Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends. I hope you are all doing so, so well today.

Today we are talking about something I see everywhere in infertility, IVF, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, and relationships—but most people do not have language for it.

And when we do not have language for something, we often create stories about it.

We personalize it.
We judge ourselves.
We judge each other.
We make pain mean something it does not mean.

So today, I want to offer you language that may explain a lot.

Today we are talking about asynchronous grief.

Now, this is not some formal diagnosis or clinical disorder. It is simply a useful framework for what happens when grief is happening on a different timeline, in a different rhythm, or in a different expression than the people or culture around it expects.

In simple terms:

Same loss.
Different clocks.

And while this absolutely happens between partners—which we will talk about—it also happens between the griever and the world around them.

Between your pain and society’s expectations.

Between your heartbreak and everyone else’s attention span.

Between what you lost and what culture thinks “counts” as a loss.

And that matters.

Because sometimes grief hurts twice.

Once because of the loss.

And again because it is misunderstood.

Let me tell you a personal story.

In the summer of 2020, my husband and I did what we believed would be our final embryo transfer.

The one that would complete our family of five.

And hindsight is rude, because looking back I can see I walked into that transfer with what I would now call forced arrogance.

“This is going to work.”
“This is our time.”
“This is happening.”

At the time, I would have called that confidence.

Now I understand it differently.

It was fear wrapped in hubris.

It was me trying to outrun vulnerability by pretending certainty.

Now, would better emotional preparation have prevented devastation when it failed?

No.

Absolutely not.

I was going to be devastated.

Full stop.

But what preparation could have done—and what I now teach clients through tools like failure planning—is help me locate some agency before the rug got pulled out from under me.

Instead, the rug got pulled.

And I went down hard.

When we got the call—you know the call.

“I’m so sorry to say this…”

That one.

I was crushed.

And in the days that followed, I moved through grief in a very recognizable way.

I would swing between being inconsolable and appearing outwardly fine.

Collapsed privately. Functional publicly.

Crying one hour. Making dinner the next.

But my husband did not grieve like that.

Outside of the immediate fallout of the call, he did not have much outward emotional expression.

He wasn’t crying the way I was.
He wasn’t talking about it constantly.
He wasn’t visibly wrecked the way I felt wrecked.

And because anger was so braided into my grief at the time, I made meaning out of that.

I made it mean:

He doesn’t care as much as I do.
He wanted this less than I did.
I’m carrying this alone.

But later, in marriage therapy, I started listening to his words instead of the story I had created about him.

And what I learned changed everything.

His grief was not less than mine.

It was different.

My grief centered around the failed transfer and what that meant for the shape of our family and our future.

His grief centered around watching the woman he loved turn herself inside out, chasing something that kept hurting her.

He was grieving helplessness.

He was grieving, watching me grieve.

He was grieving not being able to protect me.

I thought he was grieving the transfer less.

What I did not understand was that he was grieving me more.

And that is asynchronous grief.

Same event.

Different pain.

Different clocks.

But it is not only relational.

It is also cultural.

And infertility grief lives here constantly.

Because of infertility, IVF, miscarriage, and pregnancy loss—these experiences are drenched in disenfranchised grief.And if you’re interested in that topic, I did a whole podcast episode, you can go to my show and seach “disenfranchised grief,” and you can find it. 

Meaning grief that is not fully recognized, validated, socially supported, or understood.

So now imagine you already have grief.

And then imagine grieving in a world that does not know you are grieving.

That is asynchronous grief too.

What does this look like?

You are grieving embryos.

Someone else says, “Well at least you know you can make embryos.”

You are grieving a miscarriage.

Someone says, “At least you know you can get pregnant.”

You are grieving another failed transfer.

Someone says, “Just stay positive.”

You are grieving never having the family size you imagined.

Someone says, “Be grateful for the child you have.”

You are grieving infertility trauma during pregnancy.

Someone says, “But you got what you wanted.”

You are grieving years later.

Someone silently wonders why you are not over it yet.

Do you see it?

Your grief is happening on one timeline.

Culture is operating on another.

There is often a social clock for grief.

Culture tends to believe grief should be:

Visible—but not messy.
Painful—but brief.
Meaningful—but convenient.
Deep—but still productive.
Acknowledged—but quickly overcome.

And infertility grief obeys almost none of those rules.

Because infertility grief is repetitive.

Layered.

Invisible.

Cumulative.

It is not one loss.

It is often death by a thousand cuts.

A failed cycle.
A cancelled cycle.
A miscarriage.
A due date that never came.
Another baby shower.
Another calendar year.
Another bill.
Another body betrayal.
Another waiting room.

And yet because there is not always one singular event the culture gathers around, people underestimate the grief entirely.

This is why so many of you feel crazy.

You are not crazy.

You are grieving something real in a world that often minimizes invisible loss.

You are hurting on a timeline that does not match the people around you.

You are carrying pain that others cannot see.

And this can happen internally too.

Sometimes asynchronous grief is between you and you.

Part of you wants to move on.

Part of you cannot.

Part of you feels relief treatment is over.

Part of you feels devastated.

Part of you is grateful.

Part of you is furious.

Part of you is healing.

Part of you is still back there.

That is normal too.

Humans are not linear creatures.

So what helps?

Number one: Name it.

Sometimes simply saying:

“My grief is real, even if it is out of sync with the people around me.”

can be profoundly regulating.

Number two: Stop using external recognition as proof of legitimacy.

Your pain does not become real only when others understand it.

Your grief does not require witnesses to be valid.

Number three: Let grief be specific.

You may not only be grieving a pregnancy.

You may be grieving:

Time.
Identity.
Control.
Money.
Trust in your body.
Ease.
The imagined version of your family.
Who you were before this.

Specific grief tends to soften suffering.

Number four: Release the social clock.

There is no morally superior timeline.

Quick grief does not equal strength.

Long grief does not equal dysfunction.

Visible grief does not equal deeper love.

Quiet grief does not equal indifference.

Number five: Get curious with your people.

Instead of:

Why don’t you care?

Try:

What does this feel like for you?

What are you grieving right now?

How does grief show up in you?

And if no one around you gets it—

I want you to hear me clearly.

Some of the loneliest grief is grief that has outlived other people’s attention span.

That does not make your grief excessive.

It makes it enduring.

If you are still grieving something others forgot…

If your loss was never publicly acknowledged…

If your timeline embarrasses you…

If your pain coexists with gratitude…

If you and your partner love each other but are grieving in different dialects…

You are not doing grief wrong.

You may simply be grieving asynchronously.

And perhaps the invitation is not to force yourself into someone else’s timeline—

but to honor the truth of your own.

Alright my beautiful friends.

That is what I have for you this week.

If this episode resonated, send it to someone who may need language for what they are carrying.

Have a beautiful week.

And I’ll talk to you soon.