Every time I see someone say, “You don’t get over it, you just learn to live with it,” I feel my chest tighten.
Not because it is hard to hear. But because I used to believe it too.
For years after Larissa died, I told myself that. I repeated it like a mantra. I was trying to survive. I thought survival was healing. I stayed in the house. I kept her things untouched. I kept the pain alive and called it love.
But here is the truth: “learning to live with it” is not healing. It is brain damage in real time.
According to Dr. Lisa Shulman, a neurologist with the American Brain Foundation, the brain processes grief the same way it processes trauma. Whether it is death, illness, divorce, or abuse, the brain reads it as a threat to survival. It triggers fight or flight. Hormones spike. Your nervous system locks in. The world no longer feels safe.
And here is where most people stay.
Dr. Shulman explains that “grief is a normal protective process… an evolutionary adaptation to promote survival.” But when the grief becomes chronic—when it is never resolved—it actually rewires your brain.
Every thought you repeat, every image you replay, every time you shut down and say “this is just who I am now,” your brain strengthens that pathway.
“When a circuit fires repeatedly,” she says, “it’s reinforced and becomes a default setting.”
You are not just in pain. You are reinforcing pain neurologically. You are training your brain to stay there. It becomes harder to access joy, motivation, presence, and decision-making. Brain fog, low energy, anxiety, and rumination take over. You start to believe this is just life now.
That was me for nearly five years.
On the outside, I was showing up. I worked. I paid bills. I smiled at the school concerts.
But inside, I was gone.
I lived with it, alright. I lived with alcohol and THC in my bloodstream, grief in my nervous system, and memories I refused to let evolve. I believed if I let go of the pain, I would be letting go of her. And I could not risk that.
What I did not know was that my brain was literally wiring my grief into permanence.
Chronic stress—according to the science—shrinks areas of the brain responsible for memory and executive function. It impairs sleep. It compromises your immune system. It floods you with cortisol and blocks your ability to regulate emotions.
So if you are wondering why it feels impossible to move forward… this is why.
You are not crazy. You are caught in a system that rewards staying stuck.
This is the part most people do not want to talk about. Not just because it is hard—but because it means responsibility.
The damage done by chronic grief is not permanent.
Dr. Shulman makes this clear: the brain is plastic. It is constantly reshaping itself based on what you feed it. That means if trauma and grief can rewire the brain… so can healing.
Mindfulness. Meditation. Breathwork. Creativity. Movement. Choosing new thoughts. Releasing old beliefs. Learning how the nervous system works and interrupting the pattern before it becomes identity.
This is the work I started five years ago. I began to rewire everything. My thoughts. My habits. My inner voice. I learned how to recognize when I was reacting to the past instead of living in the present. I stopped coping and started healing.
Today, I do not live with grief. I live with peace. I live with memories of Larissa that make me smile, not collapse. I carry her love, not her absence. And I teach my kids that you do not have to live broken just because something broke you.
The lie of “you just learn to live with it” needs to go. It keeps people locked in the pattern, waiting for time to do something time was never designed to do.
Time does not heal the brain. Rewiring it does.
And no matter how long it has been… you can.
But only if you stop repeating the story and start interrupting the pattern.
