First, My Father Died. Then, I Got a “Grief Gut”

It first happened when I was lying face up on a massage bed. Wrapped in one of the Ricari Studios’ signature sheer mesh body stocking, the practitioner worked her lymphatic massage tool across my abdomen to the somewhat-new pooch right below my belly button. “Ah,” she said with an absolute sense of knowing—despite the fact that this was the first time we had ever met, and she didn’t, in fact, know me at all. “You have a grief gut.”

In that moment, things clicked. A year ago, my father died after an absolutely brutal battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Ever since, I could feel my body keeping score: First, I developed a case of chronic (and absolutely embarrassing) angular cheilitis; then came shingles; and now, apparently, life was giving me a grief gut.

“Grief is a whole-body str