Feel All the Feels - Grief, gratitude & Allowing Your Body to Experience It All
- Jaime Heer, FNTP, RWS
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
I'll be honest with you — I'm not a hugger. It's even become a joke among my friends: Jaime doesn't like to hug. And yet, as a nutritionist who spends her days studying what the body needs to thrive, I know how powerful human touch is. Physical connection triggers the release of oxytocin — a hormone that lowers cortisol, reduces blood pressure, and quite literally signals safety to every cell in your body. I know this. And still, I struggle to want to share that physical connection with others.
I'm sharing this because knowing something and living something are two very different things. And I find that gap becomes especially clear when we're faced with immense emotions — like grief or anger.
My husband and I recently lost one of our best friends. James battled cancer for over a year — a brutal fight that took everything he had to keep going, until his body wouldn't allow him to fight anymore. Watching someone you love suffer through that kind of physical and mental pain leaves a mark on your soul that no supplement or biohacking regimen can ever overcome.
And I know I'm not alone in this. So many of us have sat in that same impossible place — watching someone we love fade, holding grief in our chest like a stone, and then having to go on in a world that keeps spinning. Our society has taught us from a very young age to "keep calm and carry on." Push down the feelings. Put your chin up. Keep moving.
But ignoring our emotions doesn't make them disappear. It just makes them go underground — and underground is where disease takes root.
THE BODY KEEPS SCORE
In functional medicine, we talk a lot about stagnation — what happens when blood flow, lymph, and energy stop moving. Traditional Chinese medicine has understood for centuries that emotions are not separate from the body; they live in the body.
Grief sits in the lungs.
Anger lives in the liver.
Fear contracts the kidneys.
When we suppress what we feel, that energy doesn't vanish — it stagnates. It clogs the body's channels and tissues, disrupts the flow of chi, and over time, that stagnation can manifest as real, physical illness.
Chronically elevated stress hormones — cortisol, adrenaline — keep the body locked in fight-or-flight. They disrupt digestion, suppress immune function, drive inflammation, and wreak havoc on hormonal balance. This is not woo. This is physiology. Your emotions are biochemical events. And when you give them room to move through you, they do. When you don't, they stay.
Let it move through you like a storm rather than building a wall to hold it back.
FEEL IT DEEPLY. THEN LET IT MOVE.
So here's my point in writing this today: feel it. Feel the grief. Feel the anger. Feel the despair. If you need to tell the universe to go f*ck itself — say it. Scream it into a pillow. Write it in a journal. Cry in the shower. Let it be as ugly and as raw as it actually is.
Because the goal isn't to skip over the hard feelings and sprint toward gratitude. Toxic positivity — the pressure to "look on the bright side" before you've honored what's real — is its own form of suppression. You cannot rush grief. And you shouldn't have to.
What you can do is stay present with it. Let it move through you like a storm rather than building a wall to hold it back. Emotion is energy in motion — that's actually where the word comes from. It is designed to flow. When it does, when you really let yourself feel the depth of sadness or loss or fury, something shifts. It may build again. Grief often does. But it won't pile on top of itself and calcify into something that quietly poisons you from the inside.
And there will always be beauty on the other side of the storm. The waves still crash. The sun still rises. Life goes on — not because it's indifferent to our pain, but because it is so much larger than any single moment of it. We can be broken open by loss and still find ourselves standing in front of the ocean, heart cracked wide open, grateful to be here.
Life is hard. Life is beautiful. Both things are true at the same time. Learn from the hardest moments. Grow through the grief. And don't let the bitter ones get in the way of experiencing joy.
SIMPLE HABITS TO SUPPORT YOUR JOURNEY
01 | Slow Down & Notice Something Tiny
Every now and again, stop and watch an insect living its life. A bee working a flower. An ant carrying something three times its size. These small creatures are part of the same extraordinary ecosystem as you — fellow passengers on this flying rock we call home. There is something quietly humbling and grounding about remembering that. It pulls you out of your head and back into the world around you.
02 | Five Slow, Intentional Breaths — Every Day
This is not a suggestion. This is medicine. Pause once a day and take five slow, deep breaths — inhale for four counts, exhale for six. Notice what happens: your heart rate begins to slow, your shoulders drop, your jaw unclenches, and your nervous system shifts from sympathetic (survival mode) to parasympathetic (rest and repair). This is your built-in reset button, and it's free. Use it every single day.
03 | Do One Small Kind Thing
Walk a rescue dog at your local shelter. Share your leftover food with someone who needs it. Pick up a piece of trash you didn't drop. Let someone merge into traffic. Kindness activates the same reward pathways in your brain as receiving it — it is one of the most underrated health practices that exists. Kindness fosters kindness, and in today's world, we need all of it we can get.
04 | Give Someone a Real Hug
Not a polite side-squeeze. A real one. This is coming from someone who is famously, legendarily not a hugger. But I know that a genuine embrace triggers the release of oxytocin, lowers cortisol, slows heart rate, and signals deep safety to your nervous system. It is, quite literally, medicine. So consider this your prescription: one good, tight, linger-a-little-longer hug every single day. Give it to someone you love. Let them feel it. Let yourself feel it too.
Feel all the feels. Take a deep breath. Choose gratitude over bitterness. Share kindness and joy as much as you can — not because life is easy, but because it is precious.
And for James, who left this earth too soon despite trying his hardest to stay — sip a piña colada, jump into the ocean, explore a new city, strike up a conversation with a stranger. Take care of yourself so that you can enjoy every moment while you're here. We honor those we've lost by feeling it all, letting it move through us, and living life to the fullest.
With love,
Jaime
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