Daniel Island pastor explores how we handle loss in debut book
After two decades in pastoral ministry, Drew Hensley knows a thing or two about the stories people tell and the ones they don’t.
As a pastor at ONE Fellowship on Daniel Island, Hensley has spent years sitting across from people who looked fine on the outside but felt fractured underneath. He often heard the same stories: grief without funerals, without permission, and without a clear place to land.
Those conversations eventually became “Invisible Grief.”
Released on Jan. 20 through Christian Focus Publications, “Invisible Grief” explores a kind of loss many people don’t realize they’re allowed to mourn: unmet hopes, unrealized dreams, and the pain of a future that never materialized.
The book is shaped by Hensley’s 20 years in ministry, including time as a church planter in Seattle, Washington, but it is also deeply personal.
“My wife and I walked through seven years of infertility before adopting our son,” Hensley said. “This long season stirred up real pain, real questions, and legitimate feelings of loss.”
As Hensley walked through that season, he began recognizing the same pattern in others.
“I kept noticing the same kind of grief showing up again and again – grief without funerals, without casseroles, without permission,” he said. “At some point I realized: this isn’t peripheral, it’s everywhere and unfortunately a lot of people were carrying it silently. Writing this book felt less like launching a project and more like finally saying out loud what so many of us whisper.”
That silence, Hensley believes, is part of what makes invisible grief so exhausting.
“There’s no clear loss to point to, so we minimize it,” he said. “We keep moving, keep achieving, keep serving. But grief doesn’t disappear just because we don’t name it. It just goes underground. Invisible grief is often the most exhausting kind because so many feel like they have to carry it alone.”
At ONE Fellowship, a 12-year-old church on Sportsman Island Drive, Hensley and the pastoral team aim to create space for honesty rather than performance. He describes the church as a place where people are encouraged to wrestle with faith, doubt, and sorrow without feeling the need to clean it up first, a philosophy that carries through the pages of the book.
Living and ministering in Charleston have only sharpened the message. “Charleston is beautiful, and that beauty can sometimes make grief feel even more isolating,” Hensley said. “When everything around you looks like it’s thriving, it can feel harder to admit that something inside you isn’t.”
Rather than offering quick fixes, “Invisible Grief” focuses on naming pain and learning how to hold it with faith. “More than anything, I hope it gives people language for what they’re feeling and for how God meets them there,” Hensley said.
“My prayer is that readers feel seen without being rushed, and invited to grieve without being fixed. I believe that when we stop pretending we’re fine, we often discover that God has been closer than we realized all along.”
Hensley will host a local grief workshop on March 11 at St. Peter’s Church in Mount Pleasant. “Invisible Grief” is available through major retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.