Exploring the Impact of Acknowledging Grief for Our Bodies
Women are often taught to keep their body-related struggles private and to suffer in isolation. This separation prevents us from recognizing shared experiences, connecting with one another, and creating change.
If you’ve ever felt grief related to your body—due to illness, aging, injury, or other reasons—know that you’re not alone. This sorrow and rage is what is referred to as Body Grief: a deep longing and mourning that arises from the loss of control over your own body.
We all grieve something, whether it’s the loss of physical function, the feeling that our bodies have betrayed us, or the ways our bodies are let down by inadequate systems of care. Instead of being isolated individuals struggling within a flawed system, we could support one another. Acknowledging our grief could not only help us heal but also make us more compassionate, connected, and driven to fight for a more supportive world. Body grief can unite us, even when our experiences seem vastly different. Allowing ourselves to feel it, instead of suppressing it, can lead us to find connection with each other.
In a deeply divided time, Americans are searching for common ground. We desire unity, but it’s difficult to find when everything feels like a battle. Society teaches us to ignore pain, prioritize productivity, and view bodily struggles as something to hide or overcome, rather than acknowledge.
Dr. Nola Haynes, a political scientist and senior foreign policy advisor, noted that in this country, success is often pursued “by any means necessary,” a sentiment particularly relevant for women.
Imagine a world where we allowed ourselves to acknowledge our grief and recognize the different ways our bodies have been sites of struggle. Instead of feeling like we are failing, we might realize that the system was never designed to support us.
Women and marginalized genders have long carried the burden of bodily grief, experiencing forced birth, medical neglect, gendered violence, and systemic erasure. Their suffering is often dismissed as exaggeration or simply a part of life. However, this is not just an individual issue but a collective one that connects us across identities and political divides.
For disabled people, body grief is a constant reality, evident in societal ableism, the exhaustion of advocating for accessibility, and the ways their bodies are either feared, pitied, or ignored. Those newly facing physical limitations due to aging, injury, or illness may experience this grief as a shocking and isolating secret. But it’s not a secret; it’s simply something we lack the language to discuss.
Body grief also exists in the context of race, manifesting physically through stress, maternal mortality disparities, environmental injustice, and generational trauma. It resonates with those who have experienced sexual violence, reproductive injustice, and pregnancy loss, forced to navigate their grief alone in a culture that often avoids the topic. It is present in the trans experience as well, in the dysphoria and medical gatekeeping that determine who can transition and who must suffer in silence. According to activist and writer Charlotte Clymer, “Being a trans woman…is living under the constant reminder that our bodies are deemed by many to be unacceptable in the traditional gender paradigm. The curse of body grief is navigating absurd notions of women’s pain and trauma as they relate to our bodies, and the blessing of body brief is recognizing that commonality as a catalyst for the power of community among women.”
Normalizing body grievances is more than just awareness; it’s liberation. This has been learned through personal experience. Before a total hysterectomy, one individual experienced severe, silent hemorrhaging for years, unaware of how abnormal it was. The isolation was suffocating, the grief immense. Sharing this pain and building solidarity would have made a significant difference.
Body grief could serve as a unifier, provided we all have the privilege to grieve, embrace our emotions, and find comfort within our communities. Writer, producer, and impact leader Ashley Jackson, reflecting on her experiences with invisible illnesses like Fibromyalgia and Long Covid, affirms that community means confronting oneself with support, not isolation, and being held in grief.
Body grief is about what we can build when we acknowledge it. By listening to each other and recognizing shared grief, we may discover the common ground we’ve been seeking.