I’ve long held an interest in death, grief and loss. This stems from my experience of certain significant deaths within my family which have reverberated through subsequent generations. My mum lost her own mother when she was 14, and later on in her life (a few years before I was born) she gave birth to a child who lived for just 5 days. Both of these bereavements were never really spoken about, and I think they left my mum with an overwhelming sense of unresolved grief. In turn, this dormant grief seemed to define much of who she was, as well as permeate many of her relationships.

I came to know sadness and grief well, from within my own family, and for many years I’ve been working to understand the transgenerational impact of it upon me and my relationship to the world.  At first, I tried to avoid the sadness, supress it, or get busy with ‘other stuff’ as a way of not feeling the emotion. But I soon learned this was futile and that the sadness would only burst through at a later date, only this time with greater intensity and causing greater suffering. Gradually, over time, I learned to ‘stay with’ the emotion and let it ‘work its way through’ and I learned to be more comfortable in the presence of sadness, both my own and others.

When I work with clients who are experiencing sadness or grief, they can sometimes be afraid of opening themselves up to these emotions for fear of being irrevocably engulfed by them. However, my experience is that the contrary is true- if there’s a willingness to let the emotion be present, then it works its way through, it ‘completes its own journey’ so to speak. Each emotion has a specific function. The function of sadness is to make you aware of your interior state, relax you and help you let go of things that aren’t working for you. Ultimately, sadness brings you ‘back to yourself’ and helps restore a degree of personal equilibrium.

Dying Matters

My own personal journey with grief and sadness led me to explore this work within a group setting and several years ago I set up a Grief Tending circle, inspired by Francis Weller’s book ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’. More recently I have become involved in running a group called ‘Dying Matters’. Dying Matters operates out of The Good Heart Café in Frome and took its inspiration from Hospice UK’s Dying Matters awareness week in May 2022 which was aimed at encouraging communities around the country to come together to talk about death, dying and grief. The group meets once a month, on the 2nd Thursday of the month, 7.30pm-9.00pm. and is co-facilitated by myself and my friend Mel, the outreach worker at The Good Heart. Each session has a simple structure comprised of a check-in, some open floor space for anyone to share as they wish, then finishing with a check-out. The emphasis in the group is on sharing experiences as opposed to giving advice or trying to ‘fix’ anything. We have consciously sought to broaden the topic of discussion to include loss in its many forms. This might include the loss of relationships, the loss of a job, the loss of a home or homeland, the loss of certain capabilities as a result of aging, injury or illness or losses associated with ‘a life not lived’.

My personal experience of the group is that in talking openly about death, grief and loss, we can find connection and commonality with others and some of our sense of ‘being alone with this’ can be alleviated. Paradoxically maybe, the more I reflect on death, grief and loss the more I become aware of those things that bring me alive, and what it might mean, in the face of death and loss, to live a ‘good life’.

If you are interested in working on issues around death, grief or loss on a 1:1 basis, or if you’re interested in attending the Dying Matters group, please contact me for an informal discussion.