If you read the tribute post I wrote for Vinz Clortho, you already know the shape of the last two years. A loss, then another, then another. The first domino, and everything that followed. What I didn't fully explore there — because that post belonged to him, not to the work — is what grief actually does to a creative person. Not metaphorically. Biologically. And why, eventually, it makes the work better.
The Science
Grief is not in your head. It's in your brain.
When we talk about grief we tend to use emotional language — sadness, loss, heartbreak. But what's actually happening is neurological. Grief is a biological event.
Dr. Lisa M. Shulman, professor of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, explains it this way: the death of someone we love jolts our personal identity — our understanding of how we fit into the world. The brain interprets that as an existential threat. And the brain, when it perceives an existential threat, does what it always does: it triggers the stress response. Fight or flight. Cortisol and adrenaline. The full physiological alarm system, firing for a loss it has no script for.1
Sustained grief can actually lock the brain into a permanent stress response — rewiring neural pathways in ways that affect memory, focus, sleep, immune function, and yes, the ability to create.2
Modern neuroscience has identified the specific brain regions involved. Grief activates the default mode network — the same network tied to memory, self-reflection, and the processing of familiar faces — as well as the salience network, which is responsible for determining what matters and what doesn't.3 When you're grieving, your brain is essentially running a continuous loop: scanning for the person who is gone, processing their absence, trying to update a world model that still includes them.
This is why grief feels like brain fog. Because it is brain fog. Your neural resources are occupied.
The Analogy
The ball in the box.
In December 2017, a Twitter user named Lauren Herschel shared an analogy her doctor had given her to explain how grief changes over time. It went viral for a reason — because it describes something most people have felt but never been able to name.4
Picture a box. Inside the box is a ball. On one side of the box is a pain button.
When grief is new, the ball is enormous — it fills the box almost completely. Every movement hits the button. The pain is constant, unrelenting, and seemingly inescapable. You can't shift without it hitting.
Over time, the ball gets smaller. It hits the button less often. But here's the part that matters: when it does hit, it hurts just as much as it always did. The intensity doesn't diminish. Only the frequency.
For most people, the ball never fully disappears. It just gets smaller. And sometimes — a date on the calendar, a song, placing a photo on a blog post — it bounces just right and hits the button hard. You're not back at square one. You're just having a moment. The ball is doing what balls do.
Two years out, my ball is smaller. But May 29th is coming, and I've been crying at my desk all afternoon. The button still works fine.
The Paradox
Why you can't create — and why you must.
Here's where grief and creativity intersect in a way that feels almost cruel.
Shelley Carson, a lecturer at Harvard and author of Your Creative Brain, has studied the relationship between emotional states and creative output. Her research shows that grief deactivates the left prefrontal areas of the brain relative to the right — and it's the left hemisphere that handles positive emotions like hope and motivation. The right hemisphere, now more dominant, handles anxiety.5
In plain language: when you're grieving, the part of your brain that makes you feel like creating goes quiet. The motivation circuitry dims. You know you should make things. You might even want to, somewhere underneath the fog. But the signal doesn't come through.
And yet. Clinical psychologist Henry Seiden, PhD, puts it simply: "Creativity is the essential response to grief."6
Not despite the deactivation of the left hemisphere — because of it. Carson distinguishes between two types of creativity: innovative creativity (problem-solving, analytical) and expressive creativity (channeling raw emotion into made things). Grief shuts down one and opens a door to the other. The work that comes out isn't optimized or strategic. It's honest.
And Dr. Shulman's research offers something even more specific: creative and contemplative practices — painting, writing, journaling — actively help rewire the brain after grief. Writing about difficult memories, in particular, creates new neural pathways, helping the brain move from unprocessed trauma toward something it can integrate.7 The making isn't just expression. It's repair.
The Work
What it actually looks like.
In the months after Vinz died, I made very little, or what I made didn't really feel like it had impact. The brain fog was real. The motivation circuitry was dim. I showed up, but the spark was hard to find.
What came back first wasn't inspiration. It was directness.
After a little while, I stopped having patience for work that didn't mean anything. For designs that were technically correct but emotionally empty. For writing that hedged and softened and qualified everything into meaninglessness. Grief has a way of clarifying what matters — not in a motivational-poster way, but in a biological one. When the brain has been running on scarcity, it stops spending resources on things that don't hold weight.
The portfolio I rebuilt over the last two years is different from what came before it. The case studies are more honest. The writing is more direct. The work I chose to show is the work I actually care about. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it's the expressive creativity that Dr. Carson describes — the channel that opens when the analytical one goes quiet.
Grief didn't make me a better designer. But it clarified what kind of designer I want to be.
The Permission Slip
You don't have to be productive while you're grieving.
If you're a creative person in the middle of a loss and you feel like you've lost access to your own work — you haven't. Your brain is occupied. That's not failure, it's biology.
The making will come back. And when it does, it might surprise you. It might be smaller, or quieter, or more honest than what you made before. It might take a long time. There is no deadline on the ball getting smaller.
What I've learned is that you don't push through grief to get back to the work. You move through it — and the work that comes out the other side is marked by it. Sometimes that marking is the most valuable thing in it.
Vinz taught me a lot of things. One of them, unexpectedly, was how to mean it.
I'm a designer, not a neuroscientist or grief counselor — this post reflects my own research and lived experience. If you're struggling with grief and it's affecting your daily life, please reach out to a qualified professional.
This post is a companion to Two Years Without Vinz Clortho — a tribute post published on the two-year anniversary of his passing.
- Shulman, L.M. "Healing Your Brain After Loss: A Neurologist's Perspective." American Brain Foundation. americanbrainfoundation.org
- American Heart Association. "How Grief Rewires the Brain and Can Affect Health — and What to Do About It." heart.org
- Lindner Center of Hope. "The Biology of Grief: How the Brain Responds to Loss." lindnercenterofhope.org
- Herschel, L. Twitter thread, December 29, 2017. Via The Mighty: themighty.com
- Carson, S. Via Headspace: "How Grief and Creativity Work Together." headspace.com
- Seiden, H. Via Headspace: "How Grief and Creativity Work Together." headspace.com
- Shulman, L.M. Before and After Loss: A Neurologist's Perspective on Loss, Grief and Our Brain. American Brain Foundation webinar. americanbrainfoundation.org
Further Reading
Go Deeper
- Lauren Herschel's original ball in the box Twitter thread: themighty.com
- Headspace — "How Grief and Creativity Work Together": headspace.com
- American Heart Association — "How Grief Rewires the Brain": heart.org
- American Brain Foundation — "Healing Your Brain After Loss": americanbrainfoundation.org
- Lindner Center of Hope — "The Biology of Grief": lindnercenterofhope.org
