Lost and abandoned
It was a beautiful summer’s afternoon in July. I was having tea in the conservatory with my mum’s best friend who was visiting from Blackpool as my mum was unwell. I knew my mum was sick but had the belief that she would always be there for me..she was my mum after all.
That afternoon my aunt said ‘you know your mum is very ill. She has a maximum of 2 months to live’. I literally screamed. I couldn’t see a life without her. I felt I had been thrown into outer space with nothing above me, below me or to my sides. There was no one to hold my hand.
Short of 2 weeks to that day, my mum passed away on Friday afternoon just as the rain cleared and the sun shone through the window of the hospital room. My family weren’t one for talking about feelings and so I didn’t know what I was feeling or even how to feel. After an evening of crying, I threw myself into my work and studies and marched on with life, thinking I had dealt with it pretty well.
What I suppressed my body expressed
Six years later I would have dreams where I would wake myself up in the middle of the night by my own sobbing and an unbearable intense pain in my chest. The sadness that I had suppressed was overflowing out of me now. I realised there was no escape. What I suppressed, the body expressed and that’s what it continued to do…night after night after night. There was no relief and no running away.
I became more connected to the grief I felt with her passing, even 20 years later. I thought it would be something I would always feel: that pinch in my heart whenever I spoke of her.
The other side of grief
I then had the opportunity to work with grief in a very different way. It didn’t take weeks or months but hours to shift and move in a very different way.
In the process I discovered that grief was only one side of the equation. I began to get a deeper insight into the nature of my relationship with my mum and my family and the feelings of guilt and responsibility I was unconsciously carrying and felt I needed to carry for her and which were in some way holding me back from what truly mattered to me in life.
As the process went on, there was relief too that I didn’t need to shoulder the responsibility and guilt that I felt I had to. I felt so much love, appreciation and gratitude for her.
Her death was her final act of love: she gave me my Life
She set me free to explore and discover my mission. . She gave me the opportunity to connect with my dreams and what truly matters to me. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be on the path I am on and I wouldn’t have become the person I am today.
Seeing how this process remarkably transformed my life, I was inspired to master it to help others who are experiencing grief and loss.