Wired to Heal
Last month, I renewed my driver’s license. I did the preliminary steps online, so all I had to do when I went to the DMV office was pay my fees and get a new photo. While waiting in line to take the photo, I observed a woman in front of me. The photographer asked her to remove her hat. As she did, she said, “It’s my badge of honor,” revealing her bald head. Indeed. She was wearing a badge of honor, symbolizing her journey of loss and healing.
Some of us have visible evidence of our pain and sorrow, but often, our grief is invisible to the world. However, our brains are the place where grief does its major work. Dr. Mary Frances O’Connor’s book, professor and author of “The Grieving Brain,” shares how our brains fire neurons related to our attachments. The loss of our loved one creates a separation that causes a physiological response in our brain.
As I’ve been reading her book, I’m fascinated with how we are wired by our Creator with such exquisite detail and intricate abilities allowing us to form relationships. We are wired to have relationships. When a person we love has died, we are wired to grieve. And we are wired to heal.
Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” Being “fearfully and wonderfully made,” we are able to move through grief which allows us to continue to live after our loss. Life after loss looks different because we are different.
Our brains have to recalibrate as we adjust and adapt. Our brains create new pathways for us as we remember our loved ones while doing new activities without them. Our brains enable our feelings and thoughts to line up with a different reality.
Amidst all the rewiring in our brains, we form a sacred storage unit of memories while creating a new circuit board that allows us to live in the present and go into the future. Our brains are powerful and magnificent given to us by a powerful and magnificent Creator who is with us on our journey.