Child Loss & Grief Brain: You Aren’t Losing Your Mind
YOU ARE NOT LOSING YOUR MIND
What the chaos after child loss is really doing to you — and the quiet way back to solid ground.
You have probably heard it called a grieving brain — the fog, the forgetting, the walking into a room and not remembering why you came.
That part is real. And it is exhausting.
But if you have lost a child, you know there is something underneath the forgetting that is so much heavier.
Something that does not just cloud your thoughts. It takes them over.
I have lived in that place. And I want to tell you how I found my way out of it.
So let me take you back to where it began for me.
When I Could Not Trust My Own Mind
After my son died, I felt like I had a big red target on my back.
I was being attacked from every side.
Guilt weighed heavily on me. Fear consumed my thoughts. Doubt crept into every corner of my mind.
But at that point in my grief journey, I had no idea how to defend myself.
I was totally lost in a sea of grief.
The waves of my grief crashed over me relentlessly, tossing me in every direction, to the point it felt like I had absolutely no control over my life.
I not only felt completely out of control because somehow my son had died — now I was in what felt like a fight for my life, and I did not even know how to fight for it.
Nobody handed me a map for that confusion, and that chaos, and that wilderness I found myself in.
But through my own personal journey of grief, I discovered a way forward.
Not in my own strength. There is a way through this — and I want to help you see it.
Why Your Thoughts Hold This Much Power
For a long time, I believed my problem was the grief itself.
I thought if I could just get the pain to ease, my mind would finally settle down.
But that is not what I discovered.
What I discovered is that the foundation of surviving child loss is something most of us are never taught: how we manage our thoughts.
Because your thoughts drive everything. They steer the entire ship.
And the enemy of your soul knows it.
If he could not destroy you with the death of your child, he moves to his next plan — to keep you so distracted by guilt, fear, and doubt that you can never find your footing.
But Scripture tells us something that changes everything:
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” — Romans 12:2, NLT
Did you catch where the transformation begins?
Not in your circumstances. Not when the pain finally lifts.
It begins in your mind. With your thoughts.
The Wave That Will Not Let You Land
There is a picture in Scripture I cannot get away from.
The way I heard it growing up, in the King James, it goes like this:
“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” — James 1:8, KJV
The New Living Translation paints it as something every grieving mother can feel in her body:
“Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.”— James 1:6, NLT
A wave. Blown and tossed. Never landing.
Here is what that means for you.
A divided mind is a mind holding two things at once.
In one hand, you are holding the truth of God. You believe He is good. You believe your child is safe with Him.
But in the other hand, you are gripping something else. Guilt. Or fear. Or doubt.
And as long as you hold both, you stay tossed — pulled up onto the shore, then dragged back out again.
This is not a flaw in you. It is simply what a divided mind does.
The Lion That Will Not Let Go
There is a reason these thoughts do not loosen their grip easily.
“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” — 1 Peter 5:8, NLT
Have you ever watched an animal that has caught its prey simply let it go?
It does not happen. Not without a fight.
That is what the guilt, the fear, and the doubt are doing. They tighten their grip a little more every day.
But here is what makes you different from prey caught in the grip of its captor.
You have a Father who fights for you.
You were never meant to wrestle your way free in your own strength.
He steps in. He lifts the burden off of you.
Where He Is Leading You
Your Father is not leading you back into the chaos.
Listen to where He wants to take you:
“He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams.” — Psalm 23:2, NLT
Out of the surf. Out of the back and forth. Onto solid ground.
This takes me back to being a little girl, standing in church beside my dad — the one who taught me to fall in love with the Word of God — singing an old song about a firm foundation. About the solid Rock.
That is what He longs to give you. Not a quick fix. Not a day when the missing suddenly stops.
But a mind that is no longer at war with itself. A place to finally stand. And peace.
The way there is not by trying harder, or by gripping the truth more tightly.
It is by learning to sit in His presence — even for a few quiet minutes — and letting Him teach you what is true.
Because the guilt is not the truth. The fear is not the truth. The doubt is not the truth.
He is.
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode
If these words have met you where you are today — there is more waiting for you in this week’s episode.
🎙 Episode 291: Child Loss & Grieving Brains: You Aren’t Losing Your Mind
In this episode, I sit with you and walk through what is really happening in a grieving mind — why your thoughts carry this much weight, what keeps you from solid ground even when your faith feels strong, and the one small, quiet step that begins to change it all.
Next Steps
✨ Calming the Chaos
If you are ready to take the next step, I created Calming the Chaos for the mother who is tired of living tossed around by guilt, fear, and doubt — and is ready to understand what is really happening underneath it all.
It is ten teaching sessions, each with its own deep workbook, made to be the companion you carry with you this summer. You work through it in your own time, at your own pace, in your own quiet hours with God.
👉 Learn more and begin here: Calming The Chaos
With care and prayer, Teresa Davis
