The Body Keeps the Grief
I didn’t know how to be me anymore.
That’s how it began—not with a dramatic loss, but with a slow, invisible unraveling. One chapter of my life had just ended: a successful career I’d built over decades, a public identity that once felt powerful, even untouchable. I closed my last restaurant. I moved across an ocean. I entered a new relationship. From the outside, it looked like a fresh start.
But inside? Inside, something had collapsed.
I remember standing in the kitchen, barefoot, making tea. The kettle steamed. A soft song played in the background. And then suddenly—tears. No trigger. No big thought. Just this swell of emotion, rising like tidewater through my chest and throat. I leaned against the counter and cried in a way I hadn’t let myself cry in years. It wasn’t about one thing. It was everything.
I wasn’t grieving a person. I was grieving a version of me I didn’t know I’d lost. The rhythm of my days, the sense of certainty, the story I’d once told about who I was—it had all gone quiet. And in its place, a rawness I couldn’t name.
The Hidden Nature of Midlife Grief
We’re taught that grief belongs to funerals and farewells. That it arrives when someone dies, when something ends. But in midlife, grief is subtler. It doesn’t always come with closure or clarity. It comes with questions. It comes with silence.
We grieve roles that have shifted—mother, partner, caretaker. We grieve bodies that are changing in ways we didn’t choose. We grieve the future we thought we’d have, and the dreams we quietly let go of to survive the present. We grieve the parts of ourselves that feel far away now—desire, creativity, certainty, ease.
This kind of grief doesn’t always get acknowledged. There’s no cultural ritual for mourning who you used to be. No casseroles dropped off when your identity dissolves. And so we hold it in. We carry it.
And what we carry? It carries us.
How the Body Carries What the Heart Can’t Speak
When we don’t let ourselves feel the grief, the body will feel it for us.
I’ve lived this. On the outside, I was keeping it together. But inside, my chest felt tight (and I would ask Jeff to rub the area right around my heart often). My gut was reactive. I was exhausted no matter how much I slept. My hormones were swinging. My skin felt foreign. My heart, heavy.
This wasn’t just burnout. It was emotional residue. According to research in psychoneuroimmunology, when we suppress emotional expression—especially chronic sadness, loss, or trauma—it alters our immune response, increases inflammation, and disrupts our nervous system balance. The body remembers what the mind can’t process.
The book The Body Keeps the Score calls this "body memory." And I’ve felt it—those days when the sadness didn’t feel like an emotion, but a weight in my chest. When my body ached with things I hadn’t yet said aloud.
The body doesn’t lie. It whispers what the psyche can’t yet say.
Why We Don’t Recognize It as Grief
We’ve been trained not to name this. Especially as women. Especially in midlife.
We’ve been the strong ones. The glue. The emotional anchors for everyone around us. There hasn’t been space to fall apart.
So we keep moving. Keep functioning. Keep giving.
Grief gets disguised as perfectionism. As productivity. As pretending we’re fine. We overfunction so we don’t have to feel the undercurrents. And eventually, we forget that what we’re carrying has a name: loss.
I didn’t know I was grieving. I just thought I was failing at being myself.
But really, I was in a sacred transition. And grief was the bridge.
Signs the Body is Holding Unspoken Grief
Here’s what I’ve noticed—in myself, and in so many women I’ve walked beside:
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Fatigue that no amount of sleep resolves
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Puffiness, inflammation, gut reactivity
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Mood swings or unexpected weepiness
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Feeling emotionally flat or disconnected
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Tightness in the chest or throat
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Feeling "full" but not fully expressed
These are not signs that something is wrong with you. These are signs that something wants to move.
The body’s symptoms are sometimes just emotions that ran out of words.
How to Begin Releasing What’s Been Held
You don’t have to unravel all at once. You don’t have to dig for the origin story. Start with this:
a. Feel in Safe Increments
Breathe. Notice. Let yourself feel without needing to understand. A body scan. A hand on your heart. A journal page without a goal.
b. Witness Without Fixing
What if you didn’t try to fix it? What if you simply allowed it to exist? Cry without rushing to stop. Name the emotion without analyzing it. Let it pass through you, not define you.
c. Move Emotion Physically
Shake. Dance. Stretch. Walk. Emotion is energy in motion. Sometimes the body just needs to move what the heart cannot metabolize.
d. Nourish What’s Left Raw
Your nervous system is sacred. Support it with known herbal allies. Drink water. Touch earth. Rest like it matters. Because it does.
e. Connection as Medicine
Grief wants a witness. Tell a trusted friend. Join a circle. Let yourself be heard. Co-regulation with others is not indulgent—it’s ancient and essential.
When It’s More Than You Can Hold Alone
Some grief needs a container bigger than your own hands. That doesn’t make you weak. That makes you wise.
Therapists trained in somatic trauma, EMDR, or nervous system repair can walk with you through the fog. Functional practitioners who understand the mind-body link can help you regulate what feels dysregulated.
There’s no shame in asking for help. In fact, grief becomes lighter when it’s shared.
Grief asks to be witnessed, not managed.
Grief as a Rite of Passage
What if midlife grief isn’t a breakdown?
What if it’s an initiation?
You are shedding skins. Roles. Illusions. Stories that no longer serve you. That hurts. Of course it does.
But beneath the ache is emergence.
You are becoming. Again.
The body keeps the grief—until you’re ready to let it become wisdom.
Closing
If something stirred in you while reading this, let it stir. Let yourself feel it. You don’t need to solve it. You just need to stop carrying it alone.
Let this be your invitation:
What if your tears are the water your next self needs to grow?