Healing Grief: Interview with Leah about the Death of Her Mother

The grief that accompanies the death of someone you love can smash you like a tonne of bricks and take away your ability to remember how to breathe. And regardless of who you are, it is undoubtedly something that you will most likely experience throughout your life.

It can be a challenging path to navigate, and it is important to remember you are not alone. In this ongoing series, we connect with our readers and discuss their experiences with loss, grief and healing. In this issue, I got to hang out with Leah and discuss what it was really like to lose a mother.

Kim: Leah, you lost your mum when you were only 14 years old. Can you tell us what that experience was like for you as a young girl?

Leah: As you can imagine, it was life-changing. A lot of the time I think I’m okay, and then I get asked this question and I realise I’m not okay. I think that when we’re children and this happens to us, we don’t recognize how life-changing it is until much later on in life. I’m 37 now and I still think about her every day, and I still look back at things and go “I could have done that really differently”.

Just bringing that forgiveness for myself. I was a child, and I had a younger brother and sister who I had to help. But it wasn’t all bad. It’s taught me resilience and it’s made me appreciate the things that I do have, particularly the love that I get from other people. Like with anything, some days are harder than others. But at the time it was so surreal that I couldn’t even recognize it was really happening.

Kim: Looking back now, how do you feel you navigated that grief in comparison to how you felt at the time?

Leah: At the time I thought I was doing a good job of it. I thought I was keeping it all together and moving forward with my life. But when I looked back on it, I was just like, “My gosh, I was absolutely not navigating it well at all”. At 14, you’re trying to navigate life, hormones, boys, girls, your sexuality, and all those types of things. Then you throw losing your mum into the mix. What people don’t realize is that children take a lot of their identity from their parents. So when you lose one, you feel like you’ve lost a part of your identity, a part of yourself. Then add in the other people around you grieving and it makes it hard.

I did the best I could with what I had.

Kim: You’ve had so much time to sit with grief and the loss around your mum. What part has that played throughout your life?

Leah: It’s looked like many different things; risk-taking, becoming a hermit at times, being overly engaging with others, not wanting to do things on my own and constantly needing reassurance from someone else. The biggest thing I think with grief is that it never really goes away, you just learn to live with it.

It becomes like a friend and so you’ve got to make friends with it, and acknowledge it. To say, “You’re with me today and that’s okay”.

Kim: What would your advice be to someone who would benefit from making friends with their grief?

Leah: Know that it doesn’t hurt you. Know that having those feelings is okay. I avoided that for so many years. I have a therapist now because I’ve been grieving basically my whole life. For so many years I’ve pushed the grief down. And suddenly, now as an adult, I realise, “This is not going to hurt me, this is going to heal me.” So it’s sitting with that.

Kim: Have there been other particular attributes that have come from this experience in relation to your own personal growth?

Leah: Yeah. Those who know me know that I’m very opinionated. I’m very forward and blunt to the point of of course. But I think one of the things that grief helps you with is, it gives you an insight into self-awareness. It gives you empathy right, it gives you compassion. And if you let it, it allows you to have joy in your life. Because you know nothing is permanent, and so therefore why wouldn’t you do things that make you happier?

Kim: What made you realise that you needed to take the initiative to actively heal?

Leah: For me it was spiritual development. In my 20’s I was angry; I was that person that nobody liked because I was so confrontational. I was trying so hard to keep it together and I knew things had to change in my life, but I didn’t know what, or how. So when I started psychic development, it started a process of looking at myself in order to work with spirit and connect with spirit properly. That’s helped mould me and change how I was, along with other experiences along the way.

Kim: What role does grief play in your life now?

Leah: Like I said before, it never really goes away. It just becomes a part of you. I find when I’m having a hard time, it can pop up. So you’ve got to acknowledge your feelings, and where you’re at, and just let it let it be.

Kim: Obviously, everyone’s experience of losing someone is different. But what would your advice be to someone who is experiencing grief and needing to heal?

Leah: Don’t be afraid of yourself. Don’t be afraid to trust yourself. I think that deep down we all know what we need, and it’s not allowing that fear to step in. The hardest things to do are probably going to be the best things for you. So eating well, exercising, sitting with yourself, being alone, all those things. But also reach out for help, whether that’s professional help or your friends. But I think a lot is going to come from you sitting with yourself and acknowledging your feelings and saying, “You know, I’m not okay today, and that’s okay”.