When Grief Lives in the Body By Penelope Silver

Three days after my mum’s funeral, I spent the entire day in bed.

No phone calls. No arrangements. No paperwork.

For the first time in months, there was nowhere I needed to be.

I drank too much coffee. Ate buttered toast. Listened to meditations and cried.

I went looking for support. A group, a community, something. But everywhere I found, people were sharing, and I couldn’t do that. Not yet. Some hurts are just too deep for words.

So I sat with it alone. In my body. In the tension across my shoulders. In the tightness in my chest. In the ache behind my eyes from holding it together for too long.

I know grief lives in the body. I’ve known it for twenty years.

I’m a Reiki Master and EFT practitioner. For two decades I’ve sat with people and helped them release what their bodies were holding, stress, loss, old emotions that had nowhere to go. I’ve watched tension leave shoulders. I’ve watched breath return to chests that had forgotten how to open.

And then this year, I lived it myself.

But not just this year. I realised for most of my 50 years in one way or another.

Three years ago, my mum was resuscitated. They gave her three weeks to live. And then she didn’t die.

We’ve been caring for her ever since. And then this time, she was ill for a long, long time, and in hospital at the end for twelve weeks, where we were there night and day.

Living in the space between now and the inevitable goodbye.

Not knowing when. Just knowing it was coming.

That has a name. It’s called anticipatory grief. And it is exhausting in a way that is very hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it.

Grief isn’t only what happens when someone dies

What I’ve come to understand, through twenty years of practice and through this, is that grief is so much wider than bereavement.

Most of us were never taught that. So we carry things we don’t have a name for. And unnamed things are heavy.

Here’s what I know grief to be:

Anticipatory grief.

Losing someone before they’re gone. Watching them decline. Knowing what’s coming but not knowing when. Your body stays braced, hypervigilant, alert, ready, for so long that when it’s finally over, you don’t know how to stand down. I lived in that space for three years.

Ambiguous grief.

Missing someone who is still alive. The friend who became a stranger. The parent lost to addiction. The partner you grew apart from, they’re here, but they’re gone. There’s no funeral for this. No casserole on the doorstep. Just a quiet, nameless ache.

Delayed grief.

You were fine for months. And then something small, a song, a smell (for me its Fenjal shower gel) , something they used to love, and the tears arrive without warning. Grief doesn’t follow timelines. Sometimes it waits until you’re finally safe enough to feel it.

Identity grief.

Mourning the person you used to be. Before the trauma. Before the diagnosis. Before life changed everything. You’re not who you were, and that deserves to be grieved too. When my mum died, I lost her. But I also lost the role I had carried for three years. The carer. The daughter in that particular way. The Co-dependent relationship. I lost an identity I had built my days around. That grief doesn’t have a card.

Grief for the support that wasn’t there.

When my mum died, the people I expected to be there weren’t able to show up. For their own reasons. And so I went through it largely alone. That is its own grief, grieving what you needed and didn’t receive. The loneliness of loss inside the loss. Coping with loss alone.

Dismissed grief.

“It wasn’t that serious.” But it was to you. The pet. The friendship. The job you loved. The miscarriage nobody talks about. The pain doesn’t need anyone’s permission or approval to be real.

Relief grief.

Feeling relieved that someone is gone, and then feeling guilty about the relief. It’s okay to grieve a hard relationship and feel free from it at the same time. Both can be true. You are not a bad person for feeling both.

Future grief.

Mourning the dreams that died. The career that won’t happen. The family you won’t have. The life you imagined that took a different turn. You are allowed to grieve what never was.

Grief doesn’t arrive all at once

They say grief comes in waves. I didn’t really understand that until I lived it.

When we left my mum in the hospital for the last time, I felt nothing. And everything. Simultaneously. It was the strangest feeling – like static. Like my whole nervous system had simply stopped.

What I understand now is that I had been hypervigilant for three years. Alert. Watching. Ready. And suddenly there was nothing to watch for. Just a vast, open space where the urgency used to be. I had no idea what to do with it.

Realising your life had been put on hold for so long (and you wouldn’t have it any other way).

Then came the exhaustion. The kind that goes all the way to the bone.

Then anger, sudden and surprising, in the first week. I wasn’t prepared for the anger. Snapping at everyone.

I remember going to the funeral directors and seeing my mum lying there. And something shifted in me. Because what I saw was her body. Not her. She wasn’t there in the way I expected. And what I’ve come to feel, and this has given me more comfort than I can explain, is that she’s everywhere now. Not gone. Just changed. All around. Omnipresent in a way she couldn’t be when she was alive.

Then came the overwhelm of the funeral arrangements. Everything happening too fast. I couldn;t catch my breath!

In fact I can;t even remember the funeral – just feeling guilty I didn’t get to speak to everyone and hoping they didn’t think I was being rude.

And then, around week five, the shock. The quiet, delayed realisation: this can’t be real.

The loneliness arrived too. My close friends weren’t able to show up for me,  and that became its own loss, sitting alongside the loss of her. I needed people. And at the same time, I struggled to be around anyone. Both were true at once.

What I didn’t feel was guilt for mum.

I’ve experienced that with loss before, the replaying of conversations, the wondering if they knew how loved they were, the wishing you’d done more. With my mum, that wasn’t there. Because she absolutely knew. And we couldn’t have done more. And I hold that.

I’m not sharing this because my grief is special. I’m sharing it because every single one of those waves, the numbness, the anger, the shock, the relief, the loneliness, the comfort, the guilt and the absence of it, is normal. And most people move through all of this believing something is wrong with them.

Your body is doing exactly what a body does when something that mattered is gone.

So I created the thing I couldn’t find

I am a Reiki Master and EFT practitioner of twenty years, and I am also a grieving daughter. I know what the theory and books say. And I know what it feels like at 3am when the theory doesn’t help.

I went looking for somewhere to take all of this. Not to talk about it, I couldn’t do that yet. (Some hurts are so deep there just aren’t the words to cover it). But somewhere to put it. Somewhere my body could be included in the process, not just my mind.

I joined Facebook groups – but everyone was sharing their own grief stories and right now – I honestly don’t have the capacity to take those on either.

I couldn’t find it. So I built it.

Not a course. Not a programme. Not a carefully branded wellness offering.

Just a room.

A quiet room, with fairy lights and mats, where nothing is expected of you.

I’ve called it Life, Loss & Becoming.

We begin with a guided somatic meditation, moving gently through each chakra… using breath, awareness, and fingertip tapping to explore the places where grief, loss, and old emotions may still be held.

Afterwards, there’s time to sit quietly and journal on whatever comes up.

No sharing circle.

No pressure to talk.

No need to explain yourself – to me, to anyone, or even to yourself.

Just space to breathe.

Space to feel.

Space to gently release what no longer belongs to you.

It’s for anyone carrying something. A bereavement. A relationship that ended. A loss that doesn’t have a name yet. A version of yourself you don’t recognise anymore.

You don’t have to name it. You don’t have to share it. You just have to arrive.

What people say about being in the room

“Honestly, an incredible experience. I’m taken aback at how beneficial the session was for me.”
— Kelly, who came to the first session and rebooked.

The first session sold out.

The next session

Life, Loss & Becoming

Friday 14th August, 7–8pm
Yoga Sangha, Cheadle
£22

If you are in the middle of any of the waves described above, or you recognise something you haven’t been able to name until now, this room is for you.

Places are limited. Book at: www.penelopesilver.co.uk/grief-meditation-cheadle-august

Future dates are posted at www.penelopesilver.co.uk

If this isn’t for you but you know someone who might need it, please pass it on.

You might be the reason they find their way to the room.

Penelope x

Our monthly bereavement support group.