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Grief and eating

A diagnosis in the family and everything else stopping

Started 29 September 2025 · 18 replies · 165 hearts · read 1.6k times

BronwenBarry, UK · 29 September 2025
10 months ago

A diagnosis in the family and everything else stopping — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

This is a difficult one to write and I have deleted it twice.

This is the third time I have started this post and the first time I have got to the end of it, so I am going to press the button before I lose my nerve.

I do not think anything is wrong exactly. I think something is different and I have not caught up with it yet.

No advice needed. Company would be welcome and anything else is a bonus.

55

NoraDublin, IE
#1

I stopped everything for six weeks, with my prescriber's agreement, and started again when I could. That was the right shape for me.

10

MaudGhent, BE
#2

Somebody in this circle sat with me on a thread for an evening and said almost nothing and it was exactly what I needed.

6

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#3

I am pleased with the pace of this thread. Nobody has rushed to fix anything and that restraint is the skill this circle asks for.

17

NúriaBarcelona, ES
#4

What Maud described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

What I found hardest was people asking how I was in a way that required a manageable answer.

5

OsgarKillarney, IE
#5

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

7me too 7

NerysRhyl, UK
#6

Wren has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

I would gently say that if you have not eaten properly for days, that is worth a phone call rather than waiting for it to pass.

13

BibiRabat, MA
#7

March is still difficult and it is now the third March and it is less difficult than the first two. That is the whole of what I can offer.

8

BronwenBarry, UK
#8

Bereavement support was available where I am and I did not know for eight months. Worth asking about early rather than late.

9

NoraDublin, IE
#9

What helped was somebody saying that grief does not have a schedule and that mine was not going too slowly.

7

MaudGhent, BE
#10

I found the physical exhaustion of it startling. Nobody had told me grief was tiring in that specific bodily way.

8me too 8

TiborBratislava, SK
#11

People bring food. That is what happens, and for the first month I could not eat any of it and I felt terrible about the waste and the kindness.

9me too 6

NúriaBarcelona, ES
#12

Coming back a year on to say that eating is ordinary again, that the grief is not gone, and that both of those things can be true.

6

OsgarKillarney, IE
#13

Eating went completely for about a fortnight and my GP was more concerned about that than I was, and she was right to be.

10

NerysRhyl, UK
#14

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.

9

BibiRabat, MA
#15

Reading Osgar, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Reading old threads in this circle at four in the morning was, for a while, the only thing that helped, and I never posted once.

8

BronwenBarry, UK
#16

What I would say is do not make big decisions in the first three months. I nearly did and I am very glad I did not.

8me too 2

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#17

Closing note: this stays linked from the circle landing. If you have arrived late and want to say something, there is no such thing as too late here.

20

MaudGhent, BE
#18

My family all handled it differently and food was where our differences showed up, which I had not anticipated at all.

5