If you've ever wondered whether you're grieving wrong because you can't cry, because you threw yourself into work instead of falling apart, or because your grief looks nothing like what anyone told you it would, this episode is for you.
This week I'm sitting down with my friend Dr. Melissa Weiss, a chiropractor and functional medicine doctor who lost her husband Derek to COVID complications while she was nine months pregnant, can you imagine??? We get into grief, dissociation after loss, anxiety after loss, and the victim mentality that can feel strangely comfortable even before tragedy hits. If you've done the healing work and something still pulls you back into old patterns, you're going to feel this one in your body.
I've witnessed Melissa rebuild and take her power back, and I've watched her do it with a kind of radical honesty most people never let themselves have. This conversation isn't polished. It's the real stuff.
Let's get into it.
What You'll Learn About Grief and Anxiety in This Episode
- Why grief doesn't look the same for everyone: some people cry, some people dissociate and throw themselves into tasks, and neither one means you're broken or doing it wrong
- How grief puts your nervous system into survival mode: the same fight or flight response anxiety runs on, and why that overlap is so real
- Why the victim role can feel comfortable, even before tragedy shows up: and how to catch yourself in it without shame
- How unhealed trauma resurfaces during grief: why Melissa had to face childhood sexual trauma while grieving her husband and parenting a newborn alone
- The difference between awareness and radical ownership: how observing your patterns is only step one, choosing differently is what actually frees you
- Why your nervous system has to be calibrated before it can call in what you want: whether that's a new relationship, a new city, or a new chapter of life
- Why stillness, not constant doing, is where real healing actually happens
Listen to the full episode here
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SpotifyTop Takeaways on Grief, Anxiety, and Choosing Not to Stay the Victim
1Grief doesn't look the same for everyone, and that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong
Melissa told me straight up: she thought she was broken because she couldn't cry.
When her husband Derek was dying in the hospital, she didn't fall apart. She dissociated. Her words were "nobody was home." Instead of feeling it, she threw herself into logistics. His businesses. His employees. An open construction site that had to be made safe. She gave herself tasks because slowing down would have meant really feeling it, and she was nine months pregnant, carrying a baby who was feeling everything she felt too.
That is not weakness. That is your nervous system doing exactly what it's built to do when the feeling is too big to survive all at once.
Four years later, she still doesn't cry the way people expect her to. She taps into her feelings in other ways. And she wants you to know something. You are not broken because your grief doesn't look like the movies. It doesn't have a script.
2The victim role can feel comfortable, even before tragedy shows up
This is the part of the conversation that stopped me.
Melissa admitted that the victim role had actually felt comfortable to her, even before she lost her husband. Not because tragedy created it. Because it was already a familiar place to stand.
I think about this all the time in my own work. You will absolutely be the creator in your life by sitting there and being the victim, because you're going to keep creating a reality where you are the victim. The way out isn't shame, it's observation. Catching yourself in the pattern without needing to punish yourself for it.
Melissa told me she even had passive suicidal thoughts at her lowest point, the quiet kind, the "it would just be easier" kind, not because she wanted to die, but because she didn't know how to keep carrying what she was carrying. She said it out loud on this podcast because she doesn't want anyone else to think that thought makes them broken either. It's a normal moment inside grief, not a life sentence.
3Grief doesn't just visit your loss. It comes for every unhealed thing underneath it.
Melissa is a recovering perfectionist, a people pleaser, and someone who had buried childhood sexual trauma for years without ever fully naming it as trauma.
Losing her husband and becoming a solo parent cracked all of it open at once. Not because she went looking for it, but because grief doesn't stay in its lane. Losses we haven't fully processed have a way of returning and asking for our attention, whether we're ready or not.
She told me she wished it had come in smaller doses. It didn't. She's an all or nothing person, she said, so she looked it dead in the mirror and dove in. And on the other side of it, she told me, thank God I had to look that in the face. I'm so grateful I had to deal with it.
That's not a tidy ending. That's just what's true on the other side of doing the work.
4Your nervous system has to be calibrated before it can call in what you actually want
By the end of the conversation, Melissa and I got into dating after being widowed, and this is where it got really good.
She told me she's spent the last year choosing joy on purpose. Choosing herself. Picking the show she wants, the food she wants, sitting in quiet and asking herself what she actually needs instead of scanning the room for what everyone else needs first. And only from that place has she started to feel ready for the next chapter.
If you try to call in the next relationship, the next opportunity, the next version of your life before your nervous system can actually hold it, you won't recognize it when it shows up, and you won't be able to receive it even if it does. The calibration has to come first. Not the manifestation.
How to Move Through Grief Without Believing You're Doing It Wrong
Here's what I want you to actually take with you.
Step 1: Let yourself not cry, or if they come that's great too
Grief lives in the nervous system before it lives in language. If tears aren't coming, you are not broken and you are not behind. Find whatever way your body actually processes it, even if it doesn't look like what you were told grief should look like.
Step 2: Observe the pattern before you judge it
When you catch yourself in an old dialogue, the self blame, the "you didn't do enough" voice, just notice it. Melissa calls hers out loud now. No, baby girl, we don't do that anymore. That's it. That's the whole practice.
Step 3: Choose radical ownership over the victim role
Not blame. Ownership. The moment you can say "I'm doing this" instead of pointing at everyone around you, you get your power back.
Step 4: Get still, even for five minutes
Melissa's closing message to anyone listening was simple. Don't be afraid of stillness. Don't be afraid of quiet. That is where you learn the most about what you actually need.
Step 5: Let your boundaries get clearer, not smaller
Grief has a way of showing you exactly what you will and won't tolerate anymore. That's not you becoming harder. That's you finally being honest.
And one more thing worth saying. If old trauma resurfaces while you're grieving something else entirely, that's not a setback. That's your body finally trusting you enough to hand you the next piece.
Common Patterns of Bereavement Anxiety to Watch For
- Believing your grief is invalid because it doesn't look like everyone else's. No tears doesn't mean no grief. It just means your body processes differently.
- Confusing "holding it together" with healing. Throwing yourself into tasks can be a genuine survival response in the moment, but it isn't the same thing as feeling what's underneath it, and eventually that feeling asks to be let in.
- Letting an old, unrelated wound get buried again because the current loss feels like the only one that counts. Grief often surfaces everything at once, not just the newest loss.
- Rushing toward the next chapter before your nervous system is actually ready. Dating, moving, deciding, none of it works the way you want it to if you skip the calibration.
Reflect on This
- Am I grieving wrong because my grief doesn't look like everyone else's?
- What is the "victim role" costume that has felt comfortable in my life, even before anything tragic happened?
- What old wound has this current loss or hard season reopened that I haven't looked at yet?
- What would it actually feel like to get still enough to hear what I need, instead of what everyone else needs from me?
Send me a DM and tell me, what does your grief actually look like, even if it's nothing like you expected?
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Dr. Melissa Weiss, chiropractor and functional medicine doctor, on Instagram and Facebook as Dr. Melissa Weiss
- The upcoming Reclaim for Women program, launching with Dr. Jen Auchter out of their shared practice in Florida
- Melissa's previous episode with Sari and Dr. Jen Auchter on functional medicine, if you want more of their combined perspective
- Your free tool: If you're earlier in this and just need something that helps tonight, start with the Free 5 Minute Nervous System Reset. It's a guided starting point for the moments grief and anxiety put your body on high alert.
Work With Me
If you've done the healing work and something keeps pulling you back into an old pattern you thought you'd already outgrown, you're not failing. You just can't read the label on the jar from inside the jar.
In my 1:1 sessions, we go into the subconscious together on purpose, the same suggestible states where real change happens, not talking about the pattern from the outside, but actually working with it directly. That's true whether what's pulling you back is anxiety, grief, an old trauma, or a version of yourself you're ready to finally put down.
If that's what you've been needing, let's map it out on a Freedom Roadmap Session.
And if this episode met you exactly where you are, do me a favor. Follow the show, download it, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts so another woman who feels exactly like you do can find it. You can also browse more episodes on the podcast any time you need one that meets you where you are.