When Healing Feels Like Grief: Making Peace with What You Lost
At the Trauma Disruptor Coalition (TDC), we talk a lot about the power of healing. But less often do we talk about its shadow side: the grief that often walks beside it. Healing, after all, isn’t just about reclaiming what was stolen. It’s about mourning what was never given.
There comes a moment in every healing journey when the weight of what could have been hits with full force. Maybe it’s the realization that you were never truly safe in your childhood home. Or the quiet ache of seeing someone else experience the kind of parenting or partnership you always longed for. Maybe it’s the disorientation that comes when old relationships no longer feel like home—because you’ve outgrown the role you played in them.
This grief is not regression. It’s part of the work.
Psychologist Francis Weller calls grief "the natural response to loss," and reminds us that "to not grieve is to live only half a life." As you heal, you may grieve not just a person or a place, but a version of yourself: the child who had to become hyper-independent to survive, the teen who never got to just be messy, the adult who missed years of joy in survival mode. And while society tends to frame healing as upward progress, it’s more like a spiral—one that often winds through sorrow.
Neuroscience helps us understand why grief can feel so disorienting during healing. The limbic system stores emotional memory, so even when we’re no longer in harm's way, our bodies may still react as if we are. As these protective patterns begin to soften through therapy or somatic work, the underlying sadness can finally surface (Porges, 2011). This is a sign of safety. Our nervous system is saying: it's finally okay to feel.
Grieving the past doesn’t mean you’re stuck in it. It means you're brave enough to face it.
Epigenetics adds another layer to this narrative. Just as trauma can impact gene expression across generations, so too can healing. Yehuda et al. (2016) have shown that nurturing environments and reparative experiences can begin to reverse some of the biological effects of trauma. But to reach that point, grief often comes first. You have to metabolize what happened in order to make space for what could be.
Think of it like molting. Crabs don’t grow new shells until they’ve shed the old ones—a painful, vulnerable process. Or like winter in a forest. Above ground it looks like nothing is happening. But beneath the soil, roots are growing deeper, storing energy for the next season.
And grief is that winter. Necessary. Sacred. Alive.
You might find yourself crying in therapy over memories you thought you’d buried. Or feeling lost as your healing shifts long-held dynamics with family or friends. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re telling the truth—to your body, to your story, and to the younger you who never got to.
Here are some gentle practices for navigating grief as it arises in healing:
Name your losses. Write them down. Say them out loud. Let them be real.
Find safe witnesses. Healing grief is too heavy to carry alone. A therapist, a trusted friend, a support group—let them hold part of the weight.
Honor the season you’re in. Not every season is for blooming. Some are for shedding, resting, remembering.
Create rituals of release. Burn a letter. Plant something. Light a candle for the version of you who endured.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes, "To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means to carry on despite the weight." Grief is part of the weight of healing. But it is also part of what makes healing honest.
You are allowed to mourn the life you didn’t have. You are allowed to feel sad about what you had to survive. You are allowed to let go of who you had to be in order to be loved.
And in that letting go, new space opens. Space for a life that feels true. For relationships that meet you in your fullness. For joy that doesn’t demand a cost.
Healing doesn’t mean you forget what hurt you. It means you remember without reliving. And sometimes, the only way to get there is through the grief.
References
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Weller, F. (2015). The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books.
Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N. P., Desarnaud, F., et al. (2016). Epigenetic biomarkers as predictors and correlates of symptom improvement following psychotherapy in combat veterans with PTSD. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 7, 195.
Estés, C. P. (1992). Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Ballantine Books.