Grieving Losses: When Your Dreams Don’t Come True

"I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed, that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame"
 - lyrics written by
Claude-Michel Schönberg

These lyrics were sung by Fantine in the musical Les Misérables out of anguish as she has recently been fired from her job and thrown onto the streets forced into severe poverty. At this point, undoubtedly her lowest moment, she looks back into her past on happier times before life's strong wind picked up and threw her into a harsh and bitter reality. This song is debatably what won Anne Hathaway the Oscar as she brought such raw emotion to this moment - which, I believe had such an impact on people because we can all empathize with Fantine. Where do you go when a dream has been squashed in your face and you're left with an unknown future, or worse, a future you don't want?

First of all, this moment Fantine is at is crucial and we can all take a page out of her book on handing loss - express your pain. Allow yourself the openness to be disappointed. Some well meaning thoughts can even harm your progress by jumping to a seemingly innocuous end point of finding "where is the silver lining in this?" and there is a time for that too, but first you need to call the cloud what it is. When you label something it looses some of it's power over you. Are you in pain? Say it. Write it in a journal. Open yourself up to express it to a trusted friend. If you harbor it, it can fester but part of healing is acknowledging what is there.

I had a client who's daughter was around 6 years old when they realized she had a brain condition that would need treatment for the rest of her life potentially. As a father, he didn't even realize that what he was facing was so much deeper than even his worry for his daughter's own well being. As we dug deeper he was processing through the loss of his dream of having a healthy child. He was faced with this new reality of being the parent of a special needs child, which was not something he had ever pictured for himself.

The loss of a dream can be so tightly connected with us that when we find ourselves grieving we aren't even sure what steps to take because it was "only a dream" right? Wrong! A dream is tethered to our values, hopes, longings and ultimately can be some of our most valuable thoughts. There are fewer moments more vulnerable than when you hope for something - because you open yourself up to potentially not receiving it.

The second thing to be aware of would be to not cut off from dreaming in the future for fear of feeling this pain again. It can be so easy to make yourself smaller in order to not fall again. It's only human nature to not want to experience pain - but if you numb yourself off to future pain you at the same time numb yourself off to great joy and payoff from the risk of putting yourself out there. We can't selectively numb, so when you numb all the bad you numb all the good in the same breath.

If you don't even know where to begin to process an unbiased professional may be the best outlet for you to express yourself. My door is always open, and you can either email me at or call my office at (310) 614-0323 to set up an appointment. None of us can control life so it is inevitable for you to have a hope for something or another and ultimately it not come to fruition. But, the way you handle the disappointment is something to be aware of as you clean out the wound and give it space to heal. What are some of the dreams you have had that didn't turn out as you planned? Give yourself permission to be disappointed, say it out loud, and grieve it.