Grief Counselling
“What does it take to stand quietly like somebody under a clear midnight sky, taking it all in? Things going well doesn’t seem to help with this. Good fortune isn’t pervasive on this matter and it rarely gives us pause. It’s when the news isn’t good news, that’s usually the time you find the limits of what you can bear to know.”
– Stephen Jenkinson
What is grief like for you - without the support of steady, reliable grief counselling that instills creative grief rituals with a caring,, mature and wise witness?
Grief is love’s devotion to life.
Grief and love are twins joined at the hip.
Grief is praise for the very thing that has left.
Grief is a mystery, an intelligence, a divinity.
Grief is all the unmet dreams that could have been.
Grief is humbling, it asks for mercy, to pause, to listen, to gather.
Grief shapes and softens, irrevocably.
Grief is a gift, a treasure trove.
Grief’s tears - water love’s immense eternal garden.
Grief shapes and softens, irrevocably.
Grief is food that which nourishes and sustains.
Grief asks to be touched, seen and heard.
Grief melts the cage of shame.
Grief is an obligation to those who came before.
Grief is an intimacy, a gateway to love.
Grief is everything we love - we will lose.
Grief illuminates the majesty of life.
Grief is the ache of a troubled world.
Grief is the loss of connection, community, belonging.
Grief is a protest, an activism of the soul.
Grief is how you love all those things in life that end.
Allow Grief Counselling and Grief Rituals to help navigate your path toward mindful, intelligent, loving awareness.
In English, the root of the word grief is gwere.
PIE: Heavy. To bare, to prise open that which aggravates.
In Sanskrit the root is guruh.
A heaviness worthy of reverence and respect, to venerate its worth.
In Latin the root is, gravis.
Heavy, pregnant (birthing anew)
The Chinese word for grief, 悲(bei) literally means a heart that feels it cannot fly because it’s weighed down with unexpressed grief, which can manifest into breathing difficulties and bowel problems.
Fei 非, the top radical, symbolises two wings that oppose each other. Excessive unexpressed grief - ‘against, opposes.
Xin (心), the radical on the bottom, means heart.
The root for“grief” in Chinese is the character “哀“ (āi), which means sorrow or lamentation. It is often used in compounds to express mourning or deep sadness.
-
哀痛 (āitòng): deep sorrow
-
哀悼 (āidào): mourning
In Traditonal Chinese Medicine, the Lungs and Large Intestine are partners associated with the Metal Element; the emotion is grief.
Because the Lungs govern the rhythmic order, prolonged sorrow can cause disharmony to the flow of internal life.
What is Grief Ritual?
Ritual is a rite, an observance that breaks the hypnosis of exhaustion, linear thinking and doing. Grief counselling and grief rituals bring to the geography of sorrow - a treasury of gifts - healing, insight, and transformation. It steps outside the domain of our egocentric drivers and away from the rationale, the out-of-control schema of fear and order.
Evolutionary theorist, C.G. Jung, claimed that ritual is the bridge to our universal heritage of humankind. Ritual asks that you surrender to something more expansive, to escape from the prison of our important, isolated lives. It asks of us to make sacred the wider connections to our instinctive life, away from the addiction of consumption, technology and the endless distractions that separate.
Imagine returning to the symbolic nature of who you are, immersing yourself in processes that spark imagination and allure. Our focus through grief counselling is to make conscious, vital beauty from your grief. We do this through the architecture and choreography of the arts: Music, movement, dance, reflection, inquiry, writing, play, song, storytelling. For some, it can feel like coming home to the familiarity of engaging in something that our ancestors knew and held close for thousands of years. They knew what sustained their souls to become whole and grounded in meaning, purpose and community.
Curiosity and exploration calm the nervous system, which fosters spontaneous design and flow states of consciousness, like a river naturally carving its path to eventually be itself.
"Ritual is the means whereby we can engage and work the ground of grief, allowing it to move and shift and ultimately take its new shape in the soul, which is one of deep acknowledgement of the place we will eternally hold in our soul for what was lost." -Francis Weller
Why Grief Ritual is Essential for Healing.
Many Indigenous cultures, including the Mayans, speak of grief as a fluid expression that cycles into renewal, regeneration and eventual maturation. Without it, muted sorrow can manifest into a tumour which hardens the overwhelmed heart. The Australian Heart Foundation (2024) highlights heart disease as the leading cause of death.
“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give.”
- Francis Weller.
Grief is a major ingredient that makes life vivid which helps to bear the inevitable of what you are prepared to know. The strong community bonds in the Navajo culture mean that an individual’s illness or grief becomes a shared concern. Everyone is deeply connected because their culture understands that grief softens defenses, fostering connection to their shared humanity. This sense of belonging is vital to our well-being and nourished by all things.
Over time, unexpressed grief can morph into oppressive - anger, fear and depression - unknowingly we affect our workplace, our relationships, parenting and communities. Without the capacity to mourn our losses, we become zombies adrift and on auto pilot assuming a life without a compass.
Sorrow is the unexpected guest who knocks upon your door and who unwittingly means no harm other than to remind you of your capacity to love and care for that which is absent and cherished.
Learning to feel and bear witness to an impossible, crushing wave of sorrow is by no means inescapable. It comes with the territory of being human - We are born, suffer, live and die, yet many believe they are insufferable. Bullet proof. Titaninium protected.
- Welcome to grief’s lot, it’s beauty-filled purpose - intent on designating you as human all the way to the end.
Griefs rituals aim to help navigate the transition of loss and to help you recognise how and when to honour sorrow. The root of mourn is to remember, to preserve the unforgotten. To mourn is a verb. It is an active participatory engagement that requires listening and gravitas; learning the skill of how to bear the weight of honouring your losses with dignity is something your ancestors knew all along. To lose what you love is not the undoing of you; but the making of you. It is the making of maturation, wisdom and spiritual truth. Read my testimonials to find out more.