The Words I Didn't Have
22 words from around the world for what abuse, grief, and healing feel like
There were parts of my story that English couldn't hold.
I had words for what happened to me. I didn't have words for what it felt like: grieving a man who never really existed, missing myself while I was still standing in the room, the strange quiet after leaving when nothing was on fire and I kept waiting for smoke.
So I went looking. I found those words in German and Greek, Japanese and Welsh, Korean, Finnish, Hebrew, Irish, Zulu. Languages that had felt these things long enough to give them a name. Each one now is a part of my memoir, Raging Courage.
A gentle note before you start: some of these touch on abuse, grief, and estrangement. Read what you can, when you can. Take the ones that find you and leave the rest.
1. Sehnsucht (German)
A deep, wistful longing for an ideal or a state of life that may never have existed, yearning not for a person or place, but for a version of wholeness just out of reach.
I called the illusion beautiful and was terrified of losing it. But it wasn't him I was afraid of losing. It was an image, one that had never actually been real.
That's what Sehnsucht does. It doesn't make you long for what you had; it makes you long for what you believed you had. The ache is real even when the thing you're aching for never was. And I don't think I'm the only one who has mistaken that longing for love.
For you, it might be the marriage, the family, the version of "us" you were sure was real. You weren't naive for believing it. You're allowed to grieve a shape that never existed the way you thought it did.
“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” – Ben Okri
2. Katabasis (Greek)
A mythological descent into the underworld, with no built-in promise of return.
I had started editing my memories before they even formed, just in case. Somewhere in that editing, I lost the ground under my own mind.
That's what Katabasis is. Not a fall, but a descent, slow enough that you don't notice you're going down. Each step feels reasonable. Each doubt feels like your own. And no one hands you a map back, because the person leading you down is the one who took it.
For you, it might be the stretches of time when you doubted your own memory, your perception, even your sanity, because someone was quietly rewriting the facts of your life until you couldn't find solid ground.
“The victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear.” – Evan Stark
3. Saudade (Portuguese)
A melancholic longing for something absent that may never return the way it's remembered, love that persists after the loss.
I was already living inside a cracked mirror, mourning the woman I once was while still standing in the room with her.
That's the strange thing about Saudade. It doesn't wait for the loss to be finished. You can miss someone who is right in front of you, and sometimes that someone is you. I still loved her, the woman who laughed easily and trusted her own mind. I just couldn't reach her anymore.
For you, it might be the grief that started long before anything officially ended: missing the person you were, or the life you were building, while it was still technically happening. That grief isn't premature. It's love, noticing what's already slipping away.
“[Domestic violence is] a carefully laid physical, financial and psychological trap.” – Leslie Morgan Steiner
4. Kegare (穢れ, Japanese, Shinto)
A state of spiritual pollution or defilement that disrupts harmony, not a moral failing, and never permanent. It can always be lifted through purification.
My spirit had curled inward into the smallest shape it could make without vanishing, and some part of me believed that shape was permanent. It never was.
I didn't have a word for it then, but I do now. In Shinto, Kegare isn't something you are. It's something that settles on you, from contact with harm, and it was never meant to stay. Shame told me I was the stain. Kegare says the stain is not the self, and it can always be lifted.
For you, it might be the sense of contamination that lingers after abuse, humiliation, or violation. That feeling is real, but it isn't a verdict. It was never your fault, and it was never yours to carry as a permanent mark.
“All violence consists of some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.” – Leo Tolstoy
5. Kairos (Greek)
The decisive, qualitative moment, not measured in duration, but marked by significance. The point after which nothing is the same.
Freedom came in smaller moments than I expected, and this was the smallest and largest one of all: the night that split my life into before and after.
The Greeks had two words for time. Chronos is the clock: the days, the months, the years I spent waiting for something to change. Kairos is the moment that actually changes it. From the outside, it might not have looked like much. It didn't need to. Kairos isn't measured by how it looks. It's measured by what it ends.
For you, it might be a specific night, a conversation, a single sentence you finally said or heard. You can point to it as the hinge. It doesn't need anyone else to recognize it, and it doesn't need anyone's permission to count.
“The process of dissociation is an elegant mechanism built into the human psychological system as a form of escape from (sometimes literally) going crazy. The problem with checking out so thoroughly is that it can leave us feeling dead inside, with little or no ability to feel our feelings in our bodies. The process of repair demands a re-association with the body, a commitment to dive into the body and feel today what we couldn’t feel yesterday because it was too dangerous.” – Alexandra Katehakis
6. Sisu (Finnish)
Extraordinary grit shown in extreme adversity, determination beyond ordinary willpower, operating when feeling has nothing left to give.
I was not weak. I was calculating. And grit that looks like nodding, like silence, like getting up anyway, doesn't announce itself as brave.
The Finns have a word for it. Sisu isn't courage in the way we usually picture it, the big stand or the dramatic exit. It's what's left when courage runs out. It doesn't feel like strength from the inside. It feels like getting through the next hour. But it's the reason you're still here to read this.
For you, it might be the days you didn't feel strong or brave but kept functioning anyway: filing the paperwork, showing up to court, getting out of bed. None of it felt heroic. All of it counted.
“When one faces pain on a daily basis, one either learns to live with it or let it consume him.” – Jina Bazar
7. Metanoia (Greek)
A fundamental change of heart that happens because of a break, not in spite of it.
Something in me ignited that night, a spark flickering in the smallest spaces. It was the moment my resistance began.
I used to think I changed in spite of what broke me, that I survived the damage and then rebuilt. But Metanoia means something harder and more hopeful: the change came through the break. The crack was where the light got in, and where I finally got out. I wasn't the same person who walked into that night. I couldn't have been.
For you, it might be the turn you didn't choose, the change that only became possible because something shattered. You don't have to be grateful for the break. But you're allowed to notice what grew in the space it left.
“You can recognize survivors of abuse by their courage. When silence is so very inviting, they step forward and share their truth so others know they aren’t alone.” – Jeanne McElvaney
8. Hiraeth (Welsh)
Homesickness for a home, or a self, that can't be returned to, grief blended with nostalgia and yearning.
I am learning to carry my truth without collapsing, and part of that truth is grieving the woman I was before all of this. She deserved to be mourned too.
Hiraeth is homesickness for a place you can't go back to. For a long time, I kept trying to find my way back to her, as if I could retrace my steps and walk through the same door. But she wasn't a place I'd left. She was a home that no longer exists. I can miss her without needing to become her again. And I've started to build somewhere new to live.
For you, it might be the ache for who you were before: lighter, more trusting, less careful. Missing her isn't a failure to move forward. It's how you honor where you came from.
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” – Viktor Frankl
9. Querencia (Spanish)
The place a person draws their strength from, a psychological anchor, not just a location.
This time, I was going to write my own story. I held the pen, and the place that gave me the strength to pick it up again was somewhere inside me.
Querencia is the place you draw your strength from, the spot you return to when everything around you is under threat. I had spent years losing ground, then grieving a home I couldn't go back to. What I didn't understand until then was that the ground I needed had never been out there. For me, it was the thing that held: my daughters' faces, my faith, the words on the page. No one could take it, because no one could reach it.
For you, it might be the inner ground you return to when your actual housing or stability has been taken or threatened. It's the one place no eviction, no ambush, no threat can touch.
“It is not the bruises on the body that hurt. It is the wounds of the heart and the scars on the mind.” – Aisha Mirza
10. Han (Korean)
Deep, often generational, unresolved grief and resentment, carried rather than resolved, and understood as a source of endurance.
The burden never got lighter. I just learned to hold it differently. Some grief is never meant to resolve, only to be carried well.
Koreans call it Han: a grief so deep it becomes part of you, woven with anger that never got its due. It isn't something you get over. It's something you live alongside. For years, I thought my unresolved pain meant I was doing healing wrong. Han taught me otherwise. The weight I carry isn't evidence that I'm stuck. It's evidence of what I survived, and part of what keeps me standing.
For you, it might be the grief that never tidies itself into closure, and the anger that comes with it. You don't have to forgive in order to heal. You don't have to resolve what was never yours to fix. Some things are meant to be held, not solved.
“Often it isn’t the initiating trauma that creates seemingly insurmountable pain, but the lack of support after.” – Kelley Harrell
11. Nostos (Greek)
The long journey home, the leaving that starts it, not the arrival.
There is only one way from here: forward, upward, north. I had to learn that the leaving itself was the beginning of arriving, not a failure to have arrived yet.
Nostos is the Greek word for the journey home. In the old stories, the hero's homecoming isn't a single moment at the door. It's years on the road, and the road is the story. Katabasis was a descent with no promise of return. This is the return. Not finished, not tidy, but underway. I stopped measuring myself by how far I had left to go and started counting the fact that I'd left at all.
For you, it might be the first step toward safety, even when it doesn't feel like arrival yet: the run, the call, the decision, before any of it feels finished. You're not behind. You're on the way home.
“I am building a fire each day, I add more fuel until one day, at the right time, I light the match.” – Mia Hamm
12. Meitheal (Irish)
Neighbors gathering to help each other's work, without being asked twice, mutual aid as communal obligation.
I kept running with a backpack full of stones, but I was never carrying it alone. Neighbors, family, coworkers. They showed up before I knew how to ask.
In rural Ireland, meitheal was how the harvest got done: neighbors going field to field, working each other's land in turn. Nobody kept score, and nobody apologized for needing help. It was simply what you did. Isolation had convinced me I was on my own, that no one would come, and that if they did, I'd owe them more than I could repay. Meitheal says otherwise. Help isn't a debt. It's a turn. And someday, it will be yours to give.
For you, it might be the people who showed up when isolation was supposed to make that impossible: the ride, the couch, the favor you didn't have to explain.
“What is to give light must endure burning.” – Viktor Frankl
13. Lagom (Swedish)
Just the right amount, not too much, not too little. Balance as its own form of sufficiency.
I built with intention, not perfection. For the first time, I was learning what "enough" actually felt like, after years of only knowing too much or nothing at all.
The Swedes have a word for it: lagom. Not too much, not too little. Just right. It sounds simple, but after years of extremes, balance felt strange. When nothing was on fire, I kept waiting for smoke. A quiet evening felt like the calm before something. I had to learn that steadiness wasn't the absence of something. It was the thing. Enough was not a lesser version of more. It was the whole point.
For you, it might be the unfamiliar calm of a life that doesn't swing between extremes. If peace feels strange, it's not because something is wrong. It's because you're not used to being safe yet.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” – Viktor Frankl
14. Ganbaru (Japanese)
To persevere tenaciously through hardship with quiet, stubborn effort, not heroics, just doing your best and refusing to quit, one day, one task, at a time.
This heart was mended in the dark by hands that shook but never stopped.
Ganbaru isn't about winning the day. It's about showing up for it anyway, and then again the next day, and the one after that. It's not the dramatic kind of strength. It's the unglamorous, repetitive kind: the therapy appointment kept, the boundary held one more time, the small promise to yourself that you didn't break. Healing didn't come in a breakthrough. It came in repetitions. And quitting was never really an option, because giving up wasn't a door that was actually open to me.
In Japan, people say ganbatte to each other the way we might say "you've got this." So let me say it to you: for you, this might be the ordinary days of rebuilding that no one sees, the ones that don't feel like progress until you look back and realize they were. Ganbatte. Keep going.
“Keep a little fire burning, however small, however hidden.” – Cormac McCarthy
15. Nepenthe (Greek)
In Homer's Odyssey, a drug that erases grief so completely that the drinker could watch their own child die and feel nothing.
I wrote it all down and burned it in the fireplace, wanting the fire to erase the memory whole. But what actually healed me was watching it burn, and choosing to carry the ash forward anyway.
In the Odyssey, Helen pours nepenthe into the wine, a drug so powerful that whoever drinks it could watch their own son killed in front of them and not shed a tear. It's offered as a gift. It reads like a warning. Because a grief you can't feel is also a love you can't feel. I didn't want to forget what happened to me. I wanted it to stop hurting the way it did. Those turned out to be different things.
For you, it might be the wish to erase certain memories completely. That wish makes sense. But you don't need to forget in order to be free. What happened to you can become part of your story without being the whole of it.
“Grief does not demand pity. It requests acknowledgement.” – Jude Gibbs
16. Wabi-sabi (Japanese)
Beauty found in imperfection and impermanence, things that show the marks of having been broken and kept.
I have been broken and rearranged more times than I can count. That same year, Georgia and her friends were mending broken pottery with gold, and it felt like the universe handing me the metaphor before I'd even found the word for it.
The Japanese call that practice kintsugi, and it comes from a larger idea: wabi-sabi, the beauty of things that are imperfect, unfinished, and marked by time. In kintsugi, the gold doesn't hide the crack. It traces it. The bowl isn't pretending it was never broken. It's showing you that someone thought it was worth keeping. I had spent years trying to hide my seams. I didn't need to. The repair was part of the story too.
For you, it might be a different way of seeing yourself after trauma: not damaged, but rearranged, with the seams showing and no less worth having.
“Life is simple, everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment. Neither too soon or too late. You don't have to like it, it's just easier if you do.”
17. Emunah (Hebrew)
Faith as steadfastness and reliability, not certainty, trust that acts even before an outcome is proven safe.
I stepped forward before I could see where the ground would hold, trusting the process before I had any proof it would hold me.
In Hebrew, emunah shares a root with "amen," and at its core it means steadiness. The first time it appears in the Bible, it describes Moses's arms, heavy and failing, held up by two others until sundown. That's the faith I found. Not certainty. Not a feeling. Just steadiness, sometimes borrowed, practiced one step at a time. After years of not trusting even my own memory, the first thing I had to learn to trust again was me.
For you, it might be the decision to trust again: a person, a process, yourself. Not blindly, and not all at once. Emunah isn't a guarantee. It's a steadiness you build, one step and one proven promise at a time.
“The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.” – Charles Bradlaugh
18. Ambiguous Loss (English, a clinical term)
Coined by therapist Pauline Boss to describe loss with no resolution: a person who is physically gone but psychologically present, or physically present but psychologically gone.
My daughters are alive, breathing, still my children. But grieving them while they stood right in front of me was a loss with no funeral, no ritual, no name at all.
Every other word on this list came from a language that had felt this grief long enough to name it. This one didn't. It took a therapist, Pauline Boss, to finally give it words: ambiguous loss, the grief for someone who is here and not here. There are no casseroles for this kind of loss, no cards, no day on the calendar when it happened. Boss taught me that I didn't have to choose between hope and grief. I could hold both. They are gone, and they are still mine. I can mourn what was taken and keep the door open.
For you, it might be the specific grief of estrangement or alienation, of loving a living person who has become unreachable. You're allowed to grieve someone who is still alive. And you're allowed to hope anyway.
“Life happens how it happens, and you either move with the maelstrom or die wallowing about the change in the winds.” – Cora Carmack
19. Philotimo (Greek)
Honor, dignity, and duty carried out without requiring an audience or reward.
I documented everything. I recorded every call and kept every letter, not for an audience, but because it was the right thing to do.
The Greeks call it philotimo, literally "love of honor," a word they say doesn't fully translate. It isn't about being seen as good. It's about being able to live with yourself. For years someone had been rewriting the story of my life. Every note I kept was a small act of holding on to what was true. No one was applauding. Some people thought I was obsessive. But the record wasn't for them. It was for me, and for the day the truth would need somewhere to stand.
For you, it might be doing the right thing when no one saw it or applauded yet: documenting, staying honest, protecting your kids. That quiet integrity counts, even if no one ever thanks you for it.
“Realize that narcissists are looking for admirers, not partners. And, for your information, the admirer needs to show obedience. The only value you have for a person with NPD is someone who tells him how great he is to feed his ravenous ego. You, your feelings, and your desires don't count.” – Lara Carter
20. Meraki (Greek)
Doing something with soul and full personal investment, rather than performing it mechanically.
I stopped performing my way through survival and started actually living inside my own choices again, for the first time in years.
For so long, everything I did was a performance: the right tone, the right answer, the pleasing and fawning that kept things calm. I was good at it. It kept me alive. But none of it was mine. Greeks have a word for the opposite: meraki, doing something with your whole soul in it, leaving a little of yourself in whatever you make. The first time I felt it again, it was something small: picking up my camera for no one but me. I wasn't managing anyone's reaction. I was just there, fully, doing something I loved.
For you, it might be the difference between surviving on autopilot and the first moments you notice yourself fully present again. Those moments may be small, and they may be brief. They're a quiet sign that more of you is showing up.
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati, that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it, all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary, but love it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
21. Desahogo (Spanish)
Literally "un-drowning": relief from pain or hardship after something has been held under or suppressed.
I took the stand and said the words out loud, and for the first time in twenty-five years, the thing I'd been holding under the surface finally came up for air.
When he walked into that courtroom, I couldn't catch my breath. By the time I stepped down from the stand, I could. In Spanish, ahogar means to drown, to be held under, to lose your air. Desahogo is the undoing of it. It's what happens when the truth you've swallowed for years finally has somewhere to go. I didn't know how much I'd been holding until I let it out.
For you, it might be the almost physical relief of finally being heard after years of being silenced or minimized. It doesn't have to happen in a courtroom. In Spanish, you can desahogarte at a kitchen table, telling one safe person the whole story. That counts too.
“The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.” – Elisabeth Elliot
22. Ubuntu (Nguni Bantu: Zulu/Xhosa)
"I am because we are": personhood and identity constituted through relationship and community, not isolation.
I was never going to survive this alone. Every woman who came forward, Christi, Corrine, Jayme, Sara, proved that my safety and theirs were never separate stories to begin with.
There's a Zulu saying: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, a person is a person through other people. Isolation had taught me the opposite. It convinced me I was the only one, that what happened was somehow about me. Then other women started telling their stories, and the pieces fit together. What one of us said could be dismissed. What all of us said could not. I didn't find my truth alone. I found it reflected back in theirs.
For you, it might be realizing that isolation was a tactic used against you, and that you were never as alone as you were made to feel. Other survivors, other voices, other people who know: reconnecting with them isn't just comfort. It may be where you find the rest of your story.
“One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” – Sigmund Freud
Find your word
I didn't need all 22 at once. I needed one at a time, usually the one that fit the season I was in. Some days it was Sisu. Some days it was Han. Lately, more often than I expected, it's Lagom.
If one of these words found you today, I'd love to hear which one. Tell me in the comments, or send me a message. And if you know someone who is somewhere in the middle of this list, send it to them. Sometimes the first step out is just finding out that what you feel has a name, and that you're not the only one who has felt it.
With fierce love, Acasha
These words come from my memoir, Raging Courage. Learn more at raging-courage.com.
If you're not safe right now: call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. It's free, confidential, and open 24/7.
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