The Role of Grief

I know...not a catchy title. Maybe even a title that turns people away more than pulls them in. But it comes up so frequently in my work with folks that I want to lovingly pull it (the dark, foggy, painful word it is) into the light.

Healing your relationship with food and your body means being willing to grieve. It means grieving the time you may feel you’ve lost to hating your body and obsessing about food. It may mean grieving the body you’ve always wished you had to make compassionate space for the body you have right now. Or it may be grieving the idea of waking up one day and loving your body in order to give way for the the not-always-fast road to respecting your body.

This gets even trickier when our body holds trauma. When it (our body) has memories of loss, abuse (from others), neglect, mistreatment (from ourselves), and betrayal. These weave in other layers of grief that on certain days can feel hard to climb out from. 

But being able to let ourselves acknowledge this pain and suffering allows us to begin the work of healing. Ending the preoccupation with food and your body means creating space for new time, interests, and energy. And it also means honoring the grief that goes hand-in-hand. It’s so hard to see, sit with, and move through grief. But if we can make room for it and the ways it shows up in the work of learning to trust our bodies, healing can follow. 

If you’re thinking about leaving dieting behind and learning to trust that you can relate to food and your body in new ways, what are the things that feel scariest to lose? What is a gentle way that you can create some extra space for yourself today? Space to reflect on the parts that feel hardest, space to welcome in what is possible, or space to just be. 

Developing a new relationship with food and your body is possible! It’s messy work, but you are worth the effort. You deserve (because we all do!) to experience freedom in your body and a mind free from the clutter of food preoccupation.