Track-4: When Grief Shows Up as FREEZE Fog, Not Tears

I didn’t feel particularly tired that morning.

My body was fine.

But shortly after breakfast, something felt off.

My eyes were heavy — not sleepy, more congested, as if there was fog sitting just behind them. My brain felt tired in a way my body didn’t recognise. I was a little out of sorts, alert but not relaxed, present but not quite here. I couldn’t name what it was.

Only later did it become clear.

The day before, I had travelled overseas to visit my mother. She is bedridden now — reduced physically to skin and bones, though still alive, still herself. I sat with her, spoke gently, and left feeling steady. I even thought, I handled that well.

And I had.

What I didn’t realise was that something quieter had been stirred.

Trauma isn’t only about what overwhelms us in the moment.

It’s also about helplessness and hopelessness — the lived experience of caring deeply, and knowing there is nothing I can do to change what is happening.

The adult me was present, regulated, capable.

But my inner little girl had also been there — witnessing my mother’s suffering, just as she once had before. That younger part knew, again, the ache of loving without power.

This was Freeze.

A quiet overwhelm.

A memory repeating itself — not in images or thoughts, but in the body.

So the grief didn’t arrive as tears at first.

It arrived as fog.

As tired eyes.

As a mind that felt overworked while the body felt fine.

This is how my Freeze can show up when the system recognises something familiar and too big to change.

Later, when the tears finally came, they weren’t destabilising. They didn’t knock me off balance. They simply allowed what had been held to move. The helplessness of the little girl softened into adult acceptance. The fog lifted. My breath settled.

Nothing dramatic changed — but something integrated.

I’m sharing this because we often assume that if we’re functioning well — speaking calmly, showing up competently — nothing deeper is happening. But Freeze doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like quiet endurance, while an older grief waits underneath.

And when that grief is finally met — without force, without analysis — it doesn’t take over.

It leaves us clearer than before.

If you recognise this — feeling “fine” while something unnamed lingers — it doesn’t mean you’re failing or regressing. Some responses are quiet, body-based, and learned early, especially when love once had to coexist with powerlessness.

Freeze is not the absence of feeling.

It is feeling held still, waiting for safety.

When the body is ready, it knows how to thaw — not by pushing, but by allowing what was once impossible to move through, now, in its own time.

A gentle closing note

This reflection corresponds to the track ‘Freeze: Return to Expressive Self’ in the Homecoming Audio Series.

The track gently supports the shift from emotional suspension to renewed expression through breath, embodied imagery, and integrative reframing.

This writing echoes themes explored more fully in the Homecoming Audio Series..