Important Note: This article is a personal testimony about grief and eating disorders. If you are struggling with eating disorders, depression, or suicidal thoughts, please seek guidance from a qualified mental health professional. This content is for informational and inspirational purposes only and does not replace professional counseling.
There are people who believe that unshakeable faith means not falling apart. That spirituality is synonymous with permanent serenity. That those who believe in something greater never question, never suffer, never fear. I believed that too, until I received a lesson that would completely change my perception of faith, suffering, and the true healing process.
The loss of my second child placed me before a truth that no temple or holy book had truly prepared me for: faith also crumbles. And when it crumbles, it falls heavy. Very heavy. If you are going through similar grief, know that your experience is valid, and the time to heal from grief is individual and necessary.
How Loss Destroyed My Faith: The First Collapse
My oldest son was only 4 years old when I lost my second child. He was a child who was beginning to understand what family, presence, and protection meant. And I, a mother who always believed that her faith would shield her from the worst scenarios, discovered that no amount of prayer, mantra, or energy renewal could bring my son back to me.
At that first moment, there was no spiritual narrative that made sense. There was no explanation about soul purpose or cosmic lessons that could ease the visceral pain of losing a child. The faith I believed was unshakeable simply crumbled. And with it, I crumbled too.
How to deal with grief when your faith fails? This was the question that tormented me. Because what followed was not just sadness – it was a complete collapse.
Social Anxiety, Isolation, and Fear After Loss
What came next was worse than the initial pain, because it wasn’t just one pain – it was complete emotional chaos. I developed a deep fear of people. Those who tried to help me, who approached with well-intentioned words, became a source of extreme anguish. Each hug, each condolence, each pitying look felt like blades.
So I withdrew. From friends. From family. From those who truly loved me.
This post-grief isolation is more common than we discuss. Fear of people after emotional trauma is a legitimate response, but it’s also a dangerous cycle. Because the more you isolate, the worse the loneliness becomes. And loneliness amplifies the pain.
Eating Disorders From Emotional Stress: When the Body Refuses
My body also responded to this emotional void drastically. I completely lost my appetite. It wasn’t a choice. It was as if my body, mirroring my shattered mind, refused to accept nourishment, care, anything that represented “moving forward.”
The eating disorder from stress and grief became my silent companion. Eating became an act of guilt. Eating meant continuing to live while my child was no longer here. It meant accepting that life continued, when I believed it should have stopped.
I lost weight drastically. My body became a visible reflection of the internal collapse. And no one asked uncomfortable questions – everyone respected my “process,” when in reality I was slowly self-sabotaging.
The Invisible Guilt: Impact on My Relationship with My Oldest Son
But there was another silent victim in this story: my 4-year-old son. A child who, without fully understanding the magnitude of the loss, watched his mother disappear. Not physically – I was still there, breathing in the same space. But emotionally? I was a ghost.
The guilt I felt was twofold. Guilt over losing my second child, but also – and this is something we rarely discuss – guilt for not being present for my first. He saw the family fall apart. He saw his mother in pieces. He saw the routine collapse. He also suffered, and I was unable to hold him because I was too busy trying to hold myself together.
These children, you need to understand, feel everything. He knew something was wrong, but couldn’t understand why the mother who hugged him no longer hugged him the same way. Why the mother who played no longer played. Why she disappeared while still alive.
This survivor’s guilt – the guilt of being alive while another is not – became fuel for my eating disorder. If I couldn’t be present for both children – one who left and one who was here – at least I could punish myself. My body became a battlefield.
Rejecting Professional Therapy and the Desperate Search for Answers
Doctors offered me antidepressants. Many of them. With all good intentions, of course. But something within me – a stubbornness that perhaps confused itself with spirituality – refused to accept. I thought I needed to live that experience in its entirety, without chemical masks. That it would be “cheating” if I took medication to ease the deep pain.
What naivety. What veiled arrogance.
Because what followed was a desperate journey searching for answers. How to deal with grief when you reject professional help? Poorly.
Seeking Spiritual Answers: Churches, Gurus, and Holistic Therapies
Churches. Many churches. Each with their ready-made answers, their explanations about divine will and why God took children. None of it made sense. None of it calmed my racing heart. None of it resolved the anger I felt.
Then came the gurus. People who claimed to have answers, who had “connected with my son” and brought me messages from him. I paid for sessions searching for any evidence that he was well, that it all had a greater purpose. This need for meaning was so desperate that I became easy prey for those who profit from others’ suffering.
Homeopathy. Bach Flowers. Crystals. Specific diets. Grief meditations. Mantras. All kinds of holistic therapies. I tried everything, believing that somewhere there was a magic answer that would make me well again, that would heal my body that refused to eat, that would close the hole I felt in my chest.
The irony? None of them worked. And do you know why? Because the time to heal from grief cannot be accelerated. No therapy, no matter how holistic, can shorten the process your soul needs to experience.
The Turning Point: Accepting Real Professional Therapy
Eventually, in a moment of genuine weakness, I sought professional psychological therapy. Real therapy. With a licensed psychologist, scientific approaches, difficult conversations.
And this is where things began to change. Not quickly. Not in a linear way. But they began to change. The difference between holistic therapy and professional psychotherapy is that one offers comfort, while the other offers real transformation.
My therapist didn’t have spiritual answers. He didn’t have messages from my son. What he had were tools. Techniques. Uncomfortable questions that forced me to confront the truth.
The Long Process of Accepting Loss: Understanding it’s Not “Getting Over It”
Here’s the truth nobody wants to hear: you don’t get over grief. You learn to live with it.
I discovered that faith does not mean the absence of pain. I discovered that spirituality is not about having all the answers. I discovered that accepting a loss does not mean “getting over it” or “moving on” as if nothing had happened.
Acceptance was realizing that my son existed. That the pain of his loss measures the intensity of the love I felt for him. That I don’t need to find a cosmic reason for this to make sense – the only sense that exists is that he was real, he was mine, and he remains a part of me.
How to Overcome Eating Disorders Caused by Grief
The eating disorder took time to reverse. It took weeks of conversations with my therapist about why punishing my body was a form of self-harm disguised as spiritualism. It took months to be able to eat a full meal without guilt.
I started small. A spoonful. Then a cup of soup. Then small meals. Each meal was an act of self-acceptance. Of permission to continue living.
Rebuilding Relationships and Overcoming Social Anxiety
The fear of people took the longest. How to deal with isolation after grief? I learned that opening up to support is not weakness. That allowing someone to help me didn’t erase my faith – in fact, it made it more authentic.
I reconnected with friends. I apologized to people I had pushed away. And gradually, I rebuilt my support network. Social anxiety decreased. It didn’t disappear completely, but it decreased enough for me to live again.
Restoring the Bond with My Oldest Son
My son, now older, began to have me back. Not completely – grief doesn’t return us to what we were – but in a way that was real, present, and affectionate. Eventually, I was able to talk with him about losing his brother in an age-appropriate way. I was able to comfort him. And surprisingly, he comforted me too.
Spirituality vs. Religion: A Fundamental Transformation
Today I consider myself a spiritualist, not religious. This distinction is crucial to me. The faith I have now is not dogmatic. It’s not about rules created by humans, hierarchical structures, or ready-made answers to impossible questions.
What is the difference between faith and religion? Religions are human constructions – valuable in many ways, but still constructions. They try to fit the infinite into books, the divine into rituals, suffering into lessons. Spirituality, for me, is more honest. It’s recognizing that there is something greater, but I don’t need to fully understand it. It’s allowing the mystery. It’s integrating pain as part of my story, not as a problem to be solved.
The Time Needed to Heal: The Truth Nobody Wants to Hear
If there is one lesson I wish to share, it is this: the time we take to heal is not wasted. It is not failure. It is not a lack of faith or lack of strength.
Modern society wants everything to be fast. That you “get over it” in 6 months. That you’re well after a year. But the truth is that the grief healing process is profound and lasts as long as it needs to last.
How long does it take to heal from grief? There is no answer. It could be months. It could be years. What matters is that every step counts. Healing is a process. It’s long, often non-linear, and definitely longer than we like to acknowledge. But it is the time that is necessary.
Every day you’re here, breathing, even when you don’t want to breathe. Every meal you manage to eat. Every connection you rebuild. Every tear you allow to fall. Every moment you choose to go on – not “forward,” but just to go on. All of this is victory.
I lost my second son. I developed disorders. I lost faith in religion. But I gained understanding. I gained true spirituality. I gained the chance to be truly present for my oldest son. And most importantly: I gained the ability to honor my suffering without letting it define me.
Today I understand that healing does not mean forgetting. It means learning to live with absence. And yes, it takes time. The time it needs to take.
A Word for You Who Also Suffers
If you’re reading this and experiencing something similar – a loss, a grief, a painful transformation – I want you to know: the time you’re taking is not too much. It’s not too long. Your body that refuses care, your mind that refuses to accept, your heart that is shattered – all of this is valid and deserving of compassion.
You don’t need to have answers. You don’t need a spiritual narrative that makes sense. You don’t need to be “well” when you’re not well. What you need is time, honesty, permission to suffer the way your body and mind decide to suffer.
Seek help. Professional or from people who love you. Allow yourself to feel. And when you’re ready – and only when you’re ready – begin to rebuild. Not the way it was before. In a completely new way. Because you are not the same anymore. And it’s okay to be different.
The time of healing is not a test of resistance. It’s simply the time that is necessary. And it, regardless of how long it takes, is always time well spent.
Your grief is valid. Your healing journey is valid. And you deserve support, understanding, and time.
If this article about how to deal with grief touched your heart or resonates with your story, I would love to hear from you. Share in the comments your experience with grief, your healing process, or your personal transformation. You are not alone on this journey.
Did you need time to heal? Leave your reflection in the comments below.