Putting grief in perspective so that we can get on with living a life we love

When talking about it more and curling up with depression kitty feels like NOT the thing, you may wish to consider this instead...

Mothers Day, as with many celebrations, can be a day of mixed feelings. Of love, fondness, much appreciation, remembrance and recognition.  As well as, at times, of challenge. This year, I wanted to say something about the grief that can accompany it. That helps facilitate the moving through it, rather than the getting stuck in it. Having once trained in Grief and Loss too during Counselling Training, and again while I was volunteering for charities that supported families with terminally ill children, as well as being someone who was confronted with the realities of it from early in life, I am NOT for one second wanting to discount the processing of, or the time it can take to process the layers of grief over time. Especially as we later accumulate more tools to deal with it over time. But I cannot tell you how many times too over the years, I wished someone, anyone would also just stop trying to run a therapy circle about it and instead do an Emma Thompson in Love Actually…you know, tell you to “Get a grip. People hate sissies. No ones going to shag you if you cry all the time” type approach to the matter? I LOVE those kinds of friends. Well timed honesty, with a hefty dose of heart-wide-open love AND good humour, are sometimes the medicine I know I need. But the point, is that I wanted to say something about today that hopefully helps us better understand how to move through and out the other side of times of grief. Which there are actually multiple ways to do. If that's what we want to do?


I was once taught during Transpersonal Art Therapy training, as we studied Shamanic ideas about mental health, the belief that many Indigenous Shaman hold that negative emotional states are not meant to be permanent. Not a town that we move to and take up permanent residence in. But If examined and processed:

• with awareness
• in feeling into the feeling, and listening to the message that the feelings are trying to communicate to us
• in putting into perspective our thoughts about that
• gleaning what we have learned from the experience and
• what it shows us now about our purpose and how we want to move forward now

It is entirely possibly to then energetically “reset” and rebalance back into the energy of the purpose, experience and path we are meaning to walk next. This transformation can happen very quickly actually...within minutes, to days.


Unless, for whatever reason, we resist the transformation. Doing so may not always be conscious.…but at times, may have us preoccupied with the reality of the past. There can be many reasons why we might be unconsciously drawn into do this. Survivor guilt being a huge one. We might feel guilty about the possibility of moving on and being truly happy again, without them. Being happy again might feel like a kind of betrayal to their memory, like maybe we SHOULD still be in mourning for longer, IF we truly cared for them? And sometimes letting ourselves be happy again, with other people, in other circumstances, can really REALLY feel like the ultimate end too. The final letting go, now that a memory of them, and or a vague sense of their spiritual presence remaining, is one of the main things we have left, beyond their physical presence.  At such times, flipping back through photo albums, rewatching old home videos, ultrasound images, re-reading old letters, scrolling back through messages and emails, photos or videos in our phones, listening to their voicemail, can bring comfort and a sense of reconnection. Talking to others who knew them, may also bring that comfort and continued connection, and at other times, fill in some gaps. But in any regard, keep their memory feeling alive. We need this at times to heal.

But the one thing I think we need to be careful to do, is not take up residence permanently living in the past. Let me give you an example of what I mean.


On my 9th birthday, 2 days after my Mum had died, I was standing apart from the family, alone under a tree, in a picnic area in the mountains, getting a download that I have no doubt now was my Mother, about exactly this. She/they spoke of how some people can end up living in the past, after the loss of a loved one. They keep revisiting the memories of the past. Which can be reassuring and bring fond memories at first. But that inevitably takes them back, face to face, to the realisation, over and over, that they’re unfortunately, now no longer physically with them. Which then inevitability takes you in another spiral of realising and then grieving their absence.   And if we spend enough time doing that, we can start to miss out on the possibilities of life that still exist in front of us in the present. And on the future moments and possibilities of love and living a life we truly love, that are also still waiting in the next moment to come.

So they asked me to think about and choose what way I wanted to live my life going forward. Because the choice was mine. I didn’t have to think about this too long. A matter of about no more than 15 seconds really. It might’ve helped let go that I also had a strong sense and was at peace after dreaming about it too that night before, on top of over a year of Mum’s own reassurance prior, that she was absolutely fine and would be fine where she was now too. But it was a quick resolution for me to decide I wanted to commit to living and loving again, with my heart on my sleeve, as best I could, for as long as I could.  I haven’t always won at this. But I’ve given it my best shot to honour the promise that I made to myself, and her, that day.


When you make that choice, and give yourself that permission, you make room for you to also start to dream and explore a thousand possibilites at least once first in your minds eye, before you decide to go after them in real life. In that respect, I have decades worth of stuff to get done and long held big visions, that excite and inspire the shit out of me. When I remember that, I’m never short on hope and inspiration for the future.


And I’ve found, it’s also necessary medicine, that helps keep things in balance, in those moments where you have less of a choice about remembering painful memories. Like, when something that happens in the present triggers their remembrance. Or some other challenge that happens now, inevitably means that you’ve got to revisit that one, to process this one. Or, as a part of building new personal connections over time, at some point, you inevitably have to start sharing some details about such things, if you’re ever to give them a chance to better know, understand and hence meaningfully connect with you.  As well as enjoy a life you both love, together.


So on days like today, there will inevitably be moments where I might inevitably remember something about Mum. Or might find the tears welling up, thinking about the the very real spiritual relationships I had with each of the two little beings, one girl and one boy, that came with both of my 2 pregnancies that didn’t come to be. And have moments where I still find myself coming to terms with the ways in which I’d once hoped that bringing through each of them and becoming a Mother, might have helped heal and fill the tremendous void that was left in the loss of my Mother….and remember that I have to let go of all that, so that I can move forward and embrace what purpose, experiences and gifts life ACTUALLY has in store now instead. And it’s true that this has undeniably proved to be a MASSIVE task of processing, that in moments felt like it was going to drown me, the intensity and magnitude of it felt so huge.


And yet, in order to move forward constructively, there is definitely a structured way in which I go about this. In a way that doesn’t lead to days and months of giving myself permission to lose myself under a doona, curled up with the spirit of “depression kitty” and a bottle of something, somewhere. In a way that doesn’t involve hundreds of hours I don’t want to talk about it, talking about it in a Therapists office. Or involve scratching at an old wound, that i wont let heal, because the pain within it, is the only place i still know them, or that depth of connection and happiness. 


I’d rather write a quick love note, or thought, to their spiritual self now. Let the old wound heal, recontextualize and connect in new ways, that fit with the current reality of things now and honour and make room for the connections that still exist now. Because, while that one person is completely unique and irreplaceable in there own beautiful way, i've seen many times, again and again, how, when one person we love is lost to us, "life" can and will send you other permeation/s of all the things that you loved about them and that totally worked for you, for the right reasons, but via someone else. If you can just open up to seeing and receiving them. To opening up to loving and living again.

If not that, i'll throw myself into 3 hours of writing a needed book. Or planning a needed event. Or connect with someone who inspires and who’s work inspires me. Or tell a friend or two on a hike, and maybe get a quick hug, on the way to getting on with the canoeing up the river. Or maybe plan out finally finishing that skydiving jump that got put off 4 birthdays in a row, thanks to national disaster bushfires, consecutive pandemic lockdowns, vaccination challenges and then, last year, recovery from some demon descendant of long covid.  (Perhaps I should just pick ANOTHER day of the year, in which, unlike the anniversary of my 72hr long breached birth (thanks for enduring the hell of that, so that I could get here Mum!), it’s less ‘stuck’…and more “aligned”??)

But I’ve digressed, sometimes the very medicine we might need, is actually to get doing and get ON with and back to living life. Rather than constantly waiting for that point at which you think you’ll feel healed enough and ‘ready’ again to invest fully IN life? While i’m here if you do need to reach out, please know that you’re allowed to choose your own strategy, and it doesn’t have to involve either talking about it today or therapy, if that’s NOT what you want to do, or really need, or need anymore. It’s totally up to you. So how do you choose to navigate today???

​Until next time, have fun, take care and may you and all you bring to the world, be amazing.

Nat Ferrier

(Anti Grief Counsellor in Residence)

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