The Body Remembers: Grief, Loss, and the Path Back to Self
Dear Friend,
Grief and loss are something we all carry, whether we speak about it openly or not. As a therapist, I’ve seen firsthand how deeply loss can impact people, reshaping the way they live, love, and even breathe. But I’ve also lived it. I’ve felt the weight of losing three past partners, friends who felt like family, mentors who once guided me, and even business connections that once felt like lifelines. And what I’ve learned is this, grief is not just about death. It’s about endings of every kind, relationships, dreams, chapters, and versions of ourselves that we thought would last forever.
Grief is, at its core, love with nowhere to go. When someone we love leaves our life, or when a dream we held so tightly crumbles, all that love, energy, and hope doesn’t vanish. It stays inside of us, searching for somewhere to land. That’s why grief aches so deeply, it’s the echo of love that still longs to be expressed, but no longer has the same place to pour into.
We often think of grief only in terms of losing people, but it lives in so many spaces of our lives. It’s in the workplace, when we lose jobs, mentors, or the sense of belonging we once felt. It’s in business, when a partnership dissolves or a vision we poured ourselves into falls apart. It’s in our goals and plans for the future, those imagined lives that never came to be, the children we never had, the relationships that ended before their time, the versions of ourselves we thought we would grow into but didn’t. It’s even in the grief of never fitting in or feeling like we truly belong, a quiet ache that leaves us carrying invisible weight, longing for a home that exists only inside ourselves. There’s a grief in that longing that no one talks about, a sorrow for the connection we never fully found, the spaces we couldn’t claim, and the ways we tried to mold ourselves into acceptance.
The body always remembers. Grief hides in the chest that feels too heavy to expand, in the stomach that clenches with anxiety, in the back that carries tension year after year. It becomes fatigue that never seems to leave, or the sharp breath we take when a memory unexpectedly surfaces. The body is the container of all the stories we’ve lived, including the ones that never unfolded the way we imagined. Breathwork creates a bridge to that stored grief, moving it through the body and giving it a path forward.
As a therapist and breathwork facilitator, I’ve watched people try to bury their grief under busyness, or “push through” because the world tells us to keep going. But grief will always find its way to the surface, whether in sadness, anger, disconnection, or even illness. The grief of feeling unseen or excluded can be just as heavy as any tangible loss. When we finally give ourselves permission to feel it, to breathe with it, and to release it, something shifts.
I often tell my clients, and remind myself, that grief is like an ocean. Sometimes it comes in waves that knock us off our feet, other times it lingers like a quiet tide at our ankles. And sometimes it’s the hollow ache of love with nowhere to go, the longing for connection that never quite lands. Breathwork teaches us how to float, to move through the currents instead of resisting them, and to allow the body to carry what words cannot.
Grief has shaped me more than I ever expected. Losing the people I loved cracked me open in painful ways, but it also showed me how precious this life is. Losing friendships, clients, and even business connections reminded me that not every chapter is meant to last, and that endings can be as sacred as beginnings. Grief has humbled me, stretched me, and deepened my ability to hold space for others. It has taught me that love never truly disappears, it transforms, it reshapes us, and it reminds us of what really matters.
We are living in a world drenched in grief, loss of safety, loss of community, loss of dreams, loss of lives. But I believe grief can be an invitation. An invitation to soften instead of harden, to deepen our love instead of withdraw, to remind ourselves that we are still here, and that matters. If you are walking through grief right now, I want you to know this, your grief is sacred. Your love still has meaning. And while grief will always change you, you get to choose how it shapes you. You can let it close you off, or you can let it deepen your compassion, widen your heart, and remind you of the resilience you carry.
So let us keep breathing together. Let us grieve together. And let us remember that within every loss is also the possibility of rebirth. The body remembers, but with breath, the body can also release.
Holding A Space For Love To Go,
Dr. Rachel Sims
