The Five Gates of Grief
Grief can be a shattering and earth shaking experience. Whether it be the initial shock, sudden temporary waves of grief, or something that reminds you of what is no longer here on this earth — grief can demand you to pause and slow down. To think of grief just as an emotion that we can cope with diminishes the magnitude of what it means to live life with loss, absence, and longing. Grief is a process that asks you define your relationship to it, time and time again.
While grief is often associated with the death of a loved one, Francis Weller writes about the “Five Gates of Grief” in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, exploring the different ways you can experience grief throughout your lifetime. As you get to know more about the five gates of grief I encourage you to reflect on this question: Which gate of grief are you currently passing through and how is it influencing your life?
The Five Gates of Grief
The First Gate: Everything we love we will lose
This first gate includes what is often associated with grief, the loss of a loved one. It can also include the loss of a pet, a community, a home. The loss of the life you thought you would have, whether it be due to illness, transitions, or a dream that did not have the chance to fully breathe. At the core of this grief is that loss is inevitable.
For many LGBTQ+ clients this gate also holds the loss of a chosen family member whose death may not be fully acknowledged by biological families — grief that exists outside the structures society recognizes.
The Second Gate: The places that have not known love
Here lies the grief of the parts of you that have been shamed, banished, and exiled. The parts of you that have never known love, whether it be due to neglect, discrimination, or abuse. The parts of you that feel rejected. At the core of this grief is the loss that comes with feeling like you don’t belong.
For queer clients this gate often holds the grief of the parts of their identity that were hidden, shamed, or exiled — sometimes for years — before they had language or safety to reclaim them.
The Third Gate: The sorrows of the world
The sorrow and sadness of the losses you are witnessing occurring in the world live here. This looks like grief around the impacts of climate change. It looks like sorrow and anger around the displacement and genocide of communities due to colonization and imperialism. At the core of this grief is the loss that comes from living in a world that has forgotten to care about the collective.
For BIPOC clients this gate can hold the particular sorrow of watching communities be displaced, erased, or harmed by the same systems their families navigated — grief that is political and personal all at once.
The Fourth Gate: What we expected and did not receive
This gate of grief calls on you to be with the pain, sadness, and sorrow that arises when you reflect on what does not exist in your life in this very moment. At the core of this grief is the loss that comes with not receiving the love, support, and care you hoped for.
For many of the clients I work with this gate holds the grief of the cultural attunement they hoped for and did not receive — families who loved them and could not fully see them
The Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief
You may carry the beliefs, sorrow, and trauma of those who came before you. Passing through this gate means acknowledging the loss of language, rituals, names, stories, and rights that your ancestors and communities experienced even before you were born. At the core of this grief is honoring and developing an understanding of how the grief, loss, and sacrifices your parents, grandparents, and ancestors experienced can influence how you navigate this world.
For Filipino and Asian American clients this gate often holds the grief of language lost through colonization, rituals abandoned across generations, and the silence that moves through families who survived by not speaking of the pain and trauma they’ve experienced.
On Navigating Loss and The Five Gates of Grief
If something in one of these gates named a loss you’ve been carrying without language for — I want you to know that recognition itself is something. You don’t have to be ready to do anything with it yet.
I came to this work through my own losses — to suicide, to cancer, and to the kind of intergenerational silence that many Filipino and Asian American families know well.
I work with adults who are passing through one gate or several at once — LGBTQ+ adults, Filipino and Asian American adults, BIPOC adults who have been carrying grief that the world has not always made space for. Grief therapy with me is not about moving through a checklist. It is about building enough safety — inside yourself and in our relationship — to finally turn toward what you have been carrying.
Starting Grief Therapy in Los Angeles
If something in the five gates named a grief you have been carrying — I offer a free 20-minute consultation to talk about what that might look like to bring into the room. No pressure. Just a conversation.
Chris Datiles (he/him) is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and IFS therapist in Los Angeles. He works with adults who give a lot and are ready to receive. Using IFS Therapy for Grief and Loss, he helps clients understand the parts of themselves that have been working overtime, carrying more than they should, and grieving losses they haven't had language for. Specializing in LGBTQ and BIPOC adults and couples, he sees clients in person in the Arts District and online throughout California.
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