My Crohn's Diaries

Title: This is Body Grief

Author: Jayne Mattingly

Publication Date: March 18, 2025

Great for: Psychological support, newly diagnosed, feeling seen

This is Body Grief is a non-fiction book about Body Grief, which is a term that puts a name to the grief involved in, well, having a body that can get sick, get hurt, or fail us. Body Grief happens when our bodies change, age, or acquire illnesses over the course of our lives. Body Grief, like what we’d consider normal grief, is a state of loss and of mourning. We mourn what we thought our bodies should do or be. We mourn when they fail us. When we age or look different than we want to or are not able to function as society tells us we ought to.

It’s clear the author has experienced Body Grief herself. She’s quick to tell readers about her own health journey after being diagnosed with intracranial hypertension, Ehlers-Danlos, and other conditions that entirely changed the course of her life. She doesn’t hold back with sharing even her deepest feelings and fears, but she also includes the stories of others with different versions of Body Grief to add different perspectives for readers.

Mattingly breaks Body Grief down into seven stages: dismissal, shock, apology, fault, fight, hopelessness/hope, and Body Trust. Each chapter digs into one of these, including pointing out ways to tell when you’re in that stage, reflection questions, and tools to help you through the long, winding process to Body Trust. Body Grief isn’t a linear journey. We circle from stage to stage throughout our lives. It’s a form of grief that way, too, in that it’s with us forever, in some form, and we can only learn to live with it rather than fight against it or ignore it.

While this isn’t specifically about Crohn’s disease, it is about chronic illness, and I felt very seen by some of the things Mattingly discussed. Having a body that does what you don’t want it to is hard. Having nowhere to place the blame is hard. I like to give in to the occasional fantasy that I am the exception, the one who will miraculously be cured. I like to downplay my symptoms to my family and friends while still dying inside for someone to acknowledge how fucked up it is to be sick and to go about my day, week, and life like nothing is wrong. Like my life is not so different than I thought it would be. Like I am not a sick person.

It’s important to point out here, too, that everyone experiences Body Grief. Bodies, no matter whether they’re diagnosed with something or not, fail us in some way. They hurt, they break, they age. Body Grief can also come with the way our bodies don’t fit societal expectations, especially when it comes to, as Mattingly calls them, the “-isms” like racism, sexism, ableism, and ageism. Body Grief can come from puberty, from dysmorphia, from anything. Which sucks for everyone, but is also reassuring in the misery-loves-company way to know that everyone feels, to some degree, the same way I do.

And, unfortunately for us all, there is no cure for Body Grief. There is no magic fix. There’s only learning to name it, to recognize when it’s causing harm, and to work through that toward Body Trust.

Reading this might help you name it. Might help you recognize that you’re stuck in dismissal or shock or apology, might help you see the ways in which it’s impacting your life in direct and concrete ways, like mood swings, dissociation, or ignoring your body’s cues that something is wrong. Might help you identify a tool or exercise to try to start working your way toward body awareness and Body Trust.

Mattingly is blunt about the fact that our bodies fail us and there’s nothing we can do about it. She’s quick to point out that sometimes we simply can’t do everything we want to do. That sometimes no is the right choice in order to save us more pain and suffering. She calls this JOMO, or the Joy of Missing Out, an antidote to FOMO. That, often, there is no one and nothing to blame for what happened or is happening to us. It’s harsh, at times, but refreshing in a niche that often pushes positivity and smiling through the pain.

I don’t want to smile through my pain! I don’t want to say it’s ok when it’s not! It’s not ok! The bruises from my IVs, the side effects from my steroids, driving stool samples to my doctor’s office, it all sucks! And that’s ok to say and to feel and to live with alongside my joy for my cat and my family and my life.

I do think the book gets repetitive at times, but that’s how I feel about a lot of the self-help, self-improvement style books that are written in a similar format. I think this one is focused enough that it doesn’t feel like there’s filler just for the sake of filler. Just be prepared to read the phrases Body Grief and Body Trust…a lot. Which, yes, that’s the whole point, but they are frequent fliers on what felt like every page. And while journal suggestions and reflections aren’t always my cup of tea, I could see some folks really liking those, and they’re easy enough to skip past.

Definitely also be prepared for discussions of difficult topics like medical trauma, ableism/racism/sexism/ageism, sexual assault, infertility/miscarriage, etc.

All of that to say, I would recommend this, especially to chronic illness folks. I think it would be particularly helpful to those newly diagnosed, but I think anyone at any stage of their journey could benefit from aspects of this concept.

I think it’s nice to put a phrase to what I’m often feeling, to see that it’s not just me feeling this way, and also to try to acknowledge it head-on and cope with it the best I can. Body Grief isn’t something to be fixed. It isn’t something that will disappear from my life. But now I know its name, and that’s a good place to start, I think.