You’re sitting in a coffee shop, half-refreshing your inbox to see if that job interview panned out, half-scrolling Instagram. Another classmate just bought a house. Someone else just had a baby. A third launched what appears to be a successful business, although you’re skeptical if the world needs another gluten-free bakery.
You double-tap out of obligation, then go back to staring at your phone like it might give you answers. Instead, it just offers reminders: of the career you thought you’d have by now, the relationship that hasn’t shown up, the version of adulthood you were pretty sure would have kicked in by 30.
There’s a strange kind of mourning that creeps in around this age. It doesn’t come with memorials or casseroles, but it lingers. It shows up quietly—on someone else’s engagement post, in a birthday call with your parents, during a particularly sterile apartment tour. It’s the grief of a life that didn’t turn out the way you planned.
Most people won’t call it grief. They’ll call it being dramatic or just one of those seasons. But mental health professionals know better. There’s a clinical term for this kind of experience: disenfranchised grief—the kind that isn’t socially recognized but is deeply felt. It was coined by Dr. Kenneth Doka, a hospice expert who noticed that people often felt shame for mourning losses that didn’t fit into neat categories.
“A constant refrain is, ‘I don’t have a right to grieve,’” Doka wrote. But that grief—the subtle ache of unrealized dreams or delayed milestones—is real, and according to new data, it’s increasingly common.
A 2024 Pew Research study found that nearly 60% of millennials and Gen Z adults say they feel behind in life. The benchmarks they were raised to expect—homeownership, marriage, financial stability—keep drifting further out of reach. Not because they’re irresponsible, but because the finish line keeps moving. Wages stagnate. Rent climbs. Relationships get more complex. It’s not failure. It’s economics, timing and the cost of living with ambition in an unstable world.
But numbers don’t always help when it’s your life that feels like it’s stalled. Lindsey Mann, a licensed therapist who specializes in quarter-life transitions, said many clients in their late 20s and early 30s carry a quiet sense of shame.
“They’re grieving a future they once imagined—certain they’d be married, working in a meaningful job or living in a specific city,” Mann said. “And because they feel like they ‘should be over it,’ they never give themselves permission to grieve.”
That permission matters. Because without it, grief turns into something else. Resentment. Self-blame. Spiritual doubt. Especially in Christian circles, where “God’s timing” is often offered as the all-purpose balm, it’s easy to confuse disappointment with disobedience.
But that’s not how lament works. And it’s not how God works, either.
In Scripture, grief isn’t sidelined—it’s sacred. Job, Jeremiah, David, even Jesus didn’t shy away from naming what hurt. “How long, O Lord?” is a spiritual question, not a lack of trust. And it’s one that resonates with anyone sitting in the gap between what life was supposed to be and what it actually is.
Faith doesn’t erase that gap. But it can keep you from falling into it.
Author and spiritual director K.J. Ramsey, who writes about suffering and the theology of hope, puts it this way: “When we suppress our grief, we’re not being more faithful—we’re being less human. And Jesus didn’t come to make us less human. He came to show us what full humanity looks like.”
There’s a kind of quiet spiritual maturity in naming what’s been lost, even if it’s just the version of yourself you thought you’d become. That’s especially true in an age of curated timelines, where everyone else’s life appears to be right on track—and yours feels like it took a wrong turn.
To grieve the life you thought you’d have is to acknowledge that time doesn’t always cooperate. That even with good intentions and persistent prayers, some chapters don’t arrive on schedule. And that’s not weakness. It’s growth.
Because here’s the truth: Adulthood isn’t a milestone. It’s a negotiation. It’s reassessing what matters, reimagining what’s possible and releasing the illusion that there was ever a perfect timeline to begin with.
So yes—grieve the life you thought you’d have by now. Mourn what didn’t happen. Name it. Feel it. But don’t confuse that grief for defeat. Because sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit you’re disappointed—and keep going anyway.
That’s not giving up. That’s growing up.
