Reflection #9: Grieving While Queer
Because LGBTQIA+ grief is never just sad; it is layered with joy, defiance, pride, tenderness, celebration, and sparkle.
🌈Pride Month has me thinking not only about how we live as queer folks but how we grieve, and how those layered, beautiful, and complicated experiences might resonate far beyond the LGBTQIA+ community., speaking to anyone who’s ever loved and lost.
Grief is part of being human. But grieving while queer often means moving through that human experience with layers of silence, shame, exclusion, and longing while also holding pride, celebration, chosen family, and the fierceness of queer resilience. It’s never just one thing.
I’ve come to believe that for many LGBTQIA+ people, grief isn’t just about death or a loved one who died. It’s about our lives, too.
It might be about the person we were never allowed to love openly.
It might be about the family that never showed up.
It might be about the years spent hiding.
It might be about the part of ourselves we had to bury to survive.
It’s not just grief.
It’s disenfranchised grief, compounded grief, and collective grief all happening at once. And it’s about the unique ways that we, in the queer community, traverse it. Sometimes that path looks like silence or exile. Sometimes it looks like protest, ritual, or chosen family. And sometimes…it looks like comedy.
When comedian (and friend) Sam Morrison lost his partner, Jonathan, to COVID-19, he did what he does best: he turned to stand-up. But not to escape the pain. Instead, he leaned into it. With honesty, awkwardness, and queerness all fully present on stage, Sam told the story of his grief in a way that made people laugh, cry, and recognize themselves. He was, in many ways, declaring:
Grief is gay.
And he meant it.
His one-man show Sugar Daddy, which had an acclaimed Off-Broadway run and is headed to Broadway, is a deeply personal and poignant exploration of queer love, loss, and healing. In an interview, Sam shared:
“Grief is so uncomfortable but also ever-present that when you acknowledge it and open the space for people to talk about it, the floodgates open. Grief is hilarious. I’m willing to bet my gay widow support group is funnier than any comedian you’ve ever seen.”
His words are a reminder that humor and heartache often exist side by side and that even laughter can be an act of remembrance.
Sam’s story is one of many.
Tender, defiant, and deeply queer.
But it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry of grief, identity, and resilience across the LGBTQIA+ community.
No Single Story
It’s important to say this too: there is no single queer story of grief.
Some LGBTQIA+ people grieve with open support from family and community. Others face rejection, invisibility, or silence. Queer grief is not one-size-fits-all. It’s shaped by race, culture, faith, disability, class, and so many intersecting identities. How we grieve, how we’re allowed to grieve, is influenced by the communities we come from and the histories we carry. And those differences matter.
While many countries and regions have made progress toward equity and affirmation, queer and trans people still face systemic harm across the globe, from anti-LGBTQIA+ laws and rising hate crimes to policies that threaten health care, education, and safety.
In more than 60 countries, homosexuality remains illegal. And here in the U.S., trans rights are under attack, gender-affirming care is being stripped away, and suicide prevention programs for LGBTQIA+ youth are being defunded. Even the whispers questioning the future of marriage equality have started again.
These aren’t just political shifts, they’re personal. They carry grief. The grief of being erased, of feeling unsafe, of watching hard-won rights unravel. Even in places where progress has been made, queer and trans people are still grieving losses of safety, belonging, visibility, and care. And those stories matter, too.
Because of course, queer grief isn’t universal. In some places, and for some people, there is space to grieve openly, with community, love, and pride. That’s progress worth naming. But across the world, and even here in the United States, too many still face stigma or outright danger.
The truth is, the story of grieving while queer is still unfolding, and in many ways, still being fought for.
Grief and Joy, Side by Side
Pride itself is born of pain.
Stonewall wasn’t a parade. It was a riot led by trans women of color, such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and others, who demanded to be seen.
It was an act of survival. And it became a movement of celebration.
We have survived and celebrated in the face of grief before through the devastation of AIDS, the heartbreak of Matthew Shepard, the echoes of every name read at vigils that shouldn’t exist.
And yet, joy and pride still bloom.
We make drag shows into sanctuaries.
We dance at Pride in remembrance and resistance.
We laugh with each other in queer bars built from the ashes of the ones who came before us.
We make art and music and family and chosen love that sustains us.
As Harvey Milk once said:
“Hope will never be silent.”
And in grief, we carry that hope forward.
Language
And like all stories, language plays a part. How we name ourselves, our love, and our loss matters.
As an older gay man, I grew up hearing the word queer as an insult and something sharp and weaponized. Today, it’s been reclaimed by many as a word of affirmation and fluidity, especially among younger generations. Still, I know it doesn’t land that way for everyone. Language evolves, and so do we, but we carry the past with us, like grief. Both shape us, even as we find new ways to speak and to heal.
And the queer grief journey? It’s as varied as the colors in the rainbow, the ever-evolving alphabet of our glorious, affirming community, or a Pride parade where someone’s crying, someone’s voguing, and someone’s handing out rainbow Jell-O shots. Grief, like queerness, holds multitudes, and all of it belongs.
Disenfranchised Grief
But belonging doesn’t always come easily. For many queer folks, grief lives in the margins unseen, unspoken, or dismissed. That’s where disenfranchised grief begins. Psychologist Kenneth Doka defines disenfranchised grief as the kind of mourning that society doesn’t acknowledge or validate. For queer and trans people, it often looks like:
Being excluded from hospital visits or funerals because your relationship isn’t legal or wasn’t seen as “real.”
Grieving someone you were never allowed to name aloud, like a closeted partner, a chosen family member, or an estranged parent.
Navigating grief while also remembering how that person hurt or rejected you because of your gender or sexuality.
Mourning a family of origin that never accepted you or still doesn’t.
I lived this.
When David, my partner, attempted suicide, drunk and alone, I was told I wasn’t allowed to visit him in the hospital.
“We’re sorry. You’re not family.”
His family lived far away. I was the one who knew the truth of his suffering. The one who sat beside him when things were heavy. And yet, I was shut out.
He survived that attempt. But his greatest fear, being alone in the darkest moment, was realized. Not by fate, but by policy. By erasure.
When he died, the minimization continued:
“You were just friends.”
“You weren’t legally married.”
“There are lots of other gay men out there.”
Chosen Family, Real Grief
In queer communities, chosen family is often where love, safety, and identity live. These relationships are sacred.
They are sometimes the only safe places we have.
So when we lose a chosen sibling, a trans parent figure, or a queer partner, our grief is deep, real, and formative.
But when those relationships aren't recognized by bloodlines or institutions, our grief is easily dismissed, silenced, or ignored.
The message is subtle but clear: If it wasn’t legal or biological, it doesn’t count.
But we know the truth:
Chosen family, real grief.
It deserves to be witnessed with care and presence, no less than any other kind of grief
Our love was real. So is our loss.
Compounded and Collective Grief
For many LGBTQIA+ people, grief is not a singular event.
It’s compounded: multiple losses stacked on top of each other.
It’s collective: shared sorrow that stretches across communities and generations. Such as:
The queer elder who lost dozens of friends to HIV/AIDS and never had time to mourn.
The teen grieving a peer’s suicide and also their own estrangement from family.
The trans person who carries the loss of visibility, safety, and belonging every time they see another attack in the news.
Grieving while queer means we’re often holding many things:
The person. The pain. The possibility of a different life.
The community. The self that could have been.
The Closet and the Life Not Lived
There’s a grief we don’t talk about enough:
The grief of the unlived life.
For some queer folks, especially those who came out later in life, there’s mourning for the youth never celebrated, the love never expressed, the version of yourself that only existed in private.
As writer and grief mentor David Kernohan writes,
“I grieved the man I might have been if the world had welcomed me with openness instead of doctrine and shame.”
That’s a real loss.
And like so many others in queer grief, it’s invisible.
But it counts.
Coming Out and Grief
Coming out itself can be an experience of grief.
Grief for the closeted version of yourself.
Grief for the family that stopped calling.
Grief for the holidays you no longer attend.
Grief for the church you loved but can’t return to.
Even when coming out is empowering, it is also a kind of loss.
One that deserves space, ritual, and recognition.
Barriers to Support
Many LGBTQIA+ people struggle to find grief spaces that feel safe.
Therapists who don’t understand queer identities.
Support groups built around traditional families.
Fear of being misgendered, pathologized, or judged.
Some of us stop trying.
We hold it in.
We carry it alone.
After David died, I reached out to a therapist for help. I cried through the entire first session, raw, aching, honest.
At the end, she looked at me and said,
“I don’t think we’ll work on grief. I think we’ll explore the possibility that you might not be gay.”
Ummm, I’ve done that work!
I left that office devastated.
More ashamed.
More alone.
And yet, I know many therapists and support providers are doing their best. Some are extraordinary.
But this moment taught me how easily queer grief can be erased, even in places designed to help us heal.
Honoring Queer Grief
To grieve while queer is to live at the intersection of love and loss, presence and erasure, strength and invisibility.
But we are reclaiming this space.
We are naming our grief.
We are writing our own rituals.
We are building communities that say:
Your loss matters.
Your story is sacred.
Your grief is real.
As writer Zena Sharman reminds us:
“Queering grief means showing up in all our messy glory.”
If You Are Grieving While Queer…
“Grief has always been hilarious to me, albeit in very different ways at different times throughout the process.”
– Sam Morrison, interview with TheaterMania, 2023
Let that land for a moment.
In Sam’s grief, humor and heartbreak move together not as opposites, but as companions. And maybe that’s exactly where we need to be: tender, profound, and unexpected all at once.
So if you are grieving while queer, know this:
You deserve support that sees you.
You deserve language that honors your losses.
You deserve to grieve fully, even if the world never said it out loud.
Call in community, memory, and the power of witnessing each other’s truths.
You are not alone.
Not in this grief. Not in this love.
And as we keep telling these stories, raw, radiant, real, and queer, we make more room for each other.
In Pride, in protest, in vigil, in drag, in tears, in laughter, in song, yes, we keep loving, remembering, and rebuilding.
Queer grief lives alongside queer resilience.
There is so much beauty in how we hold each other.
That’s how healing begins. And that’s how we go on.
If this reflection resonated, you can find more writing and resources at Elpis Consulting, Coaching, & Community Building. And I’d love to hear your story, too. Comment below or connect with me on:
Citations & Acknowledgments:
This reflection includes references and insights from:
David Kernohan, “Grieving While Gay – Queer Men and Unspoken Losses” (May 2025)
Zena Sharman, Queering Grief
Kenneth Doka’s work on disenfranchised grief
Sam Morrison’s interviews and performance of Sugar Daddy
Research from Meyer (2003), Kaysen et al. (2014), and Ryan et al. (2009)
Quotes from LGBTQIA+ leaders including Harvey Milk