There Should Be Flowers: The Grief of Going No Contact

There’s a specific grief that comes when going no contact with someone that many people carry alone. We send flowers to funerals. We give gifts when someone loses a loved one. Yet there are times when your heart is quietly breaking more than a physical death ever could, whether that’s because of estrangement with a parent or sibling, the shame carried from divorce, a family member slowly fading from addiction or chronic illness, the list could go on.

There aren’t gifts or flowers for things like this; when your loved one is still alive but feels dead to you. No one starts a meal train when you’re grieving the slow death of a relationship. There are no cards with sympathy for a broken heart, lamenting the fact that you have to cut off contact with someone you deeply care about. But that doesn’t mean the significance of this loss is any less.

Instead, there’s a deep ache as you watch time and potential memories slip out of your hands while this person lives their life without you…and you’re left wishing so badly they would choose you. But you know there’s nothing you can do to make them change. And so, you stop. You stop putting yourself in situations that only leave you more hurt.

It can be isolating when no one seems to understand the weight of your grief or the reason for your decision. There may be people who don’t seek to understand the story, who hold this person in high esteem, urging you to get over it and forgive already. When in reality, you don’t even wish them ill, you just wish it were different! No contact is not the easy way out, but sometimes it’s the right way out. Every situation is different, but when you no longer interact with someone you have so loyally loved, there should be flowers.

Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  (2 Corinthians 4:16)