Vera
A Conversation on Healing Through Nutrition
A Q&A with Vera, founder of Colourfull Nutrition, on the physical impact of loss
Most of us understand that grief affects our emotions. But what about our heartbeat, digestion, sleep, and the tension we hold in our jaw?
Vera, founder of Colourful Nutrition, came to this question through lived experience. After losing her partner, Leo, she began to notice something few people were naming: grief was showing up in her body long before she could articulate it in words.
Today, Vera pioneers grief-informed nutrition and wellness coaching, a practice that bridges health science with personal loss. Her work focuses on a simple but often overlooked truth: grief is not just emotional. It is physiological.
The Personal Journey
How did losing your partner lead you to this work?
When I lost him, I realized there was such a huge gap. Everyone talks about the emotional and psychological side of grief, but nobody addresses what was happening to my body.
During grief, we’re in a prolonged stress state. We’re more likely to reach for energy-dense foods because we’re just trying to survive. There’s very little capacity to think about “eating well” when your nervous system is overwhelmed.
I thought: maybe I get to use both my passion and my pain point to fill this gap — to create something I wish I’d had during my own struggle.
I was already in the health field, which almost made it harder. I didn’t recognize myself. I couldn’t go to the gym. I had no energy. I experienced panic attacks for the first time. Anxiety and depression could show up on the same day. I’d be hyper-vigilant during the day and then completely depleted when I got home.
How long did healing take?
Honestly, I don’t think I truly started grieving until about two and a half years after his death.
I was in survival mode, figuring out housing, money, and school. I moved back in with my parents, which felt like taking twenty steps backward. My body was essentially a punching bag for years.
I started having irregular heart palpitations—arrhythmia—because my stress levels were so high. No one told me this could happen. With prolonged grief, the health implications can escalate into chronic conditions. That’s why I care so deeply about preventative health.
What Vera Saw in Others
What surprised you most while working with grieving clients?
That nobody was talking about the physical side of grief.
When I reached out to grief organizations, the response was overwhelming. The Death Doula Association of Canada told me, “We’ve never seen anyone focus on the physical health impacts of grief.”
Grief has existed for all of human history. And yet we’re still so grief-averse as a culture. Death became medicalized and pushed out of everyday life, and grief care never evolved alongside it. We treat it as private, internal, something to endure quietly.
The Five Energy Domains
What framework do you use?
Health and wellness are incredibly siloed. You see a dietitian, a therapist, and a doctor, each in isolation. I call it the “revolving door of health.”
I wanted a one-stop framework that acknowledges how grief affects everything at once.
The five domains are:
Food & Nutrition – Our energy source, but also deeply social and cultural.
Physical Health – How the body holds stress and responds to prolonged activation.
Mental & Emotional Well-being – Anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation.
Sleep – Hormonal reset, cognitive clarity, nervous system repair.
Life Components – Identity, relationships, community. Healing doesn’t happen alone.
How does grief affect these domains?
Grief activates the stress response. Digestion slows because your body thinks it’s running from danger. Energy diverts to your heart, lungs, and muscles. Fast food becomes appealing because it’s quick fuel.
Tension shows up everywhere: jaw clenching, tight shoulders, and hips holding stress. I remember waking up after deadlines with jaw pain from clenching all night.
Sleep suffers too. Circadian rhythms get disrupted, which affects mood, hormones, and decision-making.
And with life components (identity, relationships, community), grief reshapes who you are. What used to be no longer exists, and that’s painful. For example, you reach for your phone to text them good news, then suddenly remember they’re gone. Your daily routines lose their witness. If you were part of a partnership or family unit, that identity shifts, sometimes abruptly. This relational loss isn’t abstract. It surfaces as physical loneliness: the body expecting someone’s presence, the nervous system seeking co-regulation that’s no longer available.
The Science Behind It
What about Broken Heart Syndrome?
It’s real. When one spouse dies, the surviving partner has a significantly increased risk of cardiac events. Loss is interpreted by the body as a threat.
Research shows that a single death affects between four and nine people, many of whom receive no structured support. That makes grief a public health issue, not just a personal one.
We need to talk about this, not to scare people, but to care for them better.
Practical Support
What helps clients feel more balanced?
Often, it starts with validation. Naming what’s happening in our body and understanding that these symptoms are normal reactions to significant loss. It’s about working with our body, not against it.
Simple practices matter: gentle movement, walking, breathwork, tapping, and self-massage. These regulate the nervous system.
Community is huge. Even one person you can text. A walk-and-talk group. Healing happens faster when we’re not alone.
Advice for Others
What would you tell someone entering this field?
It’s not easy going down the pathless path. But there’s something powerful about breaking from the crowd, like the penguin that walks in the opposite direction from its colony (more on that below).
When I talk about being in a “blue ocean” in business, I mean creating something so new that you’re collaborating with other practitioners, with community, and with the people you serve, rather than competing for space. It’s scary because it’s undefined, but it’s also freeing and peaceful. My skills and lived experience (hard-won as they are) uniquely prepare me to meet people in their pain. I get to build something meaningful for me and for others from the ground up.
Find your pain point, which is the personal wound that informs the work. Find the problem you’re uniquely positioned to solve.
It can be lonely, because often, there’s no one to follow or a map to guide you. But it’s deeply rewarding.
The Penguin’s Path
There’s a documentary moment often referred to online as the “Nihilist Penguin,” originating from Werner Herzog’s 2007 film Encounters at the End of the World, filmed in Antarctica.
Penguins are profoundly social animals. Survival depends on collective movement toward food and safety. And yet, researchers have occasionally observed a single penguin breaking away from the colony and walking inland toward the mountains, an environment with no food, no shelter, and no chance of survival.
These penguins are not injured or visibly ill. Observations and long-term research suggest that bond disruption, such as the loss of a partner, may play a role in this behaviour. Whatever the cause, the penguin’s internal compass no longer aligns with the group.
There is one moment that lingers. The penguin stops. It turns back toward the colony. You can feel the weight of that pause. And then it continues forward, alone, into the unknown.
When Vera speaks about working in a “blue ocean,” she means choosing an uncharted path. Grief-informed nutrition and body-based grief care sit largely outside established systems. Most grief support focuses on the mind. Most wellness models ignore grief entirely.
So she chose a different direction.
She may be walking without a crowd, but she’s forging a trail, one that becomes a lifeline for people who sense something is happening in their bodies that no one has named.
The penguin reminds us of something universal: the courage to move differently when the old map no longer works. Grief doesn’t just live in our thoughts or hearts. It lives in our nervous systems, digestion, energy, and bodies.
And healing requires caring for all of it.
What This Means for You
If you’re grieving: You’re not broken. You’re not overreacting. Your body is responding exactly as it’s designed to.
If you’re a health professional: Ask about sleep, eating patterns, and physical symptoms. Connect loss to physiology.
If you’re considering this work: There is space in the blue ocean. Your lived experience matters.
Colourful Nutrition offers grief-informed nutrition and wellness coaching, supporting individuals through whole-body healing. Because grief is not just emotional work — it’s physical, nutritional, relational, and deeply human.
The ripple starts with one person brave enough to walk a different path.
“Your body is responding exactly as it’s designed to; you’re not broken or overreacting.” -Vera
About Vera
Vera is the founder of Colourfull Nutrition, specializing in grief-informed nutrition and wellness coaching. She supports individuals through whole-body healing, addressing the physical, nutritional, and relational impacts of grief.
Connect with Vera:
Website: Colourfull Nutrition
Instagram: @colourfulnutrition