The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss

by Mary-Frances O'Connor

Even when a person has been ill for a very long time, no one knows what it will be like to walk through the world without this other person. My contribution as a scientist has been to study grief from the brain’s perspective, from the perspective that the brain is trying to solve a problem when faced with the absence of the most important person in our life. Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful problem for the brain to solve, and grieving necessitates learning to live in the world with the absence of someone you love deeply, who is ingrained in your understanding of the world. This means that for the brain, your loved one is simultaneously gone and also everlasting, and you are walking through two worlds at the same time. You are navigating your life despite the fact that they have been stolen from you, a premise that makes no sense, and that is both confusing and upsetting.