What I Learned from Losing Maddie: 6 Ways Grief Changes Your Brain Forever

If you’ve ever lost someone, you know the ache in your chest.
What I didn’t know until my daughter Maddie died was how grief also hijacks your mind: your memory, your sleep, even how safe you feel in your own skin.

I used to think I was broken. I wasn’t. My brain was simply trying to survive something it wasn’t built for.

If you’ve got a friend, family member, or colleague who’s grieving, please know this: six bereavement days don’t return anyone to “normal.”

It took me almost a decade to make sense of it. And here’s what I’ve learned about how grief rewires the brain, maybe it helps you, or someone you love, feel less alone.

Here’s what I’ve learned, and maybe it helps you, or someone you love, feel less alone.

1. Memory Fog

Simple things slip away. You walk into a room and forget why you are there. You reread the same paragraph and nothing sticks. You are not losing your mind. Your brain is conserving energy while it tries to file a loss that does not make sense. Lists, alarms, and notes help. So does patience.

2. Survival Mode

Your system stays on high alert. Small sounds feel huge, your jaw is tight, and rest never feels like real rest. This is your brain trying to keep you safe in a world that no longer feels safe. Gentle routines help tell your body it is allowed to stand down. Slow walks, steady meals, and a few deep breaths you repeat often. Not a cure, but a signal that you are still here.

3. Emotional Flooding

One photo, one smell, one song and the wave hits. Your fear centre treats the memory as if it is happening now, so your body reacts as if it is. This is not weakness. It is biology doing its best. When it surges, name it, breathe, and ground yourself. Feel your feet on the floor. Sip cold water. Call someone who can sit with you without trying to fix it.

4. Sleep Breakdown

Nights stretch on forever and mornings feel like concrete. Some nights you cannot fall asleep, other nights you crash and still wake up empty. Grief scrambles the rhythm between sleep and wake, which is why even simple days feel heavy. Gentle sleep rituals help. Less screen time before bed, dimmer light, a short journal entry, and a calm practice you repeat. If you are wide awake, get up and do one small thing, then try again. I’ve discovered there is no shame in daytime rest.

5. Trouble Focusing

Small tasks feel like mountains. Emails, forms, and decisions drain you fast. This is not laziness. Your attention is already paying a steep price to grief. Shrink the work. One step, then a pause. Use timers, ask for help, and celebrate what you finish, not what you missed. Capacity returns in pieces. Get an accountability partner or use project management programs like Trello. Try to focus on single tasks through to completion. That is still progress.

6. Permanent Change

Grief leaves fingerprints that do not wash off. You will not be the person you were, and that hurts, but it can also widen your empathy, soften your judgment, and sharpen what truly matters. This is not about getting over it. It is learning to grow around it. To carry love and pain together. For me, that means carrying Maddie with me, every day, and letting that love guide how I show up for others.

Where MentorWell Comes In

Out of this pain, something else was born.

When I realized how much grief rewired me, I also realized something else: our kids, teens and young adults especially, need people in their corner long before life hands them this kind of weight. They need mentors who can walk beside them through confusion, self-doubt, and struggle.

That’s why The MentorWell exists. It isn’t therapy. It isn’t a lecture. It’s human connection. It’s someone listening, encouraging, and reminding a young person they’re not broken, even when they feel like they are.

Maddie didn’t get that chance. But if other kids do, maybe they won’t carry the same silence, the same loneliness, the same sense of being lost.

Final Thoughts

Grief has changed my brain forever. But it’s also changed how I see the world.

If you’re grieving, you’re not broken. You’re rewired.
If you’re parenting, remember: your child isn’t broken either. They may just need someone, you, or someone you trust, to help them carry the weight they can’t name.

That’s the work of The MentorWell.
It’s Maddie’s legacy.
It’s my way of making sure my story doesn’t become yours.