Madeline

Grief is a whole body experience. You feel it deep inside your mind, all the way to the tips of your toes. It affects every square inch of your body. As I venture on my own grief and healing journey, I’ve noticed how deeply I feel grief all over, but especially in every corner of my brain.

Grief is not just an ache in my chest that doesn’t go away; it is a rewiring of my brain that causes me to question myself, my memories, my own perception of the world.

I knew, to a degree, what grief felt like. In my 27 years of life, I have said goodbye to family member after family member, often at the same time. My family and I have always said the Smiths are cursed.

I understood grief. I understood mourning. I understood healing after. I understood finding joy and happiness as time passed. I understood looking back on those memories with fondness and a smile. What I did not understand, nor was I prepared for, was that sometimes you experience a loss so profound, grief so violent and deep, that it alters your very composition.

Two versions of yourself now exist: You Before Grief, and You After Grief. And I’m beginning to learn how vastly different those two people can be.

I have blandly joked, “Oh, since Oliver died, I feel like I’m losing my mind.” But no one around me took me seriously. No one knew that I was telling the truth. I could feel a noticeable difference in my brain, in the way my mind worked, and shortly after it registered to me, I had started to convince myself that my situation was unique, that it was just a way grief manifested for me specifically and eventually, soon, my brain would revert back to the brain I had when I was Me Before Grief.

When that transition didn’t happen quickly and I found myself with a brain I didn’t recognize, I was afraid. Grief had stolen so many things from me. I didn’t know what to do or how to cope when it quite literally began affecting a very complex, very important piece of my body.

I found myself forgetting everything that was said to me. And anyone who knew me before Oliver died knows that my memory was one of my strongest tools. I remembered anything and everything, even when people probably wished I didn’t. But since July 16, I find myself unable to remember anything. I couldn’t tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the book I just read. I found myself calling my pets by the wrong name over and over again. I could be in the middle of a sentence and all of a sudden forget what the entire conversation was about. It feels like I’m living my life with everything on the tip of my tongue, close but just barely out of reach.

In that same vein, my memories feel scattered. I can remember certain events, certain conversations and places I’ve been, but the order becomes tricky. I know that I know how to crochet a granny square, because I’ve crocheted hundreds, but after picking up my yarn and hook, I can’t remember which step comes first. I know that I’ve been to at least a dozen doctor’s appointments, but I can’t remember the order in which I went. I know the genetic counselor told me three separate times over the phone what our options were for genetic testing, and yet I still had to go and talk to her in person and have her write it down for me. Because I. Just. Can’t. Remember.

My brain seems to have made it impossible to process any emotion that isn’t anger or sadness, or the occasional guilt. In the midst of “good days” or in moments when I’m having fun, my brain shuts down. It becomes empty and numb, before eventually reverting back to the only emotions it can process right now. Unfortunately for me, those emotions are what makes opening my eyes every morning a struggle.

I’ve always considered myself a relatively intelligent person. I like facts. I like learning. So it should be no surprise that I find solace in academia, in concrete evidence and proof. Part of my grieving journey has been me exploring research and texts focused on grief, and specifically, how grief can very well affect your brain.

The more I dove in and read, the more things started to make sense. I wasn’t crazy. My situation wasn’t unique. I wasn’t “losing my mind.” Grief brain is a very real thing. I had just never suffered a loss this strong before to notice it.

The American Brain Foundation has an article I read titled “Healing Your Brain After Loss: How Grief Rewires the Brain.” And during that short read, I felt like so many of my questions were answered.

Grief sends your brain into fight or flight mode. It is a process that has developed as a form of adaptation, as something our brain has learned to do simply for survival.

“In response to traumatic events, the brain creates connections between nerves and strengthens or weakens existing connections depending on the duration and degree of the emotional response.” – Dr. Lisa M. Shulman

The severity of that rewiring is directly connected to how severe the stress and grief was. For low stress, the connection and nerves continue to grow. This helps us “cope” and reduces the fear we feel in those moments. Chronic stress, on the other hand, causes a stunt in nerve growth. Your brain is no longer focused on forming connections and memories — your brain is now focused on survival. The more stress, the less nerve growth, which leads to permanent changes over time.

Connections in your brain can misfire in two ways. One, they can misfire temporarily in moderately stressful situations and eventually revert back to “normal.” Two, they can misfire repeatedly and so often in higher stress situations that it creates a permanent rewiring of your brain. This permanent change can affect memories, decision making, attention span, and processing times.

And suddenly, I answers. I learned that my son dying was such a sever loss, was grief and pain so strong that it changed my brain. My brain that is now only focused on survival. My brain that used to work so quickly, used to be filled with so much and always wanting more, was unable to keep up. I could no longer operate in the same way I had before, not when I had experienced what I believe is the worst loss a person can suffer.

My brain isn’t broken, I’ve learned. My brain is protecting me. My brain is doing what it has adapted over thousands of years to do in order to help me cope. If you have read this, let this be a sign to give the people in your life grace. While I am loud about my grief and pain, others are not. While I have no problem telling you that my brain doesn’t feel the same as it has before, others may not. And as cliche as it sounds, you really do not ever know what someone is going through. You never know whose brain is functioning purely for survival.