By Chezzi Denyer
Grief changes you in ways no one can truly prepare you for.
If you have ever lost someone deeply woven into your life, then you know the weight of missing them with every part of your being. You know the ache that sits in your chest, the exhaustion that settles into your bones, and the strange feeling that the world keeps moving while yours has stopped.
What many people do not realise is that grief is not only emotional… it is neurological, biological, and physical.
Modern neuroscience now shows us that grief fundamentally alters the brain and body.
According to grief researcher Mary-Frances O’Connor, grief is not simply sadness. It is a profound neurobiological process where the brain is forced to reconcile two conflicting realities:
You consciously know someone is gone…
Yet your brain still expects them to return.
Your mind has mapped this person into your everyday existence. Into routines. Into safety. Into identity. Into love itself. And when they die, the brain struggles to update that map.
This is why grief can feel so disorientating.
You may reach for your phone to call them.
Think you see them in a crowd.
Hear a sound and momentarily believe they are home.
Your brain is still running on old neural pathways while trying to learn a completely new reality.
Neuroscience shows several key areas of the brain become heavily affected during grief:
• The nucleus accumbens — the area connected to bonding, reward, and longing — continues searching for the person you love, creating the deep yearning so many grieving people experience.
• The amygdala, the brain’s emotional alarm system, interprets loss as a threat to survival, triggering anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, and emotional overwhelm.
• The anterior cingulate cortex, which processes both emotional and physical pain, explains why grief can literally hurt in the body. This is why heartbreak can feel physical… because neurologically, it is.
• The prefrontal cortex, responsible for focus, memory, concentration, and decision-making, becomes depleted during grief. This is why so many people experience “grief brain” — forgetfulness, fogginess, exhaustion, confusion, and difficulty functioning.
The body also enters a prolonged stress response.
Cortisol levels rise.
Sleep becomes disrupted.
The immune system weakens.
The nervous system remains on high alert.
Grief is not weakness.
It is the brain and body attempting to survive the unimaginable.
For me… grief broke me.
I was not expecting it to.
I truly believed I could somehow hold myself together. But grief does not ask permission before it changes you.
The tears came endlessly.
They flew out of me without warning and would not stop.
The pain was too raw to conceal. Too heavy to carry quietly.
I felt ripped open.
Ripped off.
Desperate for answers.
And perhaps one of the most healing — yet confronting — parts of grief is the possibility of signs from the people we love.
Sometimes they come gently.
A smell.
A song.
A dream.
A moment impossible to explain.
And when they happen, part of you feels comforted beyond words…
But another part whispers:
“What if this isn’t real?”
Because the thinking mind is terrified of further heartbreak.
So many grieving people close themselves off, not because they want to… but because they fear hope itself. Fear being wrong. Fear hurting even more deeply than they already do.
I understand that fear because I have lived it.
I have stood in both places. Disbelief and connection. Pain and healing. Logic and something beyond it.
And more than anything, I hope that one day you experience a moment so undeniable, so full of love, that even grief itself cannot explain it away.
I am leaving a link here for a meditation you can do with a Medium I know well. We studied together at Arthur Findlay College. Her name is Kareen, and I like this meditation because it is short… only seven minutes long.
It is a peaceful guided meditation, and I encourage you to find a quiet place and simply give it a go.
Do not put pressure on yourself for an outcome. Just allow whatever is supposed to happen to happen. No fear. No judgment.
7 Minute Guided Meditation with Kareen
If you are grieving right now, please know this: the exhaustion, the confusion, the brain fog, the tears, the numbness, the anger, the longing… these are not signs that you are broken. They are signs that you loved deeply.
And love leaves a mark.
Grief changes you.
But so does love.
xxx