4: After The Storm: Where Healing Begins presented by Brian D. Smith - Episode 44: After The Storm: Where Healing Begins presented by Brian D. Smith - Episode 4
UK Health Radio Podcast
Brian D. Smith explains how grief affects the heart, immune system and brain, mixing scientific research with personal experience of loss. He offers practical ways to let grief move through the body instead of holding it in, questioning common ideas about "staying strong" after bereavement.
39:43•17 Jul 2026
After the Storm: How Grief Lives in the Body and Starts to Heal
Episode Overview
- Grief is a physical event that can alter the heart, suppress the immune system and change brain function.
- Trying to "stay strong" by holding everything in is a form of suppression that can keep grief stuck and harm the body.
- Allowing movement, such as walking or other forms of exercise, helps the body discharge stored stress and grief.
- Expressing emotions through writing, speaking, music or creative acts can calm the body’s stress response.
- Being witnessed—sharing your real feelings with another person—is a key part of allowing grief to move and the body to recover.
“"Staying strong the way we usually mean it is not strength. It is suppression wearing strength’s clothes."”
How do people find hope in the darkest times? This conversation on UK Health Radio brings grief right down into the body, as host Brian D. Smith shares why a "broken heart" isn’t just a poetic phrase. Drawing on his own loss of his 15-year-old daughter Shana, Brian talks through how grief can literally reshape the heart, disturb the blood, and confuse the brain.
He explains medical diagnoses like "broken heart syndrome" and the widowhood effect, showing how stress hormones and raised cortisol can weaken the immune system and raise the risk of illness in the months after a bereavement.
As he puts it bluntly, "Grief is a physiological event." You’ll hear references to thinkers like Ellen Langer, Bessel van der Kolk and neuroscientist Mary Frances O’Connor, whose research on "the grieving brain" supports what many mourners already feel: the person they’ve lost is wired into their very sense of "we". Brian explains how the brain holds two clashing truths – "gone" and "always here" – and slowly has to redraw its internal map, one painful correction at a time.
Rather than glorifying stoicism, he calls out the cultural pressure to "stay strong" as plain suppression, saying, "Staying strong is suppression wearing strength’s clothes." He shares his own shift from bottling everything up to letting grief move through walking, crying in the shower, blasting music, chopping wood, journalling and honest conversation. The practical heart of the episode centres on three themes: movement, expression and being witnessed.
Brian offers down-to-earth examples – from letter-writing you later burn, to shaking hands you don’t try to stop – to show how bodies "discharge" grief when given a chance. If you’ve ever wondered whether your chest pain, exhaustion or flare-ups are "just in your head", this episode suggests your body might simply be saying, "Let me do my job." What one small way could you give your body that chance today?
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