Both bereavement and the loss of a religious faith can be deeply disorienting experiences which radically transform one’s experience of the world, sense of self, and relationships with others. Recently, grief has received increased philosophical interest – especially from a phenomenological perspective – as philosophers seek to understand what it is to experience grief and what understanding grief can teach us about human experience more broadly. Grief is most commonly associated with bereavement loss; however, there is growing awareness of the (...) possibility of grief for non-death losses. This paper argues that certain experiences of deconversion can be occasions for grief. The experience of losing one’s religious faith has had scant coverage in contemporary philosophical literature yet its effect on individuals can be comparable to that of bereavement. This paper analyses deconversion experiences according to four themes common to bereavement: world destruction, temporal disruption, personal loss, and the loss of possibilities. Using a range of deconversion narratives drawn from ethnographic literature, this paper argues that some experiences of deconversion closely resemble experiences of grief, and so some responses to deconversion can rightly be called grief. One key difference between deconversion and other forms of grief regards the future-orientation of the experiences. While grief is often directed towards the loss of future possibilities, many accounts of deconversion are more concerned with losses from the past and present a positive attitude towards the future. This positive outlook can be explained by interpreting the deconversion experience through the lens of grief. (shrink)