The Grief Luminary

11/12/2021

{you don’t just lose someone once}
Someone asked me during a 1:1 call this week - ‘why is grief so hard for my mind to understand?’ and I thought I’d share with you what I shared with her.

You don’t just lose someone (or something) once - you loss them over and over,
sometimes many times a day.
When the loss, momentarily forgotten, creeps up,
and attacks you from behind.
Fresh waves of grief as the realisation hits home, they are gone.
Again.

You don’t just lose someone once, you lose them every time you open your eyes to a new dawn,
and as you awaken,
so does your memory,
so does the jolting bolt of lightening that rips into
your heart,
they are gone.
Again.

Losing someone is a journey,
not a one-off.
There is no end to the loss,
there is only a learned skill on how to stay afloat,
when it washes over.
Be kind to those that are sailing this stormy sea,
they have a journey ahead of them,
and a daily shock to the system each time they realise,
they are gone,
Again.

You don’t just lose someone once,
you lose them every day,
for a lifetime.

Now, the above can be said of ambiguous loss too - perhaps there’s family breakdown or fractures and there’s a loss without closure or a clear understanding. It’s a haunting loss to experience and be reminded of every day. Because you may still physically see that person, but they’re no longer an active part of your life.

The experience of grief can be such a complex and isolating one to navigate. But you never have to do it alone, remember that.
Sending my love x

06/12/2021

Have you heard?
I have a 12 month membership (aka sanctuary) starting in 2022. And it would be my privilege to hold space for you and your grief.

The Hope Collective is a practical 12 month journey filled with self-guided support, monthly (live and recorded) workshops, live Q&A’s, a private Facebook group with others who understand loss and tangible heart tools to allow you to hold, nurture and honour your grief.

I’m sharing all the tools and practices I’ve been using for years to support my own healing and relationship to grief so that you too can feel empowered to connect with and soothe your grief when it arises.

These practices will help you: connect with your grief, honour your loss, express your experience of grief and remember with more love than pain. A brave and safe space to be nourished. Because you matter, your grief matters and your experience of grief matters to me.

One time payment - $480AUD or 12 monthly payments of $49AUD
For more information, and to join the waitlist for a very special bonus offer when cart opens, head to www.thegriefluminary.com/the-hope-collective

18/11/2021

Grief can be an incredibly lonely experience, would you agree?

Sometimes we’re surrounded by a support team of family and friends, other times they all seem to disappear.
In some cases, when you lose a loved one or experience a loss in your life, concerned friends and family tend to see you in only one role: grieving person. Can you relate?
This not only cuts us off from the kinds of interactions that might prove restorative, but it distorts the relationships that you would ordinarily count on for comfort.

But I’m here to tell you that you do not need to struggle alone or find your way out of this alone – in actual fact, you’re not meant to. Grief has a voice and it needs to be heard to be validated. I created ‘Holding Hope’ to be a brave and safe space in which to do just that.

‘Holding Hope’ is four week offering comprising of 4 x weekly 90 minute group grief circles, weekly emails and 1 x 1:1 90 minute appointment with me.
You’ll also receive and a printable guide to use as part of your weekly reflection and contemplations.

In the witnessing of grief, we can begin to heal. We all need a safe space to talk it out, to explore and sometimes, yes to cry. A place where we don’t have to worry about upsetting someone else. A place where we don’t have to out on a happy front. A place to speak our truth.
For many people, there are very few places where you can feel truly free to express your grief in a safe place and be witnessed in it without need to make it more palatable for people to hear or see.

I know for me, some of the most powerfully healing and deeply transformational conversations I’ve experienced have been with people who were witnessing my grief in its most pure form. Who held space for me, who didn’t look away, who didn’t try to ‘fix’ what I was saying, who didn’t dilute, or respond with their advice, or own experience of what I should or shouldn’t be doing.

'Is Holding Hope for me?' you may be asking yourself.
If you find yourself downplaying your grief in an attempt to make others’ comfortable, or maybe you know that you suppress your grief or avoid sitting with your feelings and emotions – then this will be a brave space for you to lean into your grief.

If you feel like people are often uncomfortable by your grief, you feel alone in your experience of grief or like people don’t understand what you’re going through – then this is a safe space to come and be with your grief.

Or maybe the loss you experiences was some time ago and you don’t have space to be able to share your experience of grief – then and now. Maybe you just want a safe space to share their name, their memory and your love – then this is the sacred space to speak their name.

If you’re looking for tangible ways to nurture, express and honour your grief – then this is the nourishing space to come and build a relationship with your grief that allows you to remember with more love than pain.

‘Holding Hope’ starts next Thursday 25th November and runs over 4 weeks with all calls taking place via Zoom.

• Thursday 25th November 2021
• Thursday 2nd December 2021
• Thursday 9th December 2021
• Thursday 16th December 2021

All calls take place at 8pm – 9:30pm AEDT

Each week we have a particular theme that will be our focus, you’ll have received this theme as part of your reflection guide for the week. You can expect a guided meditation each week as well as an opportunity to learn some strategies and heart tools to carry with you as you navigate and tend to your grief.
You’ll always be invited to share, but never made to – that’s not how brave nor safe spaces are created. What a nourishing offer ahead of the festive season – a time that can be really challenging to navigate for many.
It would be my honour and my privilege to hold you and your grief

Investment

1 x full payment $395AUD | Early bird price $345 AUD
2 x fortnight payments $205AUD | Early bird price $180 AUD

Send me a DM if you’d like to discuss more, or you can register at www.thegriefluminary.com/holding-hope

Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed.- David Kessler “We run from grief because loss scares us, yet your hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want ...

16/11/2021

{why the grief luminary?}
There’s a few new faces around here so I thought I’d share why I started The Grief Luminary. Firstly, thank you for being here, it’s not lost on me why you’re here, so thank you for choosing to seek refuge amongst these words and images.

I created The Grief Luminary because I want to change the narrative, and experience, of trauma, loss and grief. I created The Grief Luminary because I wish it existed when I was in the depths of my own grief.

Like you, I know what it’s like to sit in the depths of darkness. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re being swallowed up by life. When life just continues on and you’re left on your knees feeling the life force sucked out of your backbone.

When you’re not sure if you’ll be able to see out your eyes by morning because you’ve soaked through another pillowcase with silent (and no so silent tears) and when you feel like you’re almost living outside of your body - watching your unrecognisable self attempt to interact with the world around her - feeling numb, detached and exhausted, at the same time being unable to reach the light switch to feel or see life any differently.

I want The Grief Luminary, and the spaces I create within it, to be that light switch for you.

Being intimately acquainted with death and loss alters your perspectives on life.
I mean, how could it not?!
It changes everything. Knowing death, seeing death, sitting with it, thinking about it and understanding it - my grief (and my work) has changed my life. Profoundly.

Rather than people fearing their grief and being afraid to sit with it, I want people to see it for what it is - love.
That grief is actually the medicine, it’s the antidote to what we’re all experiencing.
We only need to choose to build a relationship with it, rather than against it

I want you to know that I see you. I hear you and I feel you. Deeply. And I’ve got you, whenever you’re ready to choose a different way.

Holding you and your precious heart,
Xx

24/10/2021

{what makes grief worthy?}
Have you ever found yourself invalidating your grief? Fighting for your grief? That maybe the grief you’re currently experiencing isn’t worthy of being felt as deeply as what you’re experiencing it?

Your grief is worthy even if:
No one talks about them
It’s been months, years or decades since their death, or the relationship ended
They died by su***de
They died from an overdose
They were old
You weren’t married
You hadn’t been married long
You hadn’t seen them in years
They were unborn
They were born sleeping
They were a baby
The two of you were on bad terms
You’d just met
You hadn’t been dating long

This list is certainly not exhaustive, but it’s what I’m often met with when I begin to work with someone and I can see them questioning the worthiness of their grief.

I want you to know that your grief matters. Your grief will always matter. It became worthy the moment they last exhaled. It became worthy the moment you learned they had died. It will be worthy for as long as you want it to be, which is likely forever.

Grief isn’t valued on a currency of how loved they were or how long you knew them or how they died. Grief is love. Grief is painful. Someone you loved, cared about and hoped to have more time with is now gone. That hurts.

So say this with me: my grief is worthy. It is valid and deserves to be remembered and seen and heard and felt.

Is this something that you’ve found yourself struggling with?
Who and what have you lost that’s worthy of your grief?

04/10/2021

I get it. It’s overwhelming.
And at times it feels inconvenient - like, why do I have to still feel like this?
Or maybe you’re new to grief and feeling like you’re drowning in your emotions and looking for any way to avoid or suppress them. Because who actually wants to feel pain? Who chooses to feel discomfort?

But here’s the thing. There’s no way around grief, trust me, I spent the best part of 10 years searching for one. There’s no quick fix. There’s no avoiding it, ignoring it or denying the work.
And when I talk about work, I mean pain.

The only way is through.

What if I was to say to you that by going through your pain - the intense feelings and emotions, with an acknowledgment of the magnitude of your loss that you’d actually receive comfort.

The one thing you’re seeking - comfort, and in grief’s case, that looks and feels like remembering with more love than pain.

“But how long will I feel like this?”

I’m often asked in my work this very question. And I wish at times I had the answer that people were seeking in asking it. The truth is. Your grief will be with you for the rest of your days. But when we transmute the pain, we’re left with the love, and of course we want to remember with love. Because the love is where the comfort lies.

“Gathering Hope” - a 3 month immersive sanctuary to nurture, express and honour your grief for 8 people is commencing in November. Cart opening soon - DM on to join the wait list to have first access. It’s time to remember with more love than pain.

20/09/2021

{carrying your grief}
Grief demands that our emotions and heartache be adequately attended to.
Whether the loss of your loved one is recent, or many years ago, the pain of learning to live without them can be crippling. It can feel intensely overwhelming and almost impossible to find a way forward, let alone through your grief.

It can often feel confusing and hurtful to watch others continue on unaffected in their daily lives whilst you feel as though your world is shattered.
How do you begin to put the pieces of your life back together so that you can find a way to function again? How do you learn to live with the pain? Is it possible to feel joy and happiness again? Where do you even begin?

It starts with acknowledging that your life will be different. Death has left a void in your life that is permanent. It’s a brutal and undeniable truth that death and grief bring into your life, no matter how much you long for your life to be as it were.

Allow yourself to feel all of your emotions. Without labelling them, or attaching meaning to them. Anger, fear, irritability, helplessness, resentment - the actual scope you may experience is endless. If these emotions are not acknowledged, and met with compassion and eventually worked through, they will pull you down into the quicksand of grief, each one like a weight attached to your ankle.

When was the last time you intentional worked on your grief muscles? Just as we exercise and work out to strengthen our physical muscles, we can work regularly on strengthening our grief muscles by making time to reflect on and work in our grief rather than allowing it to consume us. Sometimes, no matter how much time passes, you will experience moments where your grief is too heavy again and overwhelms your grief muscles.

Always hold onto the love you shared - it can never be lost and it will always be yours to keep. Let that love help you learn to carry the pain. Holding grief and learning to live without a loved one will be the hardest thing you’ll do in this lifetime, but love and loss can walk side by side. By honouring the love you shared, you can find a way to live again.

If you’re feeling stuck in your grief or trying to navigate life following a loss in your life, I’d be honoured to walk alongside you, and guide you through as you take the steps to rebuild your life in a way that both honours and transforms your pain into love and legacy. DM me, I’m opening up 2 more places to work with me over the next 8 weeks, I’d love to hold that space for you Xx

05/09/2021

{some days the grief is just so heavy}
Today in Australia and New Zealand, it’s Father’s Day and with all the reminders around, your grief can feel all consuming and exhausting to navigate.

I’m sending all my love to anyone feeling the depths of emotion today. To anyone who has lost their father, fathers who have lost their children.
To the many that are yearning to become fathers. To those that never knew their father or may have had an absent father.
To the fathers and children with complicated relationships, or can’t be together because of lockdown.
I’m holding you all in my thoughts, always.

Honour your loss and the grief you may be feeling today, make room for it - tend to it with love, patience and compassion.
Ask for what you need, and know that you are not alone - collectively, there are many people feeling and holding your sadness and pain today.

30/08/2021

{i see you}
One of the universal truths of life is that we will all eventually lose someone or something that we love. Another truth is that each loss is unique, and each of us experiences loss differently.

Today is Grief Awareness Day a day dedicated to raising the awareness to the challenges faced in grief. A day we recognise and honour that grief looks differently for every one.

In my work with people experiencing loss and grief, and within my own personal experience, I still very much see an expectation to ‘just move on’ from their grief rather than allowing one to process and move through at a pace that feels safe and nurturing.

Talking is a wonderful antidote to grief, so it’s important to find a safe place to share your memories and feelings where you’ll be supported whether the grief you are feeling is from 20 years ago or a more recent loss.

When people talk about the effects of grief in their lives, it reduces the stigma that many feel, often in isolation. If you know someone who has recently experienced a loss, reach out and check in on them.
And if you’re someone who lives within grief - please know that you are not alone. I see you. I’m holding space for you. I hope that you will find comfort on this account.

23/08/2021

{eternal flame}
In loving memory of those who are forever present in our hearts.
If you feel called to, I’d love for you to share in the comments a special person no longer here but always in your heart.
Always loved.
Never forgotten.
Forever missed.

19/08/2021

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

Grief will never truly end. It may become softer over time, more gentle but some days will still feel sharp.
Grief will last as long as love does - forever. It’s simply the way the absence of your loved one manifests in your heart. A deep longing, accompanied by the deepest love. Some days, the heavy fog may return, and the next day, it may recede, once again.
It’s an ebb and a flow, a constant dance of sorrow and joy, pain and sweet love.

Grief like yours, love like yours, can only be carried. And just because you may carry it well, doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.
Sending my love to anyone feeling the weight of their grief right now x

16/08/2021

{grief is courage}
Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To move through and process grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to observe, express and release our feelings fully, and to tolerate and accept those feelings.

For most of us, that is a big order. It takes an enormous amount of courage to grieve. It takes courage to feel our pain and to face the unfamiliar. It also takes courage to grieve in a society that mistakenly values restraint, you know - take your two days bereavement leave from work and maybe 6 weeks of sympathy where people accept your sadness before it typically moves to a place that many feel uncomfortable in holding and witnessing.

So how do we learn to have the courage to grieve?! Some of us learn courage spontaneously, when we must act in order to survive our loss. Most of us though, learn the courage to face new challenges in the process of living, experiencing and surviving our struggles over and over again.

One way to learn courage is to experiment with being courageous. We can taste courage, notice courage, pretend courage, and most of all we can try it out for ourselves. Having the courage to grieve leads to having the courage to live, to love, to risk, and to enjoy life after loss.

We can each learn to trust that although grief is painful, it is healthy and the grieving fully will enable us not only to process and move through our loss but provides us with an opportunity to expand and grow through in re-creating life after loss.

15/01/2021

{take a break from your grief}
Give yourself permission this weekend to mentally walk away from your grief.
It’s not going anywhere, I promise you. And it will continue to demand to be heard and worked through when you return to it.
But for now, set it down, take a couple of steps away and just breathe.

In my darkest and heaviest grief, I used to push through, too afraid that if I set it down, I’d never pick it back up.
I’d convinced myself that by setting it down, I was abandoning it and the guilt would consume me.
So I’d push through, often to the point of overwhelm and exhaustion. When life would finally force me to step away. Ah, the sweet relief that followed.

So please, if you’re carrying that heaviness in your heart right now, please put it down this weekend. Give your mind a chance to feel something other than despair, your heart something other than sadness. Find one thing that provides a glimmer of joy and allow yourself to bask in it. You’ll return to your grief refreshed and renewed and ready to keep working through it.

You owe it to yourself to try. Xx

14/01/2021

{anger is just a bodyguard for sadness}
Grief can unfold differently for each individual mourning a loss, but a common emotion is anger. Such a hard emotion can be hard to navigate, and can be confusing and overwhelming to us, sometimes we don’t even recognise it in ourselves but others around us may have to absorb it. What is important to remember about anger is that it is a secondary emotion; underneath it, is a primary emotion, often sadness or fear.

If we can slow down and ask, what is my fear in this moment? What is my sadness? The answers will often highlight some areas that may need extra tenderness and navigation in relation to your grief. We need to get to the root of the anger in order to heal properly.

As we move through grief, it’s important to try to lean into the pain. Don’t try to turn it off or avoid it. Feel it - feel as much as you can bear.
Why? Because it helps to move through your grief and accept it for what it is. When we suppress, bury, buffer or ignore our feelings, they don’t go away - they remain unresolved which only prolongs our grief.

Unfortunately, there is no way around, through or ability to skip hard feelings. If we bury unresolved feelings, I assure you: you will continue to trip over them.
So face them, name them, feel it and you will move through them. Remember, we grieve so that we can feel something else.

Some questions to ponder if any of the above resonates with you and your grief journey:
Can you think of a time you expressed anger in order to conceal another emotion you were feeling?
What is your anger often triggered by?
How could exploring feelings and emotions beneath the surface help you deal with anger?

05/01/2021

{let there be light}
Hello, hi, how are you? I’m so glad you’re here. I thought I should post a little about why I started The Grief Luminary. For some time now, I’ve wanted to bring light to the loss and grief space - a little hope in the dark for those that are seeking comfort. I have BIG dreams that are slowly coming to fruition and over the next few months I’ll have some big things to share here.
I’ve been a Social Worker for the last 14 years and last year I completed a post-graduate degree in Trauma, Loss and Grief.
For the last couple of years I’ve worked in a hospital where much of my work has been centred around trauma, loss and grief - holding space for people when they (and their loved ones) are at their most vulnerable is a privilege I don’t take lightly and one I’m so very honoured to do.

Personally, like many of us here, loss and grief has touched my life. I lost one of my best friends when he died by su***de. I actually found him - it was incredibly traumatic for me and I still grieve heavily the loss of him from my life. I’m a r**e survivor - the losses which followed in many areas of my life is something I still grapple with to this day, 17 years on.
As many of you will know, I recently gave birth to the most magnificent little boy. I’m blessed beyond words to be his Mama. But before him, I’d had 5 other pregnancies. For the best part of 14 years my heart wept through despair and brokenness, each loss sinking me further into the depths of loneliness, bitterness and depression.

I became a shell of a person, struggling to see a way through it, several times this almost saw me end my life. Whilst I’m still fiercely protective of my pain and losses, and I always will be, I can now talk about it all. And I do because I never want someone to feel the loneliness, numbness toward life and despair that I’ve felt - a big reason why I share so openly and wanted to start The Grief Luminary.
So please know, you are never alone. And on the days it feels like you are, I hope you’ll find comfort on this page.
I see you, and I’m sending you love and light x

05/01/2021

{no one has to grieve alone}
This image by speaks volumes to me, what about you?
Grief can be oh so isolating. When I was in episodes of my most acute grief, I’ve never felt more lonely or invisible to others around me. Maybe you’ve felt the same? I don’t think we’re ever prepared for how lonely the experience of grief can be. From being protective of our vulnerabilities; our loss to feeling isolated by the heaviness of our grief, especially when it feels like people are uncomfortable witnessing us.

I really want to encourage you to include someone you trust as you move through your grief - it’s so hard to heal in isolation from others. This person may be a partner, a family member, a friend or a professional - someone who can hold space for you without judgement or comparison.
We need to experience both verbal and non-verbal permission to feel our feelings and emotions as they arise within us. When we share our pain, it helps us experience and witness our grief whilst receiving support.

Having our grief witnessed by at least one other person also allows us to feel validated in our loss and grief. Validation is such an important aspect of the grieving process. Don’t ever underestimate the power of talking through and allowing yourself to feel the true weight of your emotions. Think of it as an emotional release - as you talk, you’re able to vocalise you’re inner-most feelings and let go of pain that is weighing you down.

What has been your experience of grief?! Have you felt seen and supported or have you felt lonely whilst trying to navigate your loss? I’d love to hear.
If there’s any part of the above that you’d like me to unpack further, just let me know below or send through a DM.
Here to help in any way I can.
Sending love, light and hope x