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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Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. And if you’re grieving, it can feel like a slap in the face. The cards. The chocolate. The flowers. Romantic movies. Couples celebrating each other. Everywhere you look, you are reminded of love, and the person you no longer have beside you. He’s not there to take you to dinner or give you flowers. She’s not handing you a card with a silly inside joke, just for you.
It’s hard to be reminded of what we’ve lost.
It’s painful to no longer receive the love that once felt so steady and secure.
You still love them deeply, but that love is no longer expressed in the same way.
This was so hard for me. I deeply loved Jon, and I missed him terribly. He was so good at telling me what he loved and valued about me on a regular basis, not just Valentine’s Day. He’d write me notes or call me from work and speak words of affirmation that strengthened my heart. Then suddenly, those words were gone.
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Part 3: Finding Healing When You Finally Let Yourself Grieve
When I finally allowed myself to face my grief, it was both heartbreaking and healing. For years, I had held everything together—staying strong for my children, showing up for responsibilities, convincing myself that moving forward meant not looking back. But eventually, I reached a point where I could no longer hold it all in.
When the floodgates opened, they opened wide.
There were tears—many of them. There were counseling sessions, long walks, quiet mornings, and late nights spent praying through questions I didn’t have answers to. It wasn’t tidy or quick, and it certainly wasn’t easy. But for the first time in a long time, I could breathe.
I didn’t have to pretend anymore.
In that season, I began to understand something important: grieving doesn’t mean you’ve failed to move forward. It means you’re allowing God to heal what’s been wounded. I started to see how tightly I had been holding on—to control, to expectations, to what I thought my life should look like. And slowly, God invited me to loosen my grip.
