Healing Grief: Interview with Kim About the Death of Her Violent Ex Spouse

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. For this issue we interviewed our founder Kim Bleeze. She shares a different experience to what grief looked like when the father of her children died from a brain tumour.

“When someone dies, especially someone you might have had a challenging relationship with, don’t shy away from feeling all the emotions that may be present.”

FTMag: Kim, you’ve had a couple of losses throughout your lifetime, but you wanted to discuss one specifically.

Kim: Yes, my children’s father, who died from a brain tumour five years ago. We’d been separated 20+ years ago when he died, so it felt like a close passing, yet it didn’t in other ways. Plus, a significant amount of past trauma was associated with our relationship, as he was violent when we were together. Even though I’d already done a considerable amount of healing, especially in my journey as a medium and understanding ourselves and our soul path from a different perspective, his death still brought up a lot of hurts I wasn’t expecting.

FTMag: Are you happy to share more of what you mean about the hurt you weren’t expecting?

Kim: Sure. First, there was the obvious grief. I’d known this man for a long time, he was the father of my children, and he had been everything to me at one stage of my life. Not to mention the healing and forgiveness that I was gifted the opportunity to process the year leading up to his death. Then, I contributed to caring for him for the last six months of his life. So when he died, we were both at peace with what had happened between us in the past. It helped me heal, and it helped him find the peace he needed to find to pass peacefully. It wasn’t just me that was directed at, though; he’d acted violently to most of his family throughout his life. So seeing everyone come together to offer him a chance to, I suppose you could say, repent was an odd experience. So when George died, I mourned him as the father of my children, for the big heart he had underneath all his toxic bravado, and for the man he never gave himself the chance to be but always wished he was.

Then, on the other hand, it also bought all my old trauma of what I experienced with him to the surface. I would go from feeling sad he was gone, especially how it was for him at the end. To feeling relieved, I didn’t have to look over my shoulder anymore. Then to feeling rage at him for what he put the kids and me through and for leaving us that legacy.

I especially struggled because I felt that everyone had rose-coloured glasses on about the man he had always been. There was suddenly so much praise. It became essential for me to (at least privately) be as honest about all sides of him as I could be.

Then, I tried to hold the space for my kids to grieve their dad without letting on that this was how I was feeling. Even with all my knowledge as a spiritual teacher and medium, it was a challenging time. My job as a medium, helps people heal grief. Yet I was at a loss with managing that within my family. My daughter was distraught at losing her dad, and my son would only process his grief in silence.

FTMag: How did you navigate that?

Kim: I realized I had to separate myself and how I was feeling from the experience the rest of the family was having, especially my children. So, I wore two hats. I grieved in the way I needed to privately, seeking support from my peers when I needed help getting my head around it or expressing my feelings. Then I put my ‘strong mother, I’m here for you, your dad did no wrong hat on’ with my children. I didn’t get it right all the time, especially when so much raw emotion and passion was flying around the room, but I did the best I could under the circumstances.

I don’t think there can be a ‘perfect’ way to be when processing grief.

FTMag: What did you learn about yourself through that experience?

Kim: I had more healing to do. Sometimes, our instinct when someone dies is to hold them in high esteem, regardless of how they treated us. I think we still need to keep it real. If someone was an arsehole in life, it’s okay to acknowledge that part of them after they’ve died and talk openly about how you feel about that.

I spent 20+ years scared that he would one day show up on my doorstep threateningly. It didn’t matter how far I moved away from him; the thought was never too far from my mind. That doesn’t just go away. Even with that amount of healing I had done, I realized there was still a residue of emotion I needed to process and that all those years I thought I’d healed from him, I had just avoided the deeper layers of trauma. That was a big eye-opener for me.

As a healer and teacher, I think I sometimes like to think that I’ve got all my shit together – that’s far from the truth.

FTMag: What did your healing journey look like, and what is it like now?

Kim: Gee, I think it is still continuing. I’m at peace with his passing. As a medium, I know that he has simply returned home. I was lucky to have that knowledge and skillset to call on, so grief is a little different, perhaps a little easier.

For me now, I think it is more that I get upset about how it has affected my kids. They not only struggle with grief, but they’ve never given themselves a chance to process the trauma of their dad’s past actions and behaviours. So that stuff is still there, bubbling away inside of them. So our grief isn’t just the effects of his death. It is also about the after-effects of how he chose to live his life.

FTMag: What is your advice to anyone else that has had a similar experience?

Kim: When someone dies, especially someone you might have had a challenging relationship with, don’t shy away from feeling all the emotions that may be present. There is no right or wrong to grieving, and dying doesn’t suddenly make someone who mistreated you a saint.