Grief Tending & Guidance
How might it feel for the most vulnerable, tender parts of yourself to not only be seen and held, but actively welcomed and celebrated?
Your grief is welcome here
Grief does not need to be fixed, instead it longs to be tended to, welcomed and seen. The medicine for healing and transformation lies in the quality of such tender loving care.
Who is Grief Tending & Guidance for?
Grief is our natural response to loss.
Grief is often a change we didn’t want to happen.
Grief does not just have to do with the death of a loved one. A divorce or breakup is the death of that relationship. A job loss is the death of that work environment.
The mistake that we often make is that we think our loss does not count.
‘Your loss counts whatever it is. All tears count.’
Whether your grief is around a deep bereavement, ill-health, relationships or navigating another big change in your life, Grief Tending & Guidance provides you with a safe space to be heard and understood with deep sensitivity.
How does Grief Tending & Guidance work?
We live in a society that is obsessed with being happy and has little room for us to mourn our losses. We sadly ignore our grief in order to be happy, but ironically this prevents us from being happy. If we don’t give space to our grief, it diminishes our joy, love, and aliveness.
For too long we have been made to believe that loss must be hidden behind closed doors and mourned alone, when in truth grief needs to be witnessed and shared.
Originating from the word tenderness, grief tending invites us to bring compassion and kindness to our grief, like we would be with our child who has lost its beloved pet and feels the immense bewilderment of this loss.
“We often believe that our grief will grow smaller in time. It doesn’t. We must grow bigger. I don’t want the grief to get smaller or get rid of it. It is the love and is part of who we are. I want to accept all the parts of me – the good, the bad, the ugly – and grow around the grief. ”
St Nicolai Church in Hamburg stands there ruined – completely bombed out during World War II – but there is something about it being in the heart of this new, gorgeously rebuild city.
“Our transformation is in the ruins. Just like that church, there is a part of my heart that will forever be devastated and in ruins around the loss of my son. And that doesn’t mean, just like that city, that I cannot grow a beautiful life around that wound and transform it from my traumatic wound to a cherish trough. We all have the ability to do that.”
The Art of Grief Tending
After a significant loss we often feel heart broken and it feels like it is all of us.
An important part of the grief journey is recognising that we are still alive and that there is more to us than the heart break.
We do have the capacity to become a kind witness to this heart wrenching pain.
The experience then becomes one of us gently being present to a part of us that is heartbroken. From this place of compassion within us we can begin to allow all the hurt, sorrow, anger, fear and whatever else may show up to be just as it is.
And slowly, but surely that will bring us back into contact with the joys and beauty of life.
Grief Tending & Guidance offers us a space where our losses and all that comes with it can be dignified:
- No pain is too big, no reaction to our pain and loss is too irrational.
- No period of mourning is too long.
- There is nothing to get over and get on with.
- It is what it is and takes as long as it takes.
As we tend to our heartbreak and have it witnessed, we gradually move from feeling barely alive to living again and there comes a point when we can begin with rebuilding a new, beautiful life around our loss.
Gentle guidance is often invaluable in rekindling the belief that we are still ‘whole’ and full of beautiful potential, even though we carry a wound in our heart.
It provides us with the hope, encouragement, tools, and support to find a meaningful and worthwhile future.
What to expect from your Grief Tending & Guidance sessions
My grief work has been inspired by the work of Francis Weller and David Kessler and my own journey with grief. I couldn’t have done it alone and learnt to appreciate the beauty of having guides and witnesses on my grief journey.
I know how scary it can be to open up to your grief and its often overwhelmingly strong emotions. It is normal to resist taking this first step. The gentle and compassionate Presence of another person can give you the courage to step onto this unknown terrain of grief.
A series of SIX sessions
I am right beside you, listening with a tender, open heart. I bring you the medicine of compassion and a space that doesn’t try to change you or fix you in any way.
I seek to witness the magnitude of your grief. I offer an understanding of grief that helps to shift your relationship with loss, ultimately supporting you to move forward with both grief and love in your heart.
Together we build a trusting space where you can connect to your grief and express whatever is needed for it to move fluidly through you rather than getting blocked.
Usually, each week or fortnightly.
Each session lasts 1 hour.
Burnout, ME/CFS and Grief
There is pain but we ignore it and carry on as if it was not there. The repression of the natural expression of grief is using huge amounts of life energy.