Quote · The Mel Robbins Podcast
You’re Not Broken: Why You People-Please, Feel Anxious, & Never Feel Good Enough – and How to Heal
Where this was said
Frozen Grief and Autoimmune Disease: What the Body Stores
At 54:56 · chapter starts 54:20
One of the episode's most viscerally affecting passages arrives when Kelly describes what happens to grief that has never been acknowledged. Unlike named losses — a death, a diagnosis — Mother Hunger grief had no culturally sanctioned outlet. No support group, no casserole on the doorstep. So the body did what it does: it froze it. [1] — Kelly McDaniel "When grief from Mother Hunger has no name and no culturally sanctioned space to be processed, the body freezes it — storing it in cells, bo…" 54:18 Kelly describes that frozen grief as living in the cells, the bones, the joints — and draws a direct connection to the disproportionate rate of autoimmune conditions in women. As soon as someone names it, the grief begins to thaw. And thawing grief is not quiet: it arrives as rage, sadness, numbness, and the near-biological craving for an apology that Kelly is about to name.
Unacknowledged grief from Mother Hunger becomes frozen in the body's cells, bones, and joints, contributing to the prevalence of autoimmune problems in women.
Most grown women are walking around wanting an apology from their mother — one that acknowledges real harm and promises real change. Because that apology rarely comes, they transfer the craving onto partners, friends, and bosses. Naming it as a biological ache, not a weakness, is the first step to releasing it.
