Good Grief, Maria! The Stuff No One Talks About

Right, I’m seeing a lot of people suffering around me at the moment – me included – and somehow, it is all relating to experiencing some form of grief. The loss of something you once cherished. Yes, that is right: grief is not limited to someone dying.

It can centre on a missing animal, a relationship falling apart, or a loss of identity. Or it can be the death of a fantasy. The fantasy of the "perfect family" (the perfect mum who is actually a narcissist), or the sudden realisation that the "normalised," fucked-up family you grew up in actually did you a massive amount of damage. Waking up to that reality is a huge, heavy loss to process.

Grief can also be the loss of your independence – through motherhood, or in my case, losing your home to a natural disaster and dealing with the devastation of losing everything you own because of corporate negligence. Both, funnily enough, lean into mourning the life you imagined you’d be living by now.

There is a very long list of what constitutes grief outside of death, but I think you get what I am trying to say, so I will pause the context. Let’s pull this apart. I want to help you not get stuck in the dark, messy stuff of grief, or, equally, avoid it because you are afraid of what you may feel when you do.

The Swinging Pendulum

The first thing you need to get comfortable with is the wild swing. You will swing from feeling super uncomfortable in emotional turmoil, to feeling completely dissociated or numb, to functioning like a highly capable adult. This is okay. This is your brain's way of expressing and organising your thoughts in a processing phase of loss. Keeping up appearances, getting the job done, and doing the grocery shopping while a storm rages underneath your surface.

Come to terms with the fact that grief is not linear. It doesn’t follow a straight line, because life doesn’t either. One minute you feel like you’re coming to terms with it, and the next day you’re in total denial, subconsciously suppressing it because it just feels too uncomfortable.

That is okay. Get comfortable with the swinging pendulum. This is how the human body and brain process a massive amount of internal traffic. Make room for this – trust me, you won't die from it.

The aim is not to “get over” grief, but to learn to carry it in a way that does not completely overwhelm you.

The Physical Toll (And the "Dumb" Things People Say)

Grief is a physical beast. It wreaks havoc on your immune system, disrupts your sleep, and causes real, physical chest pain. A “broken heart” is not a metaphor; it's a physiological reality.

When you are in deep grief, your brain perceives the emotional trauma as a literal threat to your survival. It triggers your adrenal glands to pump out a relentless flood of cortisol – the body's primary stress hormone. In short bursts, cortisol is helpful. But when it stays "always on" due to prolonged grief, it suppresses your immune system, leaving you completely defenceless. (Or in my case, triggering horrible, life-threatening immune responses, like choking attacks.)

Worse, this chronic stress flip-switches your body into a state of cellular inflammation – stuff you can’t even see! It floods your system with inflammatory chemicals, which is why your muscles ache, your joints feel stiff, your brain feels foggy, and you feel entirely physically battered. You aren't just sad; your body is actively fighting an internal biological war. Good God, Maria, it’s quite serious stuff.

Get comfortable with an emotion called guilt swinging in from time to time, too. You need to allow it to come so you can question its validity. Is it actual shame and guilt you feel for your grief, or is it a sense of relief that you have not allowed yourself to fully connect to? Especially if a relationship was difficult or painful. Feeling relief does not negate the love you had, or the symbiotic loss you are experiencing.

You also need to get used to the fact that your friends and family are not grief counsellors. They are not trained in what to say, so they will inevitably say stuff that sounds incredibly dumb. Often, it's aggressively, toxically positive.

When you have just lost everything you own, you don’t want to be told to "be grateful you’re alive." You want to be mad. You want to be pissed off with the world. Or when you lose the love of your life and someone says, “Just be happy you got to experience a love like that” – yes, yes, lovely, lovely... now fuck off. (Albeit, this is not a permanent state of mind, it’s just the time of adjustment, right!)

People say the wrong thing not because they don't care, but because your loss makes them uncomfortable. They rush to "fix" it because they can't handle the silence of your pain. Hear this: Healthy anger is allowed. You do not have to find meaning in your loss straight away. It is incredibly healthy to be ragingly angry about what has happened to you.

My "Pow. Boom. Bust."

At the end of February, a massive, 1-in-100-year hail storm hit my town. My house got trashed by golf-ball-sized hail and flooded. To cut a very long and ugly story short, I had to move out with just the clothes on my back and leave everything behind. The storm damage was one thing, but the negligent management of my claim meant I lost everything.

I have had to move eight times into different temporary accommodations, deal with my cat getting run over by a car (she survived), and then last week, she disappeared for three agonizing days before finally finding her way back to my balcony door. My other cat, Rudi, was scratching himself until he bled from pure anxiety. On top of that, I’ve had to become a literal lobbyist just to get the insurance company to take responsibility for their unlawful actions.

It’s been an unbearable battle. High tension, masses of anxiety, and several high-risk choking attacks because my body is completely overwhelmed with cortisol and exhaustion. I would never wish this on anyone. And what is worse, I am beholden to corporate people who frankly don’t give a shit. I’m a number, a case file that has been negligently and unlawfully managed, and it sucks. I’m in survival mode and I’m up against it. This isn’t a one-dimensional product wrapped in plastic; it’s my life, and my animals' lives. Everything was going swimmingly well. Life was on the up and up, and then – pow, boom, bust. It all turned to shit.

I used to tell people I was having the love affair of my life with myself, my house, and my garden. I was bringing this old 1945 cottage back to life with new floors, a new kitchen, wallpaper, and stripped hallways. The garden was magical. I could hear the house singing; her energy was shining. Now, after sitting there mould- and rat-infested due to their delays, she feels dead, lifeless, and sad.

My heart is broken. I have not only lost all my belongings, I’ve lost my freedom, my independence, and the identity and life I had created for myself in my magical garden of Eden sitting up on a hill. I’ve lost this incredible relationship I had with my home and garden that was giving me so much joy. It’s utterly heartbreaking, and I am sad. I feel incredibly sad.

This is all culminating together into one big, blurry pile of loss. A king hit out of nowhere and through no fault of my own – but I can’t change it. So, I am allowing myself to grieve. I am allowing myself to feel sad, and I am making room for those emotions to wash in and out when they need to. I’m seeing my anger as a healthy hit of release, and I’m not afraid to express it, because I know this, too, will wash in and out. And yes, I know I have to brace myself and manage my energy for when that next email arrives from the insurance company to avoid, evade, and suck more life from my already tortured body.

There is no way for me to avoid this, so I have to work with it. I have to accept that this is happening. But there is a way that I do this so I don’t completely lose myself in the darkness of all this chaos - and become stuck in a world of grief and loss.

Rewiring the Brain: Finding “The Joy Right There"

So, let me tell you about what is getting me through. Signing up for the absolute realism of the grieving process. That, and making sure that each day, I set a strict intention to find the littlest piece of joy.

Even if it’s just a micro-moment, I grab hold of it and say out loud, “Right there. That is my piece of joy, right there.” And then I thank my brain for noticing it.

Why? Because by doing this, I am actively training my neural pathways to look for the light instead of constantly scanning for the negative. This is how you stop yourself from getting stuck in the doldrums of grief.

I also call out my "small wins" – looking at what actually went well that day, no matter how tiny. It rearranges the thoughts in your head. It reminds you that even though life feels incredibly heavy, not everything inside your head is a shit-show. This is healthy neural rewiring. This is healthy healing. You can feel safe knowing that if you allow yourself to fully feel these heavy, dark, dreary emotions, life won't end there. You will pull yourself through to the other side.

Your Added Bonus of Joy

Grieving takes as long as it takes. I'm afraid there's no shortcut. It will come and go for as long as you need to process the hurt, the pain, and the love you have lost. You do not have to pressure yourself to "move on" to please others. "Moving on" is a social construct bred by a society that hates talking about pain. Most people have zero skills in handling grief without breaking out into a nasty case of hives.

Healthy grieving is an oscillation: you sit with the loss – make room for it when it needs to be seen – and then you gently re-engage with life in small, gentle ways that are meaningful to you. (No people-pleasing allowed during grief or loss, right!)

For me, re-engaging means small things. A bit of creative cooking – I have a massive thing for making extravagant, layered cakes at the moment, and my freezer is currently packed with ridiculous combinations. It means writing. It means comedy (though never slapstick, because slapstick makes me angry). It means making time for myself where I don't have to perform or please a single soul. (Today I got into a little Harry Styles in the car, man he’s a cool dude!)

Sometimes, I get my human connection just by walking my dogs or chatting to the local butcher and the supermarket staff. Why? Because I don’t have to talk about my dire, shitty, heavy situation with them. My grief is ugly, I can admit that. But it’s my ugly, and it’s intimate to me.

Don't get stuck only looking at the dark side of your loss. Remaining in only one mode leads to stagnation or dangerous suppression. Branch out for the micro-joys. Cook. Sing to yourself. Listen to the birds. Take your shoes off and walk on the fresh grass – connect with Mother Earth.

Then, see how you feel when you wake up tomorrow. Decide what your little piece of joy is going to be. And when it happens, remember to call it out loud so your brain hears you:

"There is my little piece of joy, right there."

Yes, life can suck. Life can be incredibly mean. And it takes as long as it takes to get through this stuff. But life will also give you little rays of sunshine. You just need to look up from the depths every once in a while to ensure you catch the glimpse, and see exactly where they’re coming from. Yeah?!

Holding your hand – and thanks for holding mine!!

Fleur Elizabeth x