Surrender, Inflammation, and Learning to Breathe Again
Looking back, I can see what I couldn’t see then.
It wasn’t just trauma.
It wasn’t just stress.
It wasn’t just sleepless nights.
It was my grip.
I was holding everything tightly.
Holding my grief because if I fully felt it, I feared it would consume me.
Holding my schedule because busyness numbed the ache.
Holding my future because I was determined nothing like this would ever happen again.
But control is exhausting.
And my body was paying the price.
The more tightly I tried to manage my health, my children, my grief, and every possible outcome, the more my inflammation seemed to climb. It was as if my body mirrored my heart, bracing constantly.
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When My Body Forced Me to Stop
Eventually, my body gave out.
My colitis flared severely. I stopped sleeping. Anxiety became a daily companion. My weight dropped because during flares my body couldn’t properly absorb nutrients, no matter how healthy I ate.
In 2012, unexplained hives appeared — head to toe. Angry. Persistent. Daily.
For three years.
At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening. In hindsight, I see it clearly: prolonged trauma, chronic stress, systemic inflammation, and postponed grief had overwhelmed my system.
My body was screaming what my heart had been suppressing.
Sleep became fractured. I would fall asleep quickly, only to wake around midnight or 1:00 a.m., wide awake. My mind would race in the dark. Fear felt louder at night.
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When Grief Lives in the Body
Grief is not just emotional.
It is physical.
It settles into muscles, disrupts sleep, alters digestion, tightens the chest, and exhausts the mind. For many of us, it shows up in ways we don’t immediately connect to loss.
Part of my life after losing my husband was navigating a wave of health challenges that, at first, felt unrelated to grief. But looking back, I can see the connection clearly.
In May of 2008, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, an autoimmune disease affecting the digestive tract. My doctor explained there is no known single cause for UC, but it often appears during or after prolonged stress.
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There was a season in my life when I believed I had to fix everything at once.
The grief.
The finances.
The house.
My health.
The future.
It all felt urgent — like if I didn’t hold it together immediately, everything would collapse.
After my husband died, I went into survival mode. I stayed busy. I tried to control what I could control. If I could just organize enough, plan enough, research enough, clean enough, fix enough… maybe I could outrun the ache. Maybe I could prevent the next hard thing.
But here’s what I’ve learned — slowly, and sometimes painfully:
You can’t do everything at once.
And you’re not meant to.
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Things that Support My Health
It wasn’t a single breakthrough.
It wasn’t one perfect decision.
It was consistent small choices.
After walking through my husband’s illness — and later navigating my own health challenges — I used to think health required intensity. A strict plan. A complete overhaul. A level of discipline that felt exhausting before it even began.
But over time, I’ve learned that healing is usually quieter than that.
It’s built in rhythms.
Small, faithful, daily rhythms.
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