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.
I am a qualified Grief & Bereavement Counsellor (Institute of Counselling)