This Is Body Grief: Making Peace with the Loss That Comes with Living in a Body

"We all need an opportunity to sit gently and thoughtfully with our grief. Consider this book your invitation."—Rachel Cargle, author of A Renaissance of Her Own

A guide to living and making peace with your ever-changing body

Have you ever felt like your body has failed you? Maybe you’re not as quick or as strong as you used to be, or an illness has wrecked your sense of self, or no matter what diet you follow, you still feel uncomfortable in your own skin. So you go to war with your body for what it can no longer do—when the truth is, our bodies are always on our side.

In This Is Body Grief, disability advocate and recovery expert Jayne Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one’s ever-changing body. Like all grief, she says, Body Grief cannot be overcome but felt in all its complexity. Dismantling the narrative that your body is “against you,” she presents new ways to cope with your body's fluctuating abilities with self-compassion and grace. Along the way, she walks you through the seven stages of Body Grief—from dismissal, shock, and self-blame to hopelessness and hope, and eventual body trust—offering wisdom for how to make space for each difficult emotion as it arises.

Sharing stories from everyday people in the throes of Body Grief as well as her own journey as a newly-disabled woman—from the first of many harrowing hospital visits that resulted in her own life-altering diagnosis, to having to use a rollator on her wedding day because she could no longer walk safely on her own, to accepting the need for a hysterectomy in her early 30s—Mattingly shows that although healing isn’t a linear journey, it begins when we trust and work in tandem with our bodies.