What Grief Does to Your Brain — and How to Grieve Awake
By Reverend Joya Sosnowski · Spiritual teacher, sound healer & grief guide · 8 min read - you can also watch & subscribe on YouTube
I am Reverend Joya Sosnowski, and this is Grieving Awake — a body of work about not only grief, but who you become through grief. Most of us were never taught how to walk through loss. So when it arrives, we assume something is wrong with us. Nothing is wrong with you. Your brain is doing exactly what grief asks it to do — and once you understand what that is, you can start to consciously participate in it.
In this post I'll define grief correctly, explain what the loss of someone or something foundational actually does to your brain, and share the four foundations of grieving awake that you can use — not only in grief, but in life — to participate daily in who you become.
In this article
What grief really is
What grief does to your brain
What "grieving awake" means
The four foundations
The second grief
A short grieving-awake practice
Frequently asked questions
What is grief, really?
Grief is the process you go through when you lose someone or something that was foundational and meaningful to your life.
It also includes losing the version of yourself and the reality that existed in relationship to what you lost. There are all kinds of ways we move through loss — divorce, a diagnosis, a move, an ending — that we don't call grief, and then we judge ourselves for how we're handling it. Naming it as grief is the first act of grieving awake.
The part nobody tells you is that grief is also the process of rewiring your identity and who you become, because you don't only lose the person or thing — you lose who you were with them. That's why grief can feel like coming face to face with yourself.
What does grief do to your brain?
Grief quiets the brain's default mode network — the self-referential system that tells you who you are in relationship to the world — so your sense of identity and reality feels disrupted.
Two things happen. First, when your version of reality is disrupted, that version gets altered; it no longer makes sense, and you no longer make sense within it. Second, grief mirrors, on brain scans, some of the same quieting seen in a brain on psychedelics — which is exactly why it can feel like everything is being rewired.
I discovered this the hard way. Within the first week of my son's passing, I drove to a gas station, reached for my wallet, and realized I had grabbed a loaf of bread off the counter instead of my purse. I sat there and thought, what is happening to my brain? — because I am not a person who does that. It scared me, so I went home and started researching what happens to the brain in grief. What I found stopped me cold.
Neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor, author of The Grieving Brain, describes it this way: the brain spends enormous effort mapping where our loved ones are while they're alive, and grieving is the difficult work of throwing out that map and building a new one. Grief isn't a malfunction. It's learning — the most demanding learning a brain can do.
Neurons that fire together, wire together. Our repeated thoughts, repeated actions, and repeated emotional experiences wire our brains into the new story we're living within.
When I understood that, I said out loud: oh my God, I'm being rewired. And I did not want to be rewired into the worst day of my life. I've met women still wired and stuck in a loss from decades ago — still angry at an ex who moved on ten years back, still carrying the weight as fresh as day one. Now I understand why. If we don't participate consciously, grief rewires us by default. Grieving awake is choosing to participate on purpose.
What does "grieving awake" mean?
Grieving awake is the practice of consciously participating in who you become through grief, instead of being unconsciously rewired into your worst day.
We are meant to grow and expand into the fullest expression of who we came here to be — not to stay locked into one hard, fast, fixed identity. Grieving awake uses four foundations to move through loss with presence: present-moment awareness, radical acceptance, self-kindness, and non-resistance.
What are the four foundations of grieving awake?
These four practices work in grief, and they work in ordinary life. They're how you stay awake to your own becoming.
1. Present-moment awareness
This is the practice of bringing your attention fully to what's happening right now — without being lost in the story about it, not in the past, not in the future. In grief, this looks like feeling a wave of emotion coming toward you and letting it move. Sometimes it's a tsunami and you brace; sometimes it's a trickle, you cry, and it recedes. Everything in nature has a tempo. Everything in nature is rhythmic. And there's a real science here: the tears you cry from grief are neurochemically different from tears of joy — your body is literally producing hormones and chemicals to help carry you through. That's why staying present, without the story, is the key that lets grief do its work.
2. Radical acceptance
A practice I learned in mindfulness training from Tara Brach, who learned it from Shinzen Young. Radical acceptance is fully acknowledging reality as it is — without arguing with it, resisting it, or wishing it were different. It does not mean you're okay with what happened, that you like it, or that you're giving up. It means you recognize that this moment is already here, as it is. When we stop fighting reality, we free the energy trapped in resistance and can respond from presence, clarity, and choice.
3. Self-kindness
Self-kindness is the practice of turning toward yourself with compassion instead of judgment. When I caught myself judging how I was grieving — and felt how painful that self-judgment was — I decided to become an ally to my own heart rather than one more source of criticism. When we're suffering, self-kindness reminds us that we don't have to earn love, prove our worth, or carry our pain alone. You meet yourself exactly where you are and offer yourself the same understanding you so freely give to others. It's becoming your own inner best friend.
4. Non-resistance
Here's a formula I learned from Tara Brach: pain × resistance = suffering. You're in pain, you resist the pain, you create suffering. But if you're in pain and you simply be with it, the clenching tightness inside your body begins to release. And — this matters — don't resist your resistance either. If you notice you're resisting, stop resisting the resistance, and just be with what is.
What is "the second grief"?
The first grief is the loss. The second grief is the argument with the loss — and it's the one that keeps you stuck.
The second grief is all the wishing it were different: Why did I let him go? What should I have done? Why didn't this happen, why didn't that? It's blame — of yourself or someone else. When you get into the argument with the loss, you start grieving something that isn't even real, and nothing can be done about it. The fight with reality deepens the wound.
In the first nights after my son Weston passed, I woke up feeling like an elephant was sitting on my chest — I couldn't breathe, I thought I was having a heart attack. I called my friend Andrea, a somatic trauma therapist, and she helped me get back into my breath and my body. As I arrived back in the present, I finally heard it: a voice in my head saying why did you let him go, what kind of mother are you? I was being awful to myself. Andrea told me to stand up, stomp my foot, and tell that voice it's a liar. So I did — in my saltiest sailor voice — and it went away.
That's the difference between the two griefs. It's one thing to grieve the loss, to feel how you feel and love yourself through it. It's another thing entirely to grieve what "should have been." Non-resistance is the practice of laying that argument down — not because the loss is acceptable, but because the fight with it only deepens the wound.
A short grieving-awake practice: 5-4-3-2-1
When present-moment awareness starts to feel overwhelming, this simple practice drops you right back into your body. Stop, and slowly notice — labeling each thing without a story:
Five things you can see
Four things you can hear
Three things you can feel — your clothes, the weight of your seat, the warmth of your own hands
Two things you can smell
One thing you can taste
Then take a deep breath, and notice how you feel. You're back — here, now, in the present moment.
You can pair this with a self-kindness mantra, hands over your heart: May I be happy. May I love myself. May I be well and healthy. May I be free to see the truth of reality as it really is.
Grief, I've come to believe, is a powerful door. It's a powerful initiator that dismantles the constructs of the wounded, conditioned self and lets you get down to the truth of your true nature — a remembering, a reuniting with who you actually are. We are living in a time of awakening, and grief, of all things, can be the threshold. I never in a billion years expected my work to come through grief. But here we are, and I'm here to walk it with you — awake.
Walk this path with me
My book Grieving Awake includes guided practices, art from my journal pages, and journaling questions — plus a living library of recorded sound and somatic practices so you're not just taking in information, you're doing the work, moment by moment. Join the waitlist for the book and the course.
Join the waitlist at grievingawake.com →
Frequently asked questions about grief and the brain
Does grief actually change your brain?
Yes. Grief quiets the default mode network — the self-referential system that maintains your sense of identity — and, because neurons that fire together wire together, your repeated grief thoughts and emotions physically reshape neural pathways. Neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor describes grieving as the brain's demanding work of rebuilding its internal "map" of the world without your loved one in it.
Why do I feel like a different person, or like I've lost myself?
Because you have, in a neurological sense. When you lose someone or something foundational, you lose the version of yourself that existed in relationship to them, and grief disrupts the brain network that holds your identity together. This is a normal part of grieving — not a flaw in how you're coping.
Is grief really similar to a brain on psychedelics?
On brain scans, grief mirrors some of the same quieting of the default mode network associated with psychedelic states. This is part of why grief can feel disorienting and identity-dissolving — and why it's such a potent, if painful, opening for growth and rewiring.
How is "grieving awake" different from just grieving?
Ordinary grief can rewire you by default — often into the worst day of your life. Grieving awake means using present-moment awareness, radical acceptance, self-kindness, and non-resistance to consciously participate in who you become, so you move through the loss instead of getting locked into it.
What can I do right now when grief feels unbearable?
Try the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding practice: notice five things you see, four you hear, three you feel, two you smell, and one you taste, then breathe. Pair it with the mantra "May I be happy, may I love myself, may I be well, may I be free." It returns you to the present moment and your body.
Reverend Joya Sosnowski
Reverend Joya is a spiritual teacher, longtime meditator, somatic facilitator, and sound healer, and the author of Grieving Awake. After the passing of her son Weston, she developed the Grieving Awake framework to help others consciously participate in who they become through loss. Find her practices, book, and course at grievingawake.com.
© Grieving Awake · Reverend Joya Sosnowski · grievingawake.com
This article is for educational and spiritual-support purposes and is not a substitute for professional mental-health care.