How Mycelium Helps Us Understand Grief
Grief moves like mycelium. Silent, persistent, weaving unseen beneath the surface of our lives. It does not announce itself loudly at first; instead, it spreads in intricate networks, connecting us to the past, to each other, to the world beyond what we can immediately perceive.
Mycelium is the living web beneath the forest floor, a vast network of fungal threads that connect trees, plants, and organisms. It carries messages, nutrients, and warnings, allowing for an underground communication system that sustains life. In the same way, grief is an invisible root system of emotion, carrying the weight of loss, memory, and transformation through the fabric of our being. It ties us to those who have left and those who remain. It makes sure we are never truly alone in our sorrow.
Like mycelium, grief decomposes. It breaks down the familiar, disintegrates old forms, and reshapes us into something new. When we experience loss, parts of us die too. Identities shift, relationships transform, and what once was solid ground becomes unstable. But just as mycelium breaks down the fallen to nourish the living, grief makes space for something different to emerge. The forest cannot thrive without decomposition; neither can we.
But mushrooms teach us more than just how to decompose. They show us how to take care of one another. The mycelial network does not just break things down, it redistributes nutrients, ensuring the survival of the whole ecosystem. In grief, we too must learn to share our emotional resources, to lean on each other, to provide nourishment in the form of care, presence, and love. The lesson here is clear: no one grieves alone, not in nature, not in community, not in the vast interconnected web of life.
Mushrooms are also teachers of resilience. Some fungi thrive in the harshest conditions, breaking through concrete, surviving in nuclear wastelands, and even regenerating after destruction. In the same way, grief is a passage into something else, an adaptation to a changed world. The question is not just how we decompose, but how we regrow, how we transform, how we take what has been lost and turn it into something nourishing. Alchemy. Transmutation. Magic.
And then there is the lesson of mystery. Mycelium operates mostly unseen, shaping the world in ways we barely comprehend. So too does grief. It moves in the dark, shifting the contours of our hearts, reshaping who we are in ways that we often cannot articulate. Portals into other versions of ourselves. But if we trust the process, as the forest trusts the mycelial network, we may find that even in the unseen, even in the grief, there is something vital at work.
When we grieve, we are part of an ancient system of mourning, one that extends beyond human experience. Trees grieve the loss of their kin, sending distress signals through mycelial threads. Elephants return to the bones of their dead, touching them reverently. Even the soil, enriched by what has passed, carries the memory of everything that came before it. Grief is not just a human experience, it is ecological, ancestral, cosmic.
To grieve is to recognize our place in the web of existence, to acknowledge that we are all entangled, all part of something larger than ourselves. And like mycelium, grief reminds us that even in loss, we are still connected. The love, the pain, the longing, they do not disappear. They simply take new forms, spreading unseen beneath the surface, shaping the landscape of who we are becoming.
So when grief comes, let it take root. Let it weave its underground threads, unseen but vital. Let it decompose what no longer serves, making way for something new. And know that, like the mycelium beneath our feet, you are never grieving alone.
Michelle Carrera is a death doula, grief educator, and animal chaplain dedicated to helping individuals and families navigate the sacred transitions of life and death. Through her work at Grief and Liberation, she offers guidance, support, and resources for those facing loss and transformation. Learn more about her services, download free resources, sign up for weekly Monday Mournings missives, or schedule a consultation at www.griefandliberation.com.