10/09/2026
I was just watching a David Kessler video on grief and it bought up some of my own personal grief and for some reason, I felt the need to share.
I had never experienced grief before. Losing my mother was the first major loss in my life.
I remember four months after my mother died, my doctor told me that I just have to move on and get on with my life.
A friend told me twelve months after my mother died, that your mother wouldn’t want you to grieve her and that I need to move on. She told me that she couldn’t cope with my grief.
I had a dear friend tell me she didn’t know what to say to me when my father died, so she just didn’t come to see me.
I had people tell me “That you are not the same person” and that they couldn’t relate to me anymore.
I had people say to me that “I want the old Bernadette back”. I told them, she is never coming back.
I called a sister on the first anniversary of our mother’s death and after a few minutes, I asked her “do you know what today is” and she said “no”. My heart sunk and I cried on the inside and when I hung up, I cried on the outside.
I had people leave me, people who I thought loved me, but they couldn’t hold me in my grief. It was easier for them to leave, than to stay.
I craved to be held in my grief. To be seen and to be loved, but instead I grieved in isolation. I internalised my grief. I went deep within and the pain was unbearable. It was a pain that I had never experienced in my life before. I felt like I was suffocating. Some days the grief was so intense that my heart literally hurt. For many years, all I wanted to do was die. I just wanted to be with my mama, because in that place where ever she was, I knew that I would be loved and nurtured.
Love felt so absent in my grief. I wanted to stand on the tallest building and tell the world how much pain I was in, so that someone would see me and hold me and tell me that everything I was experiencing was normal and that I was worthy of being loved and supported in what felt like the darkest time of my life. I wanted to be held in my grief in a safe way.
I was gifted one dear friend during my grief. If you are reading this, you know who you are. The one friend that didn’t walk away, that didn’t leave me. The one good friend that heard my pain, that embraced my sadness and deep sorrow. It was all too much for one person to hold, so I often found myself going within. I spent the majority of my grief in my inner body, where it felt like a tornado of emotions were taking over my body and I was feeling weaker as the months passed by. My body was exhausted, literately exhausted. Some days it was hard to function, but I got out of bed and got through the day and landed in bed once again with great relief.
Grieving in isolation isn’t how we should grieve. Being surrounded by those that love you and can hold you, and can see you and nurture you, this is how we should do grief.
If I could offer just one thing to those that are reading my words, if someone you know is grieving someone they love, or any other major loss in their life, be brave enough to take a step closer to them, not to fix them or make them feel better, but instead, create safety around them, so they can feel their grief and fall apart, so they can be witnessed in a way that is loving and nurturing. Be present with them, be in the here and now with them, no matter what it is they are experiencing, your presence can be just enough for them to express their inner world of deep sorrow, so they don’t have to go into their inner world and grieve in isolation.
Many people are grief illiterate and I understand that not everyone has the capacity to hold a safe space for someone that is grieving, but if you can, I invite you to just do it, because you might be the one person that saves some one’s life. Ten months after my mother died, a gorgeous woman that I met in some training I did, her mother also died and three weeks after her mother died, so did she, she took her own life.
Grief is not morbid or negative or any other derogatory words I have heard people speak of grief. It is a natural, human experience, that needs to be supported and witnessed. No matter who you are or where you come from, at some point in your life, you will experience grief.
As I write these words, my body remembers the grief as if it was yesterday, I feel the exhaustion in my body and I have to remind myself, that I have come a long way and that the hardest part of my grief journey is over and now I am left with remembering and honouring those I have loved and lost, especially my dearest, precious, mother.
Image: Me holding my mother’s hand while she was dying
