When my daughter, Amy, was diagnosed with leukemia in 1999 I was numb and unprepared for the wild ride to come. She received modern medical treatment off-and-on for eight years, and when she died it was beyond excruciating. To make matters worse, there was no word to describe the totality of the experience I had been through…so I created one.
Grief is not an emotion; it is an unexplainable state…
Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Unit, 1999
Loss-ent (noun)
1. a. One who outlives a biological child.
b. One who outlives a child they fostered, adopted or raised as their own.
2. One deeply affected by the death of a child in their immediate or extended
family.
Like the single-word simplicity of widow or orphan, I crafted the word lossent as a way of simply letting others know what I’ve been through, without any of the details, while adequately encapsulating such a major life experience.
~ Lisa the Lossent
ORIGIN OF THE WORD
Thankfully, the availability of the internet allowed me to easily enter the rabbit hole of researching how and what is involved in creating a new word (neology, lexicology, and etymology, oh-my!) Losing a child has repeatedly been called ‘the greatest loss’ and the suffix “–ent” is most often used to modify nouns.
After a while of playing around with it, I eventually put together loss+ent, which I believe is appropriate, useful and obvious enough to fulfill the sometimes-need to express this horrific experience/event/feeling with language.
Over the years it comforted me, but I didn’t use it openly. It was my private word for my private pain–which I kept to myself for over a decade. Around the 16th anniversary of Amy’s death, I suddenly knew it was time to share it with others after I repeatedly felt her energy asking me, “What are you waiting for?”
Grief is not an emotion; it is an unexplainable state wherein you can find yourself stuck. For the past few decades I’ve been living and healing, seemingly fine and flourishing on the outside while still feeling mostly wrecked, confused, and doubtful inside. Why me? Why her? WTF? What now? What next? What if? Not much meaningful action happens outside when these pointless questions are on a repeat loop inside.
We will always miss our person, but eventually we see that we don’t honor them or ourselves by remaining in an extended grief state. Releasing this word is just another level of growth on my healing journey. By sharing it, I hope to ease your grief states enough to allow awareness, grace, and self-honoring to move you forward along your own healing journeys.
P.S. I see you and I love you!
Explore lossent.org by selecting a link below:
♥ Help “Lossent” get into the Dictionary ~ Spread the Word
♥ Find Comfort in Community ~ Join the Club
♥ Words of Connection ~ Read the Blog
♥ Let’s Get Together ~ Event Schedule