By Reginald Williams
Special to the AFRO
For three days Courtney Owens wore a heart monitor. She experienced elevated blood pressure. Her head began to throb, and her chest had tightened. But this wasn’t a heart attack. The symptoms her body presented weren’t the result of a fatty diet or a lack of movement. In fact, she was just duking it out with grief.
“I felt my heart flutter to the point where I was lightheaded. I thought I was having a heart attack,” said Owens.
The unexpected death of Owens’ mother on Dec. 18, 2024, sent her into an emotional spiral.
“Grief has impacted my heart in a major way,” explained the gifted poet. “I felt despair and a feeling of heaviness. The day I found my mother eternally sleeping, I felt my heart shatter into millions of pieces. It was an instant rush, and I felt out of my body.”
And then came another loss. Still grieving her mother, Owens’ father passed on Valentine’s Day 2025. In a matter of months, she had lost the two people responsible for giving her life.
Grief, according to the National Institutes of Health, “is the natural emotional response to a loss, encompassing feelings of sadness, anger, guilt and despair, often experienced after a death or other significant loss.”
Grief is as individual as is a fingerprint. Most people experience it differently.
For Dr. Negleatha Johnson, processing grief came at the cost of all of her energy.
Traumatized by her sister’s death, grief drove Dr. Negleatha Johnson to a point where all she could do was sleep.
“I was so traumatized after [my sister] died, I couldn’t stay awake,” maintained Johnson. “The manifestation of grief for me was incredible fatigue. I had a level of fatigue I had never experienced before. I came to realize, in part, that being exhausted was my grief.”
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), losing a close friend or family member can cause “emotional and psychological” challenges.
For Jacqueline Bouvier Jones, who is currently grieving the March 2024 death of her mother, grief has led to frequent crying spells. But this is not her first fight with grief. Jones said that she still cries from time to time at the death of her father, who died in 1993.
“I cry just about every day, but I don’t stay there and allow depression to take over me,” explained Jones, who maintains that grief gave her more of a reason to seek God’s face. “Grieving does not mean we are sad and down all the time. My mother always told me to ‘Pray and press on.’ I know if I don’t grieve, it will be waiting for me.”
Johnson said grief will patiently wait– it is in no rush, for those who would rather put it off for another day, month or year.
“Grief has to have its say,” explained Johnson. “For me to try and fight grief means it will just meet me later down the road.”
More often, grief is spoken in terms of the death of a loved one. However, the loss of a job or experiencing a divorce can be just as traumatic. That’s because a separation in career or a marked change in one’s love life can also be considered “a death.”
Married for 15 years, J. Dewayne Garnett wasn’t as “unhappy” in his marriage as his former wife believed they both were. According to Garnett, his wife initiated divorce proceedings because they had been unhappy for a long time. His separation and eventual divorce left him in a vulnerable emotional space.
“Divorce is a form of death, a death of a relationship, of shared dreams, of a future once envisioned together,” explains Garnett. “And like any death, it demands time, patience and the space to grieve.
While grief comes with its own emotional challenges, acute stress driven by grief can –at times– be unforgiving. According to information released by Johns Hopkins Medicine, “broken heart syndrome, also known as stress cardiomyopathy or takotsubo syndrome, occurs when a person experiences sudden acute stress that can rapidly weaken the heart muscle.”
“When you experience a stressful event, your body produces hormones and proteins such as adrenaline and noradrenaline that are meant to help cope with the stress. The heart muscle can be overwhelmed by a massive amount of adrenaline that is suddenly produced in response to stress,” reports Ilan Wittstein, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Advanced Heart Failure Fellowship, in a broken heart syndrome fact sheet dispersed by the institution. “Excess adrenaline can cause narrowing of the small arteries that supply the heart with blood, causing a temporary decrease in blood flow to the heart.”
Studies have shown that grief, especially during the time after an immediate loss, potentially increases the risk of heart attacks. And that’s not all. Medical experts maintain that grief can rewire the brain.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), a 2014 study by JAMA Internal Medical “showed that within 30 days of their partner’s death, people ages 60 and older had more than twice the risk of a stroke or heart attack compared to people who hadn’t suffered such a loss.”
Owens has no plans on going anywhere anytime soon, but the pain of losing her mother and then her father has proven to be a battle like no other fought in her lifetime.
“My mother and I had the most beautiful relationship,” said Owens. “We did everything together. She was a part of my everyday life.”
Given the history of heart disease in Owens’ family and how her mom passed, Owen’s doctors thought that it would be safe to monitor her heart.
After it all, they found nothing abnormal…just the effects of a broken heart.
