You did not expect your body to be involved like this. The exhaustion that is deeper than any tiredness you have known before. The chest pain that is not a heart attack but feels like one. The way food has no taste, or nothing will stay down, or you eat without any sense of hunger or fullness. The headaches. The immune system that suddenly cannot keep up, as though your body has decided to be as fragile as your heart.
Grief is a whole-body experience. This is not metaphor — it is biology. The loss of a loved one activates the same stress response systems as any major physical trauma. Cortisol and adrenaline flood the body. The immune system is suppressed. Inflammation increases. Sleep architecture is disrupted. The body is working to survive something it experiences as a profound wound.
Tell your doctor that you are grieving. This matters more than you might think. Grief-related physical symptoms can be misdiagnosed or undertreated when the context is not known. Your doctor needs to know that you are in acute grief so that they can understand the full picture of what is happening in your body.
Take the basics seriously. Sleep, nutrition, and movement are not optional extras during grief — they are medicine. Not because they will fix the grief, but because your body is already under enormous strain, and neglecting its basic needs makes everything harder. Eat something even when you have no appetite. Drink water. Lie down even if sleep is elusive. Walk outside if you can, even briefly.
The physical symptoms of grief are generally not permanent. As grief changes over time — and it does change, even when it does not feel like it will — the physical manifestations usually soften too. This is not a reason to white-knuckle through them without support, but it is a reason to keep going.
Be patient with your body. It is doing something difficult. It is carrying something enormous. And it is the same body that has carried you through every other hard thing you have ever survived. Give it the gentleness it deserves.