We talk about grief like it is something you learn to live with. Something that time eventually softens. But if you are still waiting for time to fix you, you are not just wasting your life—you could be shortening it.
A new study from the University of Copenhagen just confirmed something many of us know deep down: intense, prolonged grief is not just emotionally devastating. It is physically dangerous. Over a ten-year period, people with high grief symptoms were found to be 88% more likely to die than those who experienced more typical grief responses. This was true even when the grief did not meet the criteria for a formal mental health diagnosis.
Source: Neuroscience News
Let that sink in. Almost double the mortality risk. Not from the event itself. Not from a terminal illness. From grief.
This is what happens when you live in chronic emotional pain. When you tell yourself healing is impossible. When you normalize survival mode and call it strength. The body can only carry that weight for so long before it starts to break down.
And unfortunately, instead of teaching people how to process and integrate grief, most doctors are quick to pathologize it. They see the insomnia, the brain fog, the restlessness, the inability to focus, and they reach for labels like PTSD, ADHD, depression, or anxiety. Then they prescribe medications—most of which were never designed or approved to treat grief in the first place. Grief is a normal human response to loss. But in today’s system, that response gets labeled as a disorder, numbed with pills, and buried under shame.
Grief activates the brain’s threat response. That means elevated cortisol, disrupted sleep, inflammation, immune system dysfunction, and changes in cardiovascular health. It is not just that you feel like you are dying. Your body begins to behave like it is under siege—and it stays that way. For weeks. For months. For years.
That is why healing cannot be passive. It is not about waiting for time to do the work. Time does not heal anything unless you are making different choices in how you live, think, move, and feel.
Healing requires intention.
Not coping.
Not distracting.
Not stuffing it down and pretending to be okay.
It requires choosing to live life again while carrying love instead of pain.
Actual healing means learning how your nervous system works. It means retraining your brain out of the patterns it locked into after the loss. It means facing the beliefs that keep you frozen in suffering and choosing to build something new.
I know how easy it is to believe that staying in pain is a sign of love. That moving forward means forgetting. That if it still hurts, it must still matter. But none of that is true. I believed all those things once. They kept me stuck in grief for five years, disconnected from my life, my children, and the truth. The moment I chose to heal—really chose it—everything changed.
Grief will wreck your body if you let it.
It will steal your relationships, your energy, your identity, and even your life.
But healing is not reserved for the lucky few. It is not random.
It is a decision you make when you are done living like this.
If you want to live, actually live, healing is not optional.
It is the choice that saves your life.
If you are ready to break the pattern and take your life back,
you can schedule a call with me here.
