23/05/2026
Grief is not a disorder.
It is not a failure to cope. It is not a sign that someone is stuck or weak or doing it wrong.
Grief is a biological crisis.
When someone significant dies, the body loses not just their emotional presence — it loses a sophisticated energy management partner. Someone who helped regulate sleep, hormones, routines, nervous system responses. Someone whose presence was woven into the body's baseline functioning, often for years or decades.
Their absence doesn't just hurt. It destabilises.
This is the framework that neuroscientist Professor Mary-Frances O'Connor has spent years building — and it changes everything about how we support bereaved people. Not because it makes grief easier. But because it makes grief legible. Biological. Expected.
When we understand it that way, we can finally stop pathologising it.
This is the foundation of a course I have written - The Grieving Body: A Neurobiological Framework for Grief Support — a 40-hour CPD-accredited programme for experienced grief practitioners running August–December 2026.
Over the coming weeks I'll be sharing more about the neuroscience behind the course. If you're a grief counsellor, bereavement support worker, hospice professional, healthcare chaplain, funeral celebrant, or mental health clinician — follow along. This was built for you.
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