(Literally) Moving Through Grief: How Exercise Helped Me Cope After My Mum Died

We’re all familiar with the benefits of exercising, it can heal the depressed, revive the unhealthy and keep our biological clocks running. Whilst all the endorphins in the world will not undo the death of a loved one, the mental and physical advantages of moving through grief have been huge for me. Before my mum died, when I was 27, for the first time in my life I was just about on the precipice of having a healthy relationship with exercise. Despite joining the gym around a year earlier and, like most people, trialing different ways of moving my body during lockdown, I still didn’t enjoy it.

Working out was a chore, something I did because I felt or knew that I had to.

Still, I had started couch to 5k a few months prior, had gotten into a good routine at the gym and finally felt like I had found my groove. Prior to starting couch to 5k, I had never been for a run, if somebody had asked me whether I liked running, I may have even gone as far to say that I can’t run. From the first run, I felt a huge sense of achievement and freedom and wanted to keep improving. I took my mum with me on this journey, she was always my biggest cheerleader and her overwhelming pride in me for doing something “easy”, like running for 5 minutes without stopping, genuinely kept me going.

Four days before my mum died, I ran for 20 minutes without a break, the longest I’d ever ran at the time and some of the last texts we ever exchanged are us celebrating this. After my mum died, it took me several weeks before I felt ready to go back to the gym, and even longer before I felt motivated to run again. When I did return to exercising, I kept doing it because I thought I should, everything online told me that exercise would help. Have an outlet for your grief! Channel your grief! However, I felt intensely disconnected from my body and exercising only exacerbated this sensation. I’d often disassociate in the gym, not realising that 10, 15 minutes had passed by, whilst I’d been sat on a mat or a machine, yearning for my mum.

Eventually, through trial and error and persistence, I did find some satisfaction again from moving my body and would now consider myself an advocate for the life-changing effects of having a healthy relationship with exercise, particularly for the bereaved. However, that wasn’t an overnight transition, it has been 574 days since my mum died, at the time of me writing this and it was around the time of the 1 year anniversary of my mum’s death that I really felt a shift in my mindset and motivation. Whether the significance of the time of year was a catalyst for this, I don’t know, but it would be implausible to declare with confidence that any of my decisions or actions are not impacted by the loss of my mum. It impacts every fibre of my being and bleeds into everyday of my life, I carry the weight of it everywhere with me, yet, I’d probably feel lost without it.

Every run is now met with an increased sense of pride, gratitude and sorrow. I have cried whilst running, sobbed after yoga classes and fought off tears in the gym. I can’t identify whether these were “happy” or “sad” tears; someone I love is dead, and I still love them and sometimes that love makes me cry. It is far too complex to pinpoint a specific thought or event that would trigger tears, but the root cause is simple: grief. When I lift a heavier weight than last time, or hit a new personal best on a run, or master a new yoga pose, I am reminded that I am powerful and I am in control. There is no set back or challenge within the realms of the gym that can be bigger than what I’ve already faced through losing my mum. Every time I move my body, I am keeping a promise to myself, to keep going.

Many who have lost a loved one will tell you that aside from the rage, heartache and despair, grief can often bring with it an increased gratitude for being alive. I don’t mean this in the sense of being happy to be alive per se, but that you have a deeper understanding of the precariousness of life, and to put it bleakly, your own mortality. Approaching 30, I now view moving my body as a genuine privilege to not be taken for granted and try to remind myself of this on my darkest days. My body is the one thing that will remain a constant throughout my life and after the uncertainty that grief brings, reliability of always being there is a characteristic I cherish and it seems only right to make my body my best friend and to put my trust in it.

We are even more than just best friends, our relationship has become emblematic of that between a parent and child, she is my mother. She carries me through life, she keeps going even when I don’t want to. She is getting stronger every day, despite the overwhelming weakness I sometimes feel. She is resilient through dark times and tells me when I need to stop and rest, when I am too numb to notice this myself. Above everything, she loves me unconditionally and her priority is for me to keep on moving, to push myself and to find new ways to exist and to live, no matter the circumstances. Thank you, Mum.