After losing my brother and my mom to cancer, I went on a quest to understand a feeling that I could not name. I was confused about how I could already feel despair when the people I love were still with me. For me, anticipatory grief is that feeling when I know something horrible is going to happen; I just don’t know how to explain it, because it yet has not happened. Anticipatory grief also encompasses those feelings of not being understood, because I was not directly affected by illness. Over the years I’ve learned about this challenging feeling and how to cope with it. Read more from Patricia Montoya’s blog.