your thoughts without filtering
Spending time in quiet reflection
Downloading the free workbook Choosing Love That Chooses You on my website

Final Thoughts

There is something important I want you to understand.

Just because your life did not turn out the way you thought it would…

does not mean it is over.

It means it is changing.

And even though that change can feel painful and overwhelming…

it can also lead you back to yourself.

Back to a version of you that you may have lost along the way.

Closing Connection

If you are in the middle of grieving the life you thought you would have…

you're not alone.

There is nothing wrong with you for feeling this deeply.

There is nothing wrong with you for missing what was supposed to be.

Healing does not mean forgetting.

It means learning how to move forward while honoring what you have been through.

And you are allowed to take that one step at a time.

As Always
You are strong.
You are worthy.
And your story matters.
Until next time, take care of you. 💗

Let yourself grieve it… and then gently begin again.