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I’m starting a new full-time day job for a not-for-profit on 13 April.

I’m pretty nervous but excited too.

This has come during a loooong stretch of reflecting on what I prioritise, where I place my attention, and how I share things with the world.

So after 123 weeks in a row, this Substack won’t be weekly anymore.

It’s partly practical but mostly intentional.

And naturally, there’s a part of me that wants to keep going. Yup, pride, ego, the idea of “not breaking the streak.”

Like, what does “the streak” even mean anyway?

I’ve been more consistent than I ever thought I would be. That’s very cool, especially when online writing is daunting at the best of times. But life has moved on and so has my approach.

Plus I talk a lot about not overloading yourself or running on autopilot after years of burning out and using busyness as an epic form of distraction.

So keeping a weekly post going when it no longer fits would be exactly that. As a result, sharing in this space will be less frequent and more considered.

You’ll hear from me when there’s a real desire to write or when there’s something worth saying.

I’m also redesigning my website (still a work in progress): https://sabrinaahmed.com

That’s where more of my writing and offers will live.

But before I settle into that, I want to sense-check a few things.

And if you’ve been reading for a while or just found me, I’d really value your input for this next phase through this poll:

Or skip all of that and reflect on this instead:

What are you keeping going out of habit that doesn’t fit your life anymore?

Take care,

Sabrina

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P.S. Thanks for reading and supporting my work, whether you’ve been reading for weeks or years. I don’t take that lightly. So here’s to moving forward together :)

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What I’ve noticed across hundreds of hours coaching burnt out clients is how excellent they are at spotting issues and solving problems.

Almost too excellent.

They work hard to prove themselves, take on more, fix what’s broken, and stuff expands as their scope, ownership, and expectations grow.

But what starts as momentum and buzz turns into overwork. A long list of priorities then too many moving parts.

And eventually, stagnation, because they’re now managing everything they picked up, and want to pick up, along the way:

“I can’t do x until I’ve done y and z.”

“Can’t you see the bigger picture I’ve got in my head?”

“Look at everything that needs sorting first. Where do i even start?”

It’s possibly why co-workers or bosses don’t see why they’re burning out.

From the outside, it looks like capability or competence. But they don't know the inner struggle or effort.

And to be fair, some systems are actually broken. Under-resourced, poorly structured or not designed to hold the load they’re expected to carry.

But they’ll still take everything you keep giving them.

Is it overwork or over-responsibility?

The harder, maybe more painful, aspect to accept is why you keep giving. Because it doesn’t always feel like overworking. It feels like being responsible. Capable (groan). The one who can handle it.

But it’s a compulsion, an addiction, a vital need when you’re within a system.

I’m on the edge of that space again now, having just chosen a different kind of day job.

Less money. Less pressure on paper. Moving away from an industry I know I can’t stay in without it costing me.

And already, those who know me well are asking:

“How can I help you avoid overworking?”

“What boundaries are you going to put in place this time?”

“Remember what you’re being hired to do. Stick to that.”

Ouch. The frustrating (but magical) thing about having honest loved ones is how they’re pretty much right every time.

My first internal reaction was defensive even though I knew i should listen.

But as I sat on the sofa and contemplated the change, there was something unexpected underneath. A bit of shame, if I’m honest. That I’d ended up here again.

That I felt i couldn’t make it work in a high-paying industry, even though I’ve handled other, much harder things in my life. Real trauma, fear, uncertainty.

There’s also a kind of sadness in it I hadn’t fully named before.

Not just about the job, but about the version of me who could exist in that world. The one who kept up, pushed through, and got it done. But at a real, tangible cost to myself.

A realisation she’s shifting… or maybe already gone.

The pattern doesn’t go away just because you change the environment

The real pattern isn’t just about work, or overwork - that's just the symptom. Below the surface is something that shifts over time without being noticed. Here's how.

I start with boundaries. Clear, contained ones and staying true to my lofty intentions. Until I see something I could fix, can’t resist and step in. Then things get messy.

It doesn’t feel like a problem at the time. It feels like helping. Like I’m contributing and adding value. I love being someone people can rely on. It feels fricking great.

But over time, slowly and surreptitiously, it expands. More responsibility. More ownership. More pressure to keep everything moving.

A C-suite client kept reeling off all the things to get done in our sessions. But they’d also share how they contributed to their workload by suggesting big strategic jobs and then volunteering to deliver them. On top of existing responsibilities!

It was all logical stuff for the business. But layered on top was “because no one else could do it.”

Once it ramps up, and it does, the workload don’t always return to baseline. So the pattern continues: “If I just get this done, then I can rest. Then I can step back. Then I’ll get my evenings back.“

Hmm, do they come back though? Really?

This urge usually shows up around the same point for me. Around the six month mark, or within the first year.

Often when things are less defined. When there’s more at stake or I’ve started joining the dots to create a fully loaded picture of success.

More insidious possibly is when I notice how I’m perceived or how my value could shift.

I get nervous and that’s when the urge latches onto me, so I step in or take on more to prove myself.

The need to be capable, valuable, respected, especially when my self-worth feels shaky, becomes a trap of my own making.

The difficulty of not taking on more responsibility

We don’t carry unhelpful loads or patterns for no reason. It’s often because there’s an upside. A reward of sorts. You just have to look deeper to find it.

Being the one who handles it gives you something.

It makes you feel useful, skilled and in control. Respected. Like nothing will fail on your watch. And it's a high without the drugs.

You also get somewhere to park things you haven’t really dealt with. Because if you’re too busy holding everything else together…

…you don’t have to fully feel what’s shifted in you.

Avoidance is great - until it isn’t.

But what’s the alternative? You resist and don’t step in? Hmmm, that feels worse. Like watching something fall apart in slow motion and choosing not to intervene.

No thanks.

So there you are. Doing it again. Even when you’ve changed your environment. Even when you’ve made different choices.

The old pattern reappears like an awkward colleague from your past you never thought you’d see again.

And he still sucks.

Resist the urge and get picky instead

This is why doing more and being capable becomes the problem. The drive or urge isn’t coming from the work itself.

It’s coming from somewhere deeper that hasn't quite resolved.

I’m not sure what it’ll look like not to fall into this pattern again. I remember early in my career I could do the job and leave work at the office door.

So my test this time is to see something I could take on…and resist the urge.

To let things be slightly messy. To not prove myself through how much I carry or offer. To realise I’ve been hired for a role and to deliver the scope of a job.

Not to deliver the max of my capabilities whilst i disappear. These are two very different modes.

I see the pattern more clearly now, and have people who’ll help maintain guardrails around it.

That’s a great starting point. But only I’ve got the power to enforce it and keep myself sane.

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P.S. If you recognise yourself in this, the pull to take on more, even when you don’t want to, share your stories and what’s helped.

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My desk overlooked the city, with great views of the London skyline. On a rare sunny day, the sunsets were stunning, with intense oranges, yellows and hints of red across the horizon as the office lights sparked into action.

I couldn't believe this was my life. An amazing perk on top of the leadership role I worked so hard for. But something still felt off.

I'd arranged a dinner meet up with a pal at the weekend. It was at a restaurant we both liked and I'd already peeked at the menu to plan what to have (yep, that's me).

So why couldn't I feel excited to go? I was ticking the boxes for a successful life but it didn't feel real. I secretly beat myself up for feeling ungrateful.

High-functioning burnout isn't easy to spot

One thing about writing publicly every week and building self-awareness is that you analyse everything.

Sure it's a great habit to build, but it doesn't mean you notice everything or the stuff you should notice.

I wracked my brain and body to work out why I didn't ‘feel’ right. Nothing was obviously wrong, as I was still functioning. I exercised 3 times a week. Ate pretty well for someone with IBS. Kept in touch with family and friends. Did some painting when the inspo hit me.

I was on top of work even through intense peaks that pulled my focus and attention. I rose to the task and got things done, feeling more tired each time but that's normal, right?

Still, something didn't land. Nothing was falling apart back then but it felt like I was watching my life through a pane of glass.

Maybe i should be meditating more. Creating more art. Connecting more with people in person. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

But even though I tried different options, it didn't seem to shift my autopilot mode. I couldn't enjoy the fruits of my years-long labour, being a good corporate citizen and present for everyone who needed me.

Life just didn't feel right anymore. It's only work hindsight years later that I realised this was high-functioning burnout, and how it'd crept up on me slowly over time.

Working harder isn't going to fix this

If you're like me, you're a pragmatic problem solver. You notice something isn't right or needs sorting, so you lean into fix it mode.

This moment calls for research! Google searches, self-help books, YouTube videos (distracted for an hour by cat videos obvs), Substack articles ;) etc.

It's a rabbit-hole I'm happy to explore.

I was desperate to sort this out. I didn't like feeling empty or disconnected from what should be the good stuff. But no matter what I did, nothing hit the mark.

Of course, my instinctive urge after all this is to work harder. Getting sh*t done is my usual drug of choice. So, deep down I know it's not a motivation problem.

Life shifted and I missed it.

What really happened is the life I'd built no longer fit who I was. My actions and mindset were still aligned to an old life blueprint, pulling me in different directions.

That's why internal friction shows up as “feeling off. ” A mystery until we dig deeper in the right way.

Why the typical fixes don't work

With burnout, we often try to fix the surface level symptoms.

Feel exhausted? OK I'll get to bed earlier.

Feel self-conscious about my choices? OK I’ll buy into confidence hacks I've seen online.

Feel emotionally numb? OK I'll try to connect with people more deeply.

Maybe you've thought this yourself:

• “If I'm more disciplined, and push through, it'll sort itself.”

• “If I suck it up, it'll feel better. I'm just looking for problems where there aren't any”

• “I need to sort my mindset and feel more gratitude. Then this will ease”

But none of this works if you’re solving the wrong problem. And when you're left feeling fed up and self-blaming that you're not doing it “right”, it's often a deeper issue you've missed:

An identity rupture.

Because when the old life blueprint is out of date and your usual solutions don't work, you've changed at a more fundamental level and parts of your life need to realign.

Maybe this idea freaks you out. I know it did me for a bit. But it doesn't actually have to be drastic.

It could just mean what you now value isn't what you valued in the past. Or you're yearning for a different measure of success at work or home.

But once you clock it, keep going and don't turn away thinking the urge will fade. It doesn't.

The questions that actually matter are different

When there's a deeper emptiness, especially if life looks great on paper, ask yourself different questions:

1. What has changed in your life that you haven’t fully acknowledged?

2. What are you still trying to make work that doesn’t feel true anymore?

What modern living doesn't always recognise is how losses and life disruptions impact and stack up. It might be a big change you had to deal with. A death of a loved one. A lost job. A new health burden.

Over the past 4 years, I've experienced each of these, with pain, sadness and confusion etc piling onto an existing heap.

Or it could be smaller versions of these. Each one you've not processed enough, or pushed aside alters who you are and what matters, even if you don't realise it.

Your energy siphons off in the background to attend to these open loops, whilst you're working harder to keep the show moving. It's exhausting and feels like a weird background hum.

You know that vibe, like you've left the oven on but are sure you've turned it off. It's distracting when trying hard to focus on other things. But the buzz never goes away.

So, instead of trying to fix the surface symptoms, dig a little deeper. Stop to understand what's been lost before diving headlong into changing your habits, mindset, lifestyle, wardrobe etc.

At that point you'll realise where to focus.

For me, it was noticing and feeling the pain of losing my Dad, my disappointment and sense of failure at losing a job and my sadness mixed with relief of an hEDS health diagnosis.

Freedom comes when you finally listen

Sat in the ceramics studio after time away from the day job, staring at a bowl I created on a Monday afternoon made me accept the need for a different life.

Sitting there with clay drying out my hands and trying to sort a wonky edge, I felt more alive than I had in months at my corporate job.

One that aligned to how I wanted to use my precious time and limited energy.

Did it feel a bit like giving in? You bet it did. But I knew that was old mindset noise trying to keep me safe. Because not changing is stability even though it's an invisible cage.

Financial security still matters, especially with soaring costs and a world on fire. But looking after my health and sanity has become primary. I was fed up of the burnouts, even if my ego nudged me back to old goals I thought were still important.

If I'm honest, this urge was bubbling in the back of my mind for a while. But I'd ignored it, maybe from fear or the sense of giving up what i’d worked so hard to achieve.

I just wish I'd listened to it sooner as I'd have saved years of deeper burnout and going through the motions.

Now it feels like I'm on the other side. Contemplating a more streamlined career - working more remotely in a different industry perhaps - leaving more time for creativity (ceramics and painting) and people that matter.

Plus taking breaks when my body needs to crash and not beating myself up about it. I still do but old habits and all that.

I'm much clearer on the choices to make for my life to fit what matters. And it's fricking liberating to choose intentional slowness over urgency or fear.

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P.S. If you've been wrestling with similar emptiness in your ‘successful life’ and want to talk it through, I'm opening up 1:1 coaching slots for the next few months. Learn more and enrol to Embracing Life After Loss here.

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Apparently I've written a weekly Substack post for 122 weeks in a row. Yes, I'm surprised too.

I'm kinda proud but also frustrated it's not grown the way I’d like. And in the past, I'd be checking numbers, seeing how others compare and trying to hustle harder.

But after several burnouts and recognising my urge for busyness when I'm uncomfortable, I’ve been resisting.

I realise how my pattern shifts from feel pain → get overwhelmed→numb out emotionally →avoid pain and stay busy.

It might work temporarily but it's not helpful in the long run. At some point, you feel nothing in general which is scary.

That's when you need to face what you've been avoiding and finally let things flow.

Numbness starts off as a protective mechanism

There's no one way we react to loss. It's a range influenced by personal factors, personality traits, environment and culture, context, life stage and so on.

But many of us become emotionally numb since it's a protective mechanism. Our brains might kick into running through a thousand scenarios depending on the loss, so we go into temporary shut down as it doesn't feel as disorienting or overwhelming.

The past 4 years since losing Dad and jobs has taught me I lean into emotional numbness after pain pretty consistently.

It makes sense at first but when you try to move forward with life alongside loss, you realise you don't feel anything anymore.

The pain seems faded behind a pane of glass, but so does the good stuff. Small wins, cool connections, a TV show or movie i like.

Meh.

Logically I know it's a positive thing. I should feel something. But I don't feel anything. So what do you do when the volume is low? Turn it up until you might feel something.

Being busy is rewarding until it's stifling

I end up leaning into work. You might have you're own crutch or go-to like exercise, food, drinking, partying, gaming etc.

Not just a couple of extra hours or sessions. But going hard into your emotional numbness drug of choice by keeping your mind and body distracted.

I’d take on extra projects. Try to solve issues i could see bubbling in the future even if they weren't urgent. Spend time perfecting tasks that didn't need to be perfect.

A few times, I stayed in the office listening to people rant at the end of the day so they'd feel lighter on the commute home.

In my mind, it was OK to keep working in the office afterwards loaded with their sh*t and my task list.

At least I’d been useful. Valuable. Had a virtuous purpose to be there because it was more important to make them feel better than myself.

Anything to keep busy and not be alone with my thoughts. Those uncomfortable thoughts that try to creep in and steal attention.

And with thoughts come emotions I don't want to feel. I can't fix those open wounds so why bother trying?

I could work 13+ hour days for months at a time, but couldn't tap back into what made me happy. Because I’d stopped letting myself feel sad.

Let the feelings in like eating broccoli

Even when you know you need to feel the hard stuff, it's hard to actually do it. “Eating broccoli” one of my team would say. To teach a child to eat broccoli, you have to offer it to them over and over again.

Eventually after the “it's gross” stage, they let it in. Not like they loooove broccoli now, but they're not actively turning away.

If you're overworking, keeping busy or trying to fill in the quiet moments by running yourself ragged, maybe you're avoiding something too.

Perhaps it's something painful that did or didn't happen. Notice what you lost in that moment. A person. A role or status. An identity. A dream or hope.

Because when you don't let yourself acknowledge that loss, or the hard emotions that come with it, you might numb out longer than expected.

It doesn't mean you'll always stay like that. It might just take longer to reconnect to the hurt parts of you.

I found art and creative expression helped me reconnect to my emotions. It was an indirect way to feel something when I didn't have the words or couldn't go there.

And eventually I felt something.

Curiosity, enjoyment, pride, calm. Small moments that helped me feel alive again. And the urge to stay busy finally weakened because I was less disconnected.

Weirdly a great way to pause the urge to stay busy is to do something new. It might feel like adding to your task list but the effects impact much deeper.

They bring different parts of you to the front that helps shift perspectives.

And we need to go deeper if we've been avoiding loss. Because it doesn't disappear.

At some point, what you ignore makes you pay attention in the end. So why not do it on your terms?

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P.S. After 122 weeks of these Substack posts, I'm going to mix things up.

I'm keen to write more of a digest style update of interesting and useful things. There'll still be some personal stuff in there but also stuff I've spotted in the world.

Let me know what to include and let's shape this next phase together.

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I was made redundant last year but am going back to corporate soon. And to be honest, I'm freaking out about it.

A career break was a god send. I needed time to decompress and recover from the space I'd been in. After burnout, after grief, after health problems.

Now, after months of trying to build something different here and in my business, the bills are a reality hard to ignore.

It's ramping up my anxiety. Not because I don’t know how to do the job. I do. Well, part of my brain knows I can, but the “redundancy part” still has lingering imposter syndrome and wants to run and hide.

I’ve spent years being the responsible one, the person who gets things done, holds things together, takes on more when things start falling apart.

It's a lovely signature of my past burnouts. But I'm anxious about more than not being able to do the job.

I'm worried about burning out again.

Burnout creates fractures only you can see

Burnout has a way of changing how clearly you see the life you were living before. Because it reshapes reality with this veneer of illness, disappointment and overwhelm.

I remember the long hours, the crap sleep, the nervousness around office politics. Trying to be all things to all people, even if they were unreasonable. They were senior to me and what they said, goes.

Having time to myself over the past few months has been life-affirming. There's a reason all the business and entrepreneur coaches talk about creating a “freedom business”.

It's because so many of us are sick and tired of the daily grind, values misalignment and exhaustion doing things that rarely move the needle on what matters.

Freedom gives you relief from certain types of fckery, the snarky client, the useless internal teams or lazy project manager who can't get the basics right.

And frustratingly, the people who burn out aren’t the careless ones.

It's the responsible ones. The ones who go over and above, see all the connections, care about what they're doing (too much), and keep going when something inside is asking them to stop.

Responsibility is a strength, but it's a fast way to slowly abandon ourselves.

Knowing my proclivities towards this, I'm always nervous going into a new role or job. I hear the burnout siren’s call and head straight for those coastal rocks.

Silly me, darn it.

What's different about resisting burnout this time?

I know something now that I didn’t understand as well before.

Burnout doesn’t always start with work or workload. Sometimes it starts with loss.

• The loss of a parent.

• The loss of a version of yourself.

• The loss of a life that once made sense.

• The loss of connection and support.

When loss happens, responsible people do the same thing: we keep going. We keep functioning. We take care of everyone else and try to make the world stable again.

And sometimes the way we cope with grief is by pushing it down and carrying on, until even the body eventually refuses to keep living like that.

Burnout happens when the part of you that knows something is wrong finally stops cooperating.

It's internal mutiny to get you to pay attention to your poor choices and actually wake up.

Come on kiddo. Get with the programme.

Through feeling detached, emotionally detached, unable to connect to the life you've created, burnout forces a kind of clarity.

You start to see the difference between keeping a life functioning and actually living it.

I went from feeling important I'd signed a cost-saving deal working late into the evening, to enjoying a new glaze on a pot I'd created from scratch.

Both can be satisfactory, but once you’ve seen that difference, it’s hard to pretend you didn’t. Or that you prefer one over the other.

So the question I’m sitting with now isn’t whether I can go back.

Of course I can, and I've done it before. The real question is something else entirely:

Can I return without disappearing inside that life again?

Applying the real lesson after burnout

Maybe the real work after burnout isn’t escaping the world that burned us out. With the pace and cost of modern life, it's hard to escape fully.

And I'm still playing the lottery to speed that process up. One can hope.

Instead, it’s learning how to stay in it without abandoning ourselves again.

I've realised loss fractures who we are. We lose a part of ourselves and that's when other things crumble without even realising until it's too late.

Our health, relationships, values, life legacy and focus.

I’m still figuring out what the next phase looks like. This Substack and my coaching/ training business are part of that questioning and exploration.

And I'm not the only one struggling to navigate it.

But I know this much after being inspired by an Aussie movie gem back in the day, Strictly Ballroom.

I’m not willing to live my life half lived anymore, and neither should you.

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P.S. If you’ve ever had to return to something that once burned you out, I'm curious: what did you do differently the second time?

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Weeks after Dad died, I texted him some pictures of my garden foxes. I knew something was off and then I remembered. Oh, he’s gone.

It was clear I wasn’t OK. I took a few days off work. My voice sounded different. I moved more slowly. My face was puffy from tears and stress.

People knew I was grieving.

I felt held and supported by friends and colleagues. Family was a bit different because we were all reeling. Lost in our own loss.

The messages were lovely. Flower bouquets and cards. Softer tones aware of my closeness to Dad and the depth of my devastation.

No one expected normal.

The shift didn’t happen overnight. It happened gradually.

The quiet recalibration no one notices

I felt the silent judgment when I hadn’t looked for a new job after the last one ended months before.

Gentle nudges about what Dad would want me to do other than hermit myself away from the world.

But over time, I became more functional in a patchy way.

Back to a day job, which had its own stresses. I could hold conversations without tearing up (most of the time). From the outside, it looks like improvement. From the inside, it feels like sheer effort.

And at some point, the checking-in dissipated.

I don’t think it's intentional. We respond to visible distress. When it's less visible, the response adjusts.

We think our mates are doing better. We don't want to keep repeating “how are you feeling?” We don't want to keep picking at the grief scab.

But internally, the adaptation is still happening. Inside, the pain still bounces around, seared into our being.

We question reality itself and the point of going on.

“After the funeral, it went quiet…”

In grief forums, this comes up again and again.

• “Everyone was there at the start.”

• “After the funeral, it went quiet.”

• “They assume I’m fine now.”

Not because people stopped caring, but because the bereaved seem and look more stable and lives keep going on.

Once they're back at work, back in a routine, no longer visibly undone or falling apart, the world reads it as a form of “recovery.”

Sure, still delicate or maybe struggling at times, but they're getting back to life. What they don’t see is how deep down they’re still recalibrating. Still adjusting to who they are without that parent. Still noticing the absence in ordinary, unexpected moments.

At work, I could respond to emails. I could sit through meetings without feeling like I might unravel. But when a memory of Dad popped up because someone mentioned gardening, I craved someone to notice the magnitude of my loss.

But they rarely did.

Years on, I'll tear up in LIDL near the middle aisle of random offers Dad loved exploring, and the wave hits me fast.

Tight chest and throat. Breathing gets harder. Eyes water and sting with hot tears I struggle to hold back. Not collapsing. Just caught for a second by a trigger memory.

From the outside, it looks like hay-fever. Inside, it's like holding back a tsunami.

When “I’m fine” becomes automatic

By this stage, “I’m fine” becomes efficient. A reflexive reply when grief feels odd to bring up.

It keeps conversations smooth. No one wants to hear how you really feel right? It's an easy breezy social contract.

I mean how do you even reply to “I feel like I'm dying inside today. What about you?”

Yep, “I'm fine” avoids awkward pauses. It protects others from having to respond to something complicated or heavy.

Especially if you've always been the steady one. Reliable. “Strong”. The one who doesn't like making a fuss.

The habit isn’t about denying reality but rather greasing social wheels to get through the day. But damn it feels lonely, hiding the real parts of yourself from people in your orbit.

I'm sure your people will offer support if you speak up. But as a highly sensitive person, you try not to be too much for others.

It makes asking for help a bloody nightmare.

Creative expression creates space for what we need to hear

During my Art-Based Coaching Diploma, we started with our art story, because art can be a loaded term. It reminds us of school creativity, and the self-judging “I’m not good at drawing.”

But for myself and my clients, art and creativity helps make sense of what’s going on when words don’t come. It brings structure to the “feeling off” that distracts and makes us feel uneasy.

Visualisation lets unconscious feelings and knowledge surface when we create space for them. A new way to hear what has been painfully silent but intense.

Even if aphantasics, people who don't have mental imagery, tap into this but in a different way. Instead of images in their mind’s eye, they might notice concepts, feelings and physical sensations more. It’s about the process.

Eighteen months after I lost Dad, I ended up in tears after a visualisation exercise. I realised how much of my creativity was linked to him. As I created images on a big piece of paper about my art story, the grief wave arose in ways I hadn’t expected.

I thought I’d found some peace with that loss, but I’d actually crushed it down. That deep black hole and void I was trying to ignore was laid bare.

It unlocked a process that was tough but so vital in helping me move forward after loss in a way that felt meaningful, instead of going through the motions.

A Guided Meditation to figure out what will help

If you’re curious about using art and visualisation, here’s a guided meditation when you know you’re not OK but don’t know where to start.

1. Find a quiet spot, slow down your breathing and bring your attention to the breath coming into your nose, in and out, in and out.

2. Notice any tension in your body and release any tightness in the muscles or joints. I clench and let go to hone in on each area.

3. Close your eyes gently or focus on a point gently.

4. Reflect on where you'd like more support in your life. Try not to censor yourself through this exercise. Let what appears unfold without judgment.

5. Keep this question in mind: where do I need support right now?

6. Now bring to mind a woodland path. Notice the sights, smells, sounds, touch on your skin.

7. Keep walking gently along the path ahead.

8. Then something catches your attention, and you spot a clearing in the woods.

9. You wander over. There's a large log on the ground and on top of it, a medium-sized box.

10. You reach out to the box, take in the scene, and lift the lid.

11. What do you find in the box that helps you identify the support you need?

12. Notice the colours, shapes, sizes, textures. Abstract or real? Static or moving? Any other considerations you spot? Again try not to censor what appears.

13. Bring your focus back to your breath and space you're in. Slowly open your eyes and grab a piece of paper and pen and write down or draw what came up for you.

14. Reflect on what this brings to focus re the support you need. Is it specific people? Groups? Known people or anonymous? Face to face or online.

15. Express and journal until you run out of descriptions, suggestions and ideas.

16. Then pick your top 3.

17. Choose one to act on in this coming week:

    1. What's the first micro-step? A call? An Internet search? A text message?

    2. Write down when you'll do this and what you expect as an outcome. Lean into the benefits of this first and maybe tough step.

Don’t rush through this process. Let your mind and body guide you intuitively, instead of letting bias or what you think you need direct.

Allow yourself to get help because it's likely what you would do if you were asked, right? Give others the opportunity to be that for you.

There's no timeline on grief

The early weeks after parent loss are loud. Hectic. Disorienting.

They're when you spin off your axis and don't know what or where you need to focus.

The months and years after can be quiet and complex.

When everyone thinks they’re fine, maybe it's simply that they’ve learned how to carry grief without broadcasting it.

Or like most things in life, attention fades when we don't talk about it.

But absence doesn’t. Absence remains and it's OK if you still find it hard.

Grief keeps recalibrating in the background long after the room has gone quiet.

But you don't have to stay quiet with it.

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P.S. If you want a personalised live guided meditation to make sense of your grief experience, my 1:1 coaching programme Embracing Life After Loss is for you. Learn more here.

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I was taught grief follows death. There’s a moment. A phone call. A hospital room. A funeral.

Then an after.

But I've realised many of us are grieving someone who's still alive.

• A parent with dementia who recognises your face but not your history.

• A Mum who survived illness but never quite returned to herself.

• A Dad who’s physically present but emotionally unreachable.

• An estranged parent who still occupies far too much mental space.

There’s no clean ending here. You can’t point to a single day and say, “That’s when it changed.”

Or if you can, the change doesn't come with a formal ending we all understand.

Why this kind of grief lingers

I’ve grieved versions of Mum, who's still very much alive. And the hardest part isn't the sadness.

It's the inner conflict.

Sadness finds its level after time. But the situation never quite makes sense so there's a tug-of-war about how things “should” be versus how they “are.”

The constant questioning:

• How can I be grieving if they’re still here?

• Why do I feel like I’ve already lost them?

• Why does every interaction leave me slightly braced?

It's the kind of grief that destabilises because there isn't a real signal. No clear before or after.

It's why no one brings food or cards. No one checks in on the anniversary of a personality or relationship shift. No one marks the day you realised the relationship you hoped for isn’t coming.

My epiphany came in the middle of a therapy session. Tying myself up in knots for being the fixer but still disappointing to Mum, until the therapist said “It might be time to accept your Mum can't be the Mum you want.”

I was floored. “Can't be…the Mum I want.“ Hmmm, how had I never seen it that way before?

I finally had permission to be sad. To realise this was like fitting a square peg in a round hole, and likely always would be.

But it doesn't wrap things up in a nice bow, no matter how much we want that. Trying to explain why you're pulling away when they won't accept your version of reality.

Explaining to mates why you're not going to afternoon tea for Mother's Day because you don't want an argument.

Or trying to stay compassionate when you're exhausted with all their health issues, bad turns, or tough decisions when you're just over it right now.

So you retreat. You carry it quietly. You beat yourself up.

You decide whether you're ready for your next choice and what it means. Bracing yourself because you don't know how it'll go.

You feel relief on some days. Anger on others. Guilt for both.

You have the veneer of a functioning adult, having breakfast, showing up for meetings, managing logistics. Trying to muster energy to move or exercise.

But underneath, it always feels unresolved.

Unsatisfactory. Like an itch you can't scratch no matter how hard you try.

There’s a term for this: anticipatory grief. Or ambiguous loss.

Knowing that helped me realise it’s not just me. Not just in my head.

But labels aren’t the main thing.

The main thing is this:

Your mind doesn’t get a clean “after.”

So it keeps trying to update the relationship in real time, finding solutions, trying to find some meaning or sense to it.

Circling if I do this then that might happen.

There are thousands of possibilities which is why it's so exhausting.

But if you're unsure what you're really grieving, your brain keeps looking for answers in the wrong places.

Name the real loss

When there’s no clear ending, the grief becomes vague. And vague grief lingers like a bad smell.

Even though the penny dropped for me with my therapist, the real loss didn't become clear until later.

Until I started seeing it as loss and something to grieve. And I realised I was grieving the parental role Mum could never be for me.

Not for any nefarious reason in this case. Just the inability to be who the other person needs them to be.

And that I don't have to rise to it. I know she's not going to be who I wished she was. I can let the sadness and disappointment flow for that loss.

Recognise when the yearning for what others have kicks in. The jealousy. The “I wish I had that…” thoughts.

Which is why a practice that helps is deceptively simple.

Name the real loss.

Not the headline version. Not what you think it might be. Or how your mate or partner might describe it.

Not “I’m upset about Mum and how we argue.”

Get real specific.

Mine is “I’m grieving the Mum I needed but didn’t have. And might never have.”

Yours might be:

• “I’m grieving the version of Dad before dementia.”

• “I’m grieving the fantasy that one day we’d finally feel close.”

• “I’m grieving the idea that she would protect me.”

• “I’m grieving the hope that he would change.”

Or some other version of this. That level of precision feels brutal. Maybe disloyal. Because we don't really like airing our dirty family laundry.

It feels so vulnerable to admit, even to ourselves, so silence is safety.

Plus we get influenced by external judgement, because when someone is still alive, it feels wrong to grieve them.

Especially if they’ve suffered or are still suffering. Or others say, “At least they’re still here, or they are your parent, you should have some respect.”

But what you’re grieving isn’t their heartbeat.

You’re grieving a role. A version. A future that quietly dissolved whilst you were looking the other way.

Clarity reduces internal conflict

When the loss stays vague, the mind and body keep searching for something that makes sense.

• Maybe it will get better.

• Maybe I’m being dramatic.

• Maybe I expect too much.

• Maybe I should just be grateful.

You switch between hope and resentment. Between trying harder and pulling away.

But we get clarity when we name the actual loss.

That doesn't make it less painful. Lord no. It might intensify it because we've put a fricking laser beam on it.

But if the real grief is, “I never felt emotionally safe with her,” then you stop waiting for her to suddenly become safe.

If the real grief is, “He will never be the Dad I imagined,” then you stop measuring every interaction against a fantasy version of him.

This isn’t about blame. And it isn’t about cutting people off, necessarily.

It’s about accurate assessment with data that's true for you. And the right information helps us make more helpful decisions.

Acceptance here isn’t approval. It’s recognising what is, rather than what you hoped would be.

There’s a strange relief in that.

When I stopped trying to extract water from a dry well, I had more energy and appreciation for relationships that could nourish me.

To lean into my friendships with mates who accept me for who I am.

That doesn't make me cold. It makes me clear and discerning.

That clarity is kinder than endless hope that keeps pain stuck.

You don’t need a death certificate to grieve

You might have a single grief statement or many. With grief, we're not necessarily grieving just one loss.

So list as many as feel right. If you’re navigating a parent who is fading, changing, distant, or estranged, try this:

Finish the sentence.

“I’m grieving…”

And don’t edit yourself to make it sound generous or socially acceptable.

Write the raw version. Because no one has to see this except you. And if you aren't being honest with yourself, who are you being honest with?

Grief isn’t always about death or bereavement. It’s the loss of the relationship you quietly let go of, or need to.

And you don’t need a funeral to call it grief. You're still processing and adapting to loss, even if you don't realise it.

Sometimes the most stabilising thing you can do is name exactly what you’ve lost.

Not the person. But the version of them you needed them to be. Or the version of you that no longer exists.

It gives your grief your something to hang onto. And it's when you stop waiting for a phone call that'll never come.

So get specific and start building the life that's actually here.

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PS. If you’re carrying anticipatory loss or complicated living-parent dynamics, my self-guided course, Navigating Grief with Compassion helps you unpack the loss you're reeling from and find steadiness at your own pace. Learn more and enrol here.

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I have a confession to make. I didn’t think about grief much before Dad died. I supported friends and family as best I could but believed the information and messages out there and not much beyond.

Until I lost Dad and felt totally adrift and lost, with epic levels of exhaustion and losing my appetite and drive for life. Grief felt like a pass to a different life, not aware of the rules or how anything worked anymore.

So, I leant on what I knew. The Five Stages of Grief Model was one of them. And as the emotional waves and thoughts and physical sensations washed over and around me, I tried to tie them to what I’d heard.

But it was so confusing. Only after working with a grief counsellor and throwing myself into art did I realise how much of our grief preparation is based on outdated models.

So that’s something I’m looking to change here.

Why the Five Stages fall short

Grief and bereavement have traditionally been viewed through the Five Stages Model. It suggests a linear progression through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

However, modern insights and scientific understanding reveal a more complex picture of grief as a non-linear and deeply individual process.

While the Five Stages Model provides structure, and much needed certainty, it often oversimplifies the multifaceted nature of grief. And it was created from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ work with people who were dying, not from research on bereaved people.

This is an important context difference, and it’s led to pressure landing on people in unhelpful ways.

Many of us don’t experience grief in a sequential order, leading to confusion and self-blame when our feelings and thoughts deviate from this path.

The expectation to progress neatly through stages crushes those of us already navigating the heavy burden of loss in a complicated or prolonged way.

I sometimes wonder how much of this outdated narrative around grief contributes to us hurting more deeply or for longer than needed.

It’s worth questioning the status quo.

Embracing the Dual Process Model of Grief

The Dual Process Model is a psychological framework created in 1999 by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, showing how coping with bereavement isn’t linear but rather oscillates between two coping types:

1. Loss-Oriented Coping Mode: Direct engagement with the loss itself.

2. Restoration-Oriented Coping Mode: Adjusting to the life changes caused by the loss.

Their research suggests healthy bereavement adaptation involves moving back and forth between these two modes. It’s a more accurate picture of how we cope with grief.

I know my initial grief response was very loss focused and disconnected, drifting day to day but not attaching to anything. I felt guilty every day, questioning my thoughts and actions (“Am I bargaining when I wish he hadn’t died?”) and distracted by which stage I was in and why it didn’t quite fit.

Not long after, I looked up the differences between grief and depression because it felt so similar to my lowest depression periods, but also completely new. I was lost.

I also beat myself up when I could only muster a bit of focus on the probate process and dealing with his finances and estate. I delayed and delayed because it felt like I was ignoring his death if I focused on death admin.

It took a lot of effort to move into and stay in restoration or life-focused mode. But if I’d known about this moving back and forth concept being helpful back then, small steps into restoration would have felt like a win with less guilt.

This model recognises the fluid nature of grief, where emotions, feelings and energy fluctuate and coexist. So, by understanding that grief does not follow a linear path, we give ourselves the grace to feel what we feel fully without the constraints of a predetermined framework.

Feeling like we’re doing grief “wrong” layers on suffering when we’re already in pain.

Why your body needs both modes during grief

When Dad died, my body felt it instantly before my mind caught up.

Muscles and joints ached, my tummy was off, and I wanted to sleep all day but couldn’t rest properly. I disconnected, sluggish and couldn’t get going, wanting to shut down and ignore the world and this new reality.

My memory turned to sh*t. I left the gas hobs on for hours a few times. I thought I’d done things when I hadn’t. It was disorienting at best, scary as heck at worst.

I knew grief was stressful. But I didn’t realise it could feel this physical.

When you lose someone you love, your stress systems activate. The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA axis) releases cortisol and other hormones to help you respond to threat. That makes sense. Loss is a threat. It destabilises everything.

For many people, those systems stay more activated than usual for a while. Sleep becomes lighter or fragmented. Appetite shifts. Your immune system can dip. Concentration becomes unreliable. You might feel wired and anxious with a racing heart. Or flat and slowed down. Or both, at different times.

This isn’t weakness but a body reeling and trying to adapt to a world that’s fundamentally changed.

This isn’t “just grief.” This is your biology responding to a major disruption.

Here’s why the Dual Process Model works with your biology, not against it

When you’re stuck in loss-oriented mode 24/7, like crying, looking at photos, regretting every “wrong” decision, feeling the full weight of the loss, your stress response doesn’t get a break or a chance to settle.

The body doesn’t register relief and there’s no signal that it’s safe enough to pause.

But when you consciously move into restoration-oriented activities, like dealing with practical tasks, going for a walk, making dinner, sending one probate email, you’re giving yourself permission to shift.

Actions might still be stressful, but doing small, discrete tasks offers a beginning, middle, and end. That completion gives your system a different input.

Not “the loss is gone,” because it isn’t. It signals “I can still function and manage life tasks.” And that matters.

Your body is built for shifts. Periods of activation, followed by partial recovery. Grief throws that rhythm off its axis.

Moving deliberately between loss and life helps realign it.

You’re not avoiding grief. You’re reducing the load on a system that’s already stretched

Focusing on restoration-oriented activities isn’t avoiding grief. It’s making space for it. Because life does keep moving, even if we don’t want it to.

I felt guilty every time I focused on Dad’s finances, sending emails and death notifications to so many organisations. It felt like forcing myself to move away from what he meant to me, when I focused on his estate and admin issues.

But dealing with his estate wasn’t a distraction from grief. It was a way to regulate my stress response and take breaks from feeling the loss at such a raw, emotional level. And it’s not like we don’t still cry when we’re dealing with death admin.

Nostalgic waves wash over us, we get lost in the “what ifs” but we return to a task that moves us forward, even if it’s just an inch.

This is why my coaching work starts with the body: sleep nutrition, movement, hydration. When your HPA axis and body are dysregulated, you don’t always have the energy for deep emotional processing.

And that’s OK because you’re in survival mode. But helping body basics creates the conditions to do that in a healthier, more sustainable way.

The Dual Process Model isn’t just a psychological framework but offers a way to actively manage your stress physiology and function. Oscillating between loss-focus and life-focus isn’t weakness. It’s regulation.

It’s your body’s way of coping with something that otherwise overwhelms your biological systems completely.

The benefits of a non-linear approach

Your body is built for movement, for shifts away from and back toward baseline. That’s how it adapts to change.

The Dual Process Model works because it works with how your stress response functions, not because it follows some therapeutic ideal.

Loss-oriented and restoration-oriented modes aren’t stages to complete. They’re states your nervous system and mind can move between to feel steadier over time.

And if you’ve felt off for a while, you’re not failing and you’re not behind. Your biology is doing what it evolved to do, which is helping you survive loss whilst continuing to function in a world you wish would stop but won’t.

The day I finally filled in one probate form and then went for a short walk without apologising to Dad in my head, that was oscillation.

Not progress through a stage or guilt about doing something. Just movement.

And that’s enough.

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P.S. If you're curious about exploring your grief in a more flexible way, check out my self-guided workshop Navigating Grief With Compassion. I have a section with a fillable template about the Dual Process Model to try yourself.

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The thought surprised me when I had it, sobbing over Dad’s body in the ICU room. ‘How could you leave me here with all these assholes?’. It’s not really something you think will crop up in the moment, but I was angry at him for leaving me behind.

I wished I was more gentle or graceful, but those have never been my strengths. So, the thought lingered and the beats of anger throbbed deep in my chest.

It should have passed, if you believe the ‘stages’ of grief are real. But they weren’t for me.

The anger hasn’t subsided after 4 years.

And it revisits in unpredictable waves in darker moments when I feel particularly alone.

Why the anger keeps resurfacing

Anger is a boundary emotion, and flares up when:

• Our values or boundaries have been transgressed

• Something feels unsafe, intrusive or unjust

• You’re expected to tolerate more than you have resources for

It appears when we lose our sense of agency, like not choosing the situation (i.e. someone died), we can’t easily change things (i.e. we couldn’t reconnect with someone gone), or we’re absorbing consequences that aren’t ours (i.e. trying to cover financial overheads related to loss).

And it isn’t just reactive to an event or trigger. We brace ourselves because we’re preparing for potential danger or overload. I catch myself filtering calls from mum when I’m nervous about another fight we’ll end up in.

Stomach in knots, shoulders tensing up and heat flushing across my face. I’m already armoured up with curt responses before anyone says a thing.

We stay vigilant and scan for what might go wrong in our environment. I design escape routes for family events, mapping how to leave before things get overwhelming.

Anger motivates us to pay attention and protect ourselves.

But when it’s not allowed, named or explored, it persists and appears when there’s a gap between how things are and how things shouldn’t have to be.

That’s how it resurfaces for me. Dad was the glue for our family. He softened the edges to the stark family differences I have and made me feel seen and understood in only the way he could.

I still miss that deeply and when I’m reminded that’s gone, the anger rises and still disarms me. That protective buffer is gone, and I’ve still not figured out how best to replace or reassert it.

When the conditions don’t change, the emotion doesn’t either.

So now, it looks like bracing before family calls or events. Being careful about when and how I communicate with people Dad used to buffer. And trying not to close myself off from new opportunities for connection and trust.

Anger is a signal, not failure

In most cultures, we’re told to keep our anger at bay. Keep calm and carry on. Or that anger is a grief stage we work through and then it’s done. But does this framing really help?

From the people I talk to - when sat across coffee tables, sending WhatsApp messages or chatting on the sofa - I know that’s BS. Anger persists. It’s raw.

And every single one of them have some version of: “I thought I’d be over this by now, but I just can’t let it go.”

So, anger signals what matters to us, not that we’re a failure.

Anger, when it’s acknowledged and channelled, becomes fuel. It tells you where your boundaries are. It shows you what you’re not willing to tolerate anymore. That’s not dangerous. That’s clarity.

So it's not something to fear or suppress but rather lean on and use wisely. It doesn't mean you didn’t love someone enough, or in the right way. Or that the grief is stuck and can’t be shifted.

It means something isn’t working and we need to do something stabilising about it.

Use anger to motivate, not beat yourself up

If you recognise anger flaring up after loss, don’t use it as a stick to beat yourself up. Don't make yourself small or feel shame for getting angry about a situation or circumstance you’re in.

Get curious instead.

Tune into what your anger is trying to signal to you. Lean into what’s unfinished or missing from your current situation that needs stability.

For me, anger is signalling how to build family stability without Dad in the picture. And accepting something harder: I won’t be the person they want or need me to be. And that’s OK.

Sure, the anger still bubbles in the background, because Dad’s never coming back. But I’m learning to protect myself without him. And that’s not failure, but survival.

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P.S. If you’re unsure how to explore your anger or other emotions, check out my self-guided workshop Navigating Grief With Compassion. I have a whole section about noticing and naming emotions for when the waves hit.

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I was still groggy from my afternoon nap when the doctor called to say Dad had died.

I shook uncontrollably. The rest of the call was a blur.

I got off the call and the phone slipped from my hand. I collapsed from the sofa onto the floor and released the most inhuman howl from the core of my body.

Pure, raw grief.

But relief didn’t appear then. It appeared later and that’s what surprised the hell out of me.

When relief after loss feels weird

Later that night, my brother and I went to see his body in the ICU red zone. Only two people allowed during COVID, so Mum never got to see him.

Wrapped in layers of PPE, we cautiously walked into the dimly lit and stark room. My tears and snotty nose filled up my mask. I could barely breathe.

I leaned over his body, expecting to see pain etched on his face. With every organ failing, breathing getting harder, body crumbling, I thought the stress would still be there.

He looked peaceful. Like he was asleep.

And I felt that first flush of relief.

Not because he was gone. Because his body was no longer working so hard just to stay alive.

But it was short-lived.

The shame reflex is strong after relief

The judgement flooded in almost immediately.

“What kind of daughter feels relief when her Dad is dead?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Did you want this? How could you?“

My stomach turned and my damp, clammy cheeks burned up under the layers of all that PPE.

I felt uneasy. Queasy. Unworthy.

Again it was hard to breathe. I turned away from his face, unwilling to share my messed up thoughts and emotions with him.

Ashamed.

But it turns out relief after parent loss is most common after illness, suffering, or uncertainty.

It’s not an emotional preference or a verdict on love. Even though we layer that crap on top afterwards to feel worse than we already do.

No, it’s a nervous system and mindset response once a sustained threat has finally ended.

When someone you love is seriously ill, your brain and body stay in constant vigilance. You're monitoring every change, bracing for worst-case scenarios, living in uncertainty.

This sustained state is metabolically and emotionally expensive.

And when loss happens, the stress load drops even while sadness, longing, and love remain in the mix.

Relief often arrives when there’s clear evidence the suffering has ended. So when I saw Dad’s body at rest, looking peaceful, my brain got concrete information that his struggle was over.

My system was allowed to stand down, even if it was briefly.

So the problem isn’t the relief. It’s the meaning we attach to it and whether we take a compassionate or uncompassionate view about ourselves.

When grief is expected to look only like sadness, relief gets misread as coldness or moral failure. It drives our shame because relief feels wrong in that context.

In reality, love and relief often coexist, and one doesn’t cancel the other.

It means we saw how much the situation cost, and that this part of the story has ended.

What I’d tell you now

I still think back to that moment in the ICU. Dad’s face finally at peace, my own relief crashing into shame.

If I could go back to that sobbing, puffy and lost woman in that moment, I’d tell myself: “This doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you a human, and that’s OK.”

Relief and grief live in the same body, often at the same moment.

Love and exhaustion co-exist. And you don’t have to choose between honouring them and acknowledging the cost of their suffering.

If you’re holding complicated grief right now, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into what you think you’re supposed to feel, you’re not alone.

Even if you knew it was coming, or it was a shock, don’t be surprised if relief appears.

And you don’t need to wear shame on top of everything else you’ve lost.

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P.S. If you’ve been struggling with your grief, I’ve created a self-guided workshop to help with where you are right now. Learn more and enrol to Navigating Grief With Compassion.

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Some days I miss my dad. Some days I miss who I was when he was still alive.

I was alone after he died. Truly alone, in a way I’d never felt before. I’d survived depression, anxiety, cPTSD and disordered eating for most of my life.

Feeling isolated and different. But I felt adrift now like never before, without the anchor of Dad’s unconditional love.

He’d assigned me his next-of-kin. All those discussions with doctors were overwhelming. What if I got it wrong? I fretted day after day about my choices.

It was picking the best of the worst options.

My family couldn’t cope the same way, so I protected them from the brunt and took the guilt hits after he died. Then withdrew as my world quietly fell apart.

We’d built a closer relationship over the years, and it was just easy. Fun. Caring. It felt like he was the only one who really wanted to protect me without putting his needs first.

And when he died, a part of me died too.

The version of me that picked up the phone more easily. That tried harder. That smoothed things over. That was available whenever the family needed me, even if it was exhausting.

That person has gone now. And Mum called me out on it last week in another argument over the phone:

“You used to be so nice. You called more when Dad was here and visited more often.”

She's not wrong. What really hurt with it coming from her is how she's ignored why I changed.

And no matter how much she wants to take his place, I don’t think she ever will.

When part of you dies, what used to matter doesn’t anymore

I’ve always been obsessed with work. It appeals to my problem-solving nature but feeds my people-pleasing and perfectionist patterns too well.

After Dad died though, it seemed a bit pointless.

I needed to earn money, but I’d always struggled with corporate life. And yet, I accepted the golden handcuffs reluctantly.

Sure, I could survive but it always took a part of me with it. I become too entangled and over-giving, every time.

Too emotionally consumed with office politics, answering emails and working late into the night. Taking on projects or problems that weren’t mine to fix.

It’s hard when you see all the issues, solutions and fails others can’t. I overwork and over-give to prove my worth through blood, sweat and tears.

When I started a new job after losing Dad, I held some healthy boundaries for a while. But was going through the motions, on autopilot. It became harder to deal with corporate when I didn’t know what the future looked like. Who I was anymore:

• How long can I stay here?

• Can I build my coaching practice in the next 12 months to replace my salary?

• Do I even want to stay in London or explore other options now?

Every decision felt massive. Overwhelming. I kept my head down and threw myself into the work because at least there was structure and rules to follow.

Plus, it helped me avoid the ongoing loneliness and grief. I still missed Dad too much and needed to feel useful in a different way. I didn't realise it at the time so gladly sacrificed myself.

My work obsession ignited, even though it was a tough environment and job. Maybe because it was intense. Even when I realised it wasn’t the legacy I wanted to build, I kept going because it felt familiar.

I trained as a coach to use my experience and knowledge to help others, initially with burnout recovery and more recently to embrace life after profound and prolonged grief.

But being an entrepreneur in this space is f*cking hard and like screaming into the void at times. The day job helps keep the lights on. I know it’s a reality I need to accept.

And it gets harder with each role to feel OK with it.

The question that broke my paralysis: Fear or values?

I realised I was stuck because I was asking the wrong questions. “What would Dad want for me now?” “What will Mum think?” “What will the family say about me if I retreat?”

This to and fro questioning kept me stuck and anxious. Frozen. But the question that finally moved me forward was “What actually matters to me now?”

Not what used to matter. Not what should matter. What matters NOW, in this moment, to this version that survived his death.

That’s when boundaries become non-negotiable. When I stopped apologising for pulling back, fixing their problems, being their backstop when things got too hard.

Is it easy? No. But it’s necessary.

I knew my family were trying to replace the gap Dad left with me as the fixer, doer, one that got things sorted. I already played this role but was trying to pull away over the years.

I finally began enforcing proper boundaries with Mum which she’s resented ever since. The first time I said no to her after Dad died, I felt awful. I zoned out watching YouTube videos but couldn’t settle. Paced around the sitting room. Restless.

Was I being cruel? Selfish? Or did I need to survive? Part of my identity was “the good daughter” but who was I when that didn’t make sense or align anymore?

And after he died, I just couldn’t do it anymore because something inside me died with him. Instead, the values question gave me my answer: survival wasn't selfish.

It was vital.

Why setting boundaries protects the parts of you that remain

My relationship with Mum was always tricky. And admitting it here now: she’s narcissistic.

Sure, that term is over-used these days, but recalling discussions with previous therapists over the years, I know it’s not just me.

She’ll never be happy with who I am. I took it as over-interest as a child. A bit controlling. Now I recognise it’s because I’m not who she wants me to be.

On how I look, how I act, my life choices, or how I look after and protect her - or don't.

I was parentified early in life and it taught me how people-pleasing was survival and useful.

Dad worked long and unsocial hours, and I’d stay up late to spend any time with him. But he wasn’t around as much as we wanted.

So, Mum had real influence.

We didn’t have much money growing up. Another reason I overwork because I know what it’s like to have the bailiffs take your stuff away or being threatened with the electricity being turned off.

I learned to tolerate discomfort for a bigger cause. Financial stability. Feeling accepted. Making her proud and secure when no one else could.

But it's a never-ending job and the complaints don't stop. No matter how much I bend, contort, or reshape myself to fit.

And after a lifetime of people-pleasing and being there for her, I couldn't handle it anymore.

Setting boundaries is protection, and I'm still working out the right balance.

For her and for me. It's not easy with so many conflicting messages and inner critic voices railing in the background.

Every time she tries to pull me in, I retreat a bit further.

I've said hard truths aloud. And she’s never forgiven me.

Embracing life and rebuilding based on values not fear

We’re not just mourning a parent when they die or become distant, but the part of us gone with them.

The potential shared future we could have had. The life lessons they aren't able to offer.

There’s grief we don’t even realise is there for the parts we’ve lost. It's why life feels off for so many of us. Reality doesn’t make sense because we've fundamentally changed.

And in this new reality, our tolerance for BS tanks massively. That’s not a bad thing, but it means no longer wasting the time left in my one precious life.

That means not to hand it over to a company who doesn’t care. Or a parent who wants more than I can offer.

Today is about embracing a life based on what’s important now. Helping others make sense of grief when it reshapes who you are. Choosing to pivot my coaching work from burnout to grief support is a risk.

It feels like starting from scratch. And every time I post, I lose subscribers.

But this is my life’s work, because losing a parent, however that happens, impacts many of us in ways we could never imagine. Unable to adapt our lives to grief and feeling heavy, stuck, and adrift.

It’s made me more discerning about the corporate work I take on. To minimise distraction and aware of how much energy I’ll need to make it work. I’ve said no to roles because they aren’t the right fit anymore.

It’s scary but that’s what values-driven looks like for me now. Whilst creating ceramics and designing grief workshops to put something beautiful into the world. To explore and get curious about the things I still don't understand.

Living life not driven from fear of the world and its judgement, but from deeper values and what matters most.

Will everyone be happy with this approach to life?

Probably not. But we can’t keep pleasing everyone whilst killing ourselves, can we?

I'm learning how to live with the version of myself that emerged after Dad died. Some days are clearer than others. Some decisions still feel impossible. But I’m no longer frozen by them.

If you're navigating this same identity crisis - stuck between who you were and who you're becoming, unable to make decisions because nothing feels solid anymore - I get it.

It’s why I have this Substack and do this work.

Not to tell you who you should be now. But to help you discover who you actually are, beneath the grief, expectations and fear.

So, we’re on this journey together.

And maybe that’s exactly where we need to be.

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P.S. What decision are you struggling to make right now because you don't know who you are anymore? Hit reply or comment because I read every response.

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Two years after my Dad died, I thought I was grieving. Turns out, I was also burning out. And I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

I was in my day job for just over a year by then. It started off positively enough. But a nightmare project and my people-pleasing pattern kicked in: long hours, trying to be all things to everyone. Add toxic colleagues and disrespect, and I found myself fully absorbed in the job.

The second anniversary of Dad’s death was a tough one. It felt different from the first because I put added pressure on myself: “Shouldn’t you be OK with this by now?”

I didn't appreciate how much long-lasting and intense grief impacts every day life: how I was avoiding the pain of grief by throwing myself into work, giving up my health and wellbeing for everyone else.

When we feel shaky inside, it's easy to grasp at external solutions for a sense of importance and value. I ended up in tears talking to a colleague, feeling like there was no way out of the pressure, the bad behaviour, the lack of boundaries.

But I hadn't realised, until I looked back on that time, how much grief was driving my burnout patterns.

Burnout and grief feed into each other

I'd survived a lot of pain in my life by that point, and avoidance always gave me relief.

People-pleasing made me feel useful. Perfectionism made me feel proud. Being a busy bee made me feel important.

These coping strategies started as survival, but they became constant patterns that cost me my sense of self, my health, my emotional wellbeing.

The more I tried to show I was 'back to normal,' the more exhausted I got. And I turned it all inward, being harsher and harsher on myself.

I felt cynical, depleted, frustrated that no one could see how much effort it took just to function.

Work felt meaningless. My life didn't feel like mine anymore. I was a robot, going through the motions, isolating myself because I was 'too busy.'

Shame and guilt kicked in and sat heavy in the background. How had life turned out like this again? Not asserting healthy boundaries. Not putting my health or values first. I’d abandoned myself.

But when I stopped or slowed down, I just really missed my Dad. It still hurt so much.

My burnout pain felt weirdly aligned with my grief. Both felt unbearable, so in a twisted way, it matched how much I was hurting inside.

Now, I notice these patterns in myself and my burnout clients. And how grief drives us into burnout, and how burnout intensifies our grief without us realising.

They feed each other.

If you've felt like this, whether it's months or years after losing a parent, you're not alone, and you're not failing.

What you're experiencing has a name, and understanding it changes everything. So, let’s talk about what the research actually shows, because knowing you’re not alone in this pattern can be super relieving.

Most of us grieve resiliently, but not everyone

I've always wondered how some people deal with obstacles and challenges better than others.

We now know it's a combination of biological, psychological and social inputs, but it doesn't stop us comparing our reactions to everyone else and feeling sh*tty when we struggle to cope.

We often talk about grief as if it follows one predictable path. But the research doesn’t support that.

Longitudinal grief studies show that people don't move through the same experiences at the same pace. Instead, they follow different 'grief trajectories’.

Work led by Resilience expert, George Bonanno, which followed bereaved people for years after a loss, consistently found a small number of broad grief trajectories rather than one “normal” or standard response.

Since his early studies, here's what the research consistently shows:

• Most people (around 60%) grieve resiliently: the loss is painful, but life gradually reorganises and grief integrates

• Some people (around 20–30%) struggle at first, then slowly adapt

• A smaller group (around 10–20%) follow a non-resilient trajectory, where grief remains intense and disruptive over time

People who fall into this non-resilient trajectory often experience what researchers call prolonged grief (or sometimes still known as complicated grief). It’s not a judgment about how much you loved someone or how ‘strong’ you are.

It’s simply a description of a grief pattern where the loss continues to feel intense and disruptive over time, rather than gradually integrating into your life.

What prolonged grief actually looks like

Those of us who fall into this non-resilient trajectory are often functioning on the outside in one way or another. We’re working. We’re showing up. We might even look “back to normal”.

But internally, the loss is still live.

It often looks like:

1. Life narrowing rather than slowly widening again.

   Sometimes we avoid the loss and reminders the person is gone, but other times we bathe ourselves in it.

2. A lingering sense that the world, or the self, has fundamentally changed.

   I felt like I was drifting for months. Untethered. Nothing felt the same again, even years later.

3. Disbelief about the death.

   I still forget Dad has gone and wonder how it all happened. I know it did, but something still feels unreal somehow.

4. Intense waves of emotional pain that continue months or years later.

   This happened listening to a song yesterday. Tears and sadness. It still hits.

5. Difficulty reconnecting with purpose, direction, or a sense of “this is my life”.

   This one has been particularly strong for me, and this Substack is a key part of expressing a different purpose and legacy I want to (need to) build.

6. Finding it hard reintegrating into relationships or activities, perhaps leaning on unhelpful coping strategies like staying constantly busy, overworking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or distraction.

   My burnout patterns kicked in quickly when I felt that deep emptiness and grief void. They took over and drove me to exhaustion and despondency until I stopped and let myself explore the ongoing impact of losing Dad on my life.

This isn’t about grieving wrong.

It’s about a loss that changed more of our reality than expected, and never fully settled.

The thing is, I didn’t recognise this as prolonged grief at the time.

I thought I was coping. I was working hard, staying productive, holding things together. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived it.

But I didn’t need more time. I needed understanding and self-compassion.

Why do some of us struggle to adapt to losing a parent?

Research suggests that those of us who struggle to adapt after a loss aren’t weaker or less resilient. Our grief tends to touch more fundamental parts of life.

This often happens when the person who died was tied to identity, meaning, or emotional safety. I always felt more connected to my Dad than the rest of my immediate family, so his loss made those family dynamics shift massively. I’m still figuring out what that looks like.

When someone keeps going, takes on responsibility, and stays “functional” rather than being supported, grief can get ‘stuck’.

And when avoidance looks like staying busy or useful or earlier losses or adversity sit quietly in the background, we don’t process the underlying issues or feelings. There’s little space to make sense of what the loss means for who you are now or in the future.

In these situations, grief doesn’t integrate on its own. Not because time failed but because adaptation needs deeper understanding, support, and space, not just endurance.

For many people, grief integrates.

For others, it doesn’t and needs more care and exploration.

Key takeaways

If your grief softened with time, that’s a common and healthy outcome.

If it didn’t, that doesn’t mean you’re broken, weak, or failing at grief. It means time alone wasn’t enough to help your system adapt to what fundamentally changed.

What helps isn't forcing yourself back to normal or comparing your path to other people's. It's understanding how grief works, reducing self-blame, and creating the conditions where the loss can integrate into your life rather than dominate it.

You don't need to avoid the hurt anymore. You can learn to carry it without it carrying you. And you don't have to figure it out alone.

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P.S. If this post resonated, I’m pleased to launch my new self-paced and on-demand online workshop, Navigating Grief With Compassion, to help you find steadiness with your grief without feeling rushed, judged or pressured to '“move on”. Enrol here.

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I didn't want to cry at Dad's funeral.

I needed to be stoic. To hold everything in because crying in public felt impossible.

My Mum wailed at the cemetery, and I gripped my best pal Shaheena tighter to steady myself.

But still, just quiet sobs I tried to swallow down.

And I kept doing this for years.

The emotions would spike - at my office desk, in the supermarket when I saw the instant noodles he loved - and I'd stuff them deep down. Style out the water leaking from my eyes.

Nothing to see here.

Until one evening when I finally let myself go on the train home from London Bridge.

I sobbed uncontrollably. Tears streaming, snotty nose, gulping breaths. Ugly crying.

And what happened?

Nothing.

No judging stares. No horrified looks. Everyone lost in their own thoughts or planning what they wanted for dinner.

That's when I realised I was making my grief harder than it needed to be.

All because of a fake fear that didn't exist.

We absorb grief rules we never agreed to

There are messages about death and grieving we absorb without realising.

That there's a “right” timeline for bereavement, a “right” way to grieve, a point when you need to be back to “normal”.

There isn't.

And these unconscious or conscious messages seep in, adding pressure to how you cope. Like a harsh Victorian aunt who beats you over the head with:

• “People are going to look at you.”

• “Why are you still upset about this?”

• “Why are you crying when you weren't even that close.“

• “You knew it was coming so why are you so affected?“

You're punished for feeling bad and having a heart.

Add to that cultural norms that being stoic is “strong”, and we've got a recipe for numbing out or looking for distraction.

But does suppressing emotions ultimately help?

For me, it was a very clear no.

Because the intensity came back 10x worse that made it hard to function.

And on the train home, sobbing freely at last, I learnt something: that emotions and feelings don't adjust to external “logic” or norms.

They show up to relay information about what's going on, both inside and how we exist in our environment.

They offer data we can choose to listen to or ignore.

And from my personal and professional experience, the more we suppress our emotions, the more they try to grab our attention.

What to do when grief hits mid-day, mid-sentence, mid-life

One of the hardest things about grief is that it doesn’t always arrive politely.

Nope, that would be way too convenient.

It shows up mid-day. Mid-sentence. Mid-life.

When you're about to join a call or your pal shares happy news which makes you remember your loss.

In those moments, trying to “figure out“ what you’re feeling makes things harder.

And sometimes the work isn’t about sense-making just yet. Sometimes it’s simply staying with what’s there without being overwhelmed or shutting down.

That memory. That wave of missing or yearning. That body-level jolt that knocks the air out of you before your brain catches up.

When this happened to me I'd get stuck trying to do one of two things. Shut it down and push through, or get pulled into analysing what it “means” and into thinking-loop purgatory.

Neither helped.

But I learnt to stay with the spike without amplifying it. To feel what I felt and keep going anyway.

I created the STEER Framework by bringing together grief research, neuroscience, acceptance and commitment psychology, and creative practice into something you can actually use in the moment:

S: Stabilise the moment

Start with the body, not the story.

When a spike or wave hits, your system’s already braced. Before you're able to think or understand, you need some physical steadiness.

On that train journey, I noticed my toes in my shoes and my feet on the floor. A small grounding action.

For you, it might be slowing your out-breath slightly or softening your gaze to narrow visual input.

You’re not trying to relax. You're creating just enough safety to stay present.

T: Touch the sensation

Turn your attention to what you can feel, not what it means.

Grief shows up as sensation first. Some body tightness, a heaviness, a buzzing or restlessness, a racing heart.

On the train, I noticed my chest tighten and it was harder to breathe. I was gulping for air as I sobbed.

I sat with it, observed it. Where it was in my body. How long it lingered or shifted.

No interpretation. Just noticing.

The sensation tends to settle when it’s noticed. Stories and judgement tend to intensify.

E: Externalise the energy

Emotions become overwhelming when they stay trapped inside.

Externalising means giving the feeling somewhere to land outside your head, even briefly.

For me on that train, it was letting the tears fall down my cheeks. Breathing out a little louder.

You might write one honest sentence, doodle lines or shapes, or make small, repetitive movements.

Maybe you'll say something out loud when you’re alone (or under your breath if you're not).

This isn’t about expression or insight just yet. It’s to reduce the internal load so your system isn’t carrying everything at once.

E: Evaluate capacity

Tap into what you have the body budget for.

This is the step most people skip.

Instead of asking “why am I feeling this”, or distracting yourself, ask: “what do I have capacity for right now?”

On that train ride, I had zero space to hide. I felt exposed but couldn't pretend it wasn't happening.

So I didn't.

In other situations, it might look like continuing gently, slowing the pace, taking a short pause, asking for support, or stopping for today without judging yourself.

Grief moves in spikes or waves, so respecting your capacity helps stay present and engaged.

You don't force yourself beyond your limits.

R: Re-orient yourself

Bring helpful direction back in.

You don’t get to choose when grief shows up. But you do get to choose how you steer when it hits.

After crying, sobbing on that train, I knew something shifted. I asked myself: “what matters next?”

I knew I had to look after myself differently.

Walk home safely. Eat a nourishing dinner. Sit with my cats and reflect.

Small but real steps.

Ask yourself: “What's the smallest step I can take that feels true to me right now?”

This is how you feel what you feel and keep driving anyway.

Not by pushing emotion away. Not by letting it take over. Not by beating yourself up for being human.

But by letting it ride alongside you as you feel the spike, surf the wave, and move forward as best you can.

An invitation

That evening train journey taught me more than I realised at the time.

Grief doesn't need permission. But I could let the grief spike, sit with it, and keep moving ahead.

If you're ready to practice staying present with what shows up: the grief, the fear, the waves, the noise, I’m hosting a small, in-person creative workshop next Saturday, 17th January, between 2 - 4pm, at BLEUR GALLERY & STUDIOS in Central London.

It's called: I Keep Driving Anyway.

We’ll explore this idea through a bus metaphor using guided mark-making and sensory creative practice.

No art skills needed. No pressure to share. Just space to practice and stay with what’s present.

I’d love to see you there. Select tickets here.

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My Mum said she felt dead. The cat had died a few weeks ago. She missed Dad as his 4th deathiversary had just passed. She wanted to come stay with me.

I felt guilty about my response. ‘Here we go again.’ I thought and hesitated about inviting her round.

She’s the only person who drains me like this. I’m not proud of it. I feel impatient, mean, like a terrible person. But it hasn’t come from nowhere.

Here’s what they don’t tell you about losing a parent: the one that remains doesn’t automatically become easier to deal with. Sometimes the grief makes everything harder.

And we’re supposed to feel grateful they’re still here, so we put up with things we wouldn’t otherwise. ‘At least I still have a Mum’ becomes the bar.

A few months ago, when I mentioned to a friend how hard I still found dealing with her, they said ‘She’s your mother. You should be grateful.’

I stuttered, grasping for words to justify my feelings. I couldn’t find them.

Not only do we feel bad from the inside about wanting space, but we also know there’s pressure from the outside if we voice it.

But when do we ever hold back on supporting people we love when it’s not complicated?

This is how the Gratitude Trap kicks in. You accept behaviour you wouldn’t tolerate from others, even though you feel the cost.

Be thankful, not ‘demanding,’ right? So, despite my reservations, I agreed to have Mum around.

When you’re parentified young, it becomes a job you never wanted

I was parentified early, after her spinal accident when I was 5 or 6, that became her defining victim story.

Life before, and life after. I’ve heard it countless times as she recounted how hard things were, along with her constant health issues, to anyone who’d listen.

For much of my life, as she was in and out of hospitals, I feared she’d die.

I never thought Dad would go first. Or that our relationship would degrade so much I wouldn’t want to talk to her.

I didn’t realise how much my Dad was the glue in our family. Once he’d gone, and I fell into a deep grief, I had nothing left for Mum.

Not long after he died, she had a knee replacement. I travelled for hours to take her to hospital and back home, but it exhausted me. And she needed physical support, probate admin support, emotional support.

Once again, I was the parent when I needed parenting. Something in me switched off that day. Four years later, it still hasn’t come back on.

We’ve not always had the easiest relationship.

And she wasn’t supportive when I needed her most; when I told her something difficult about our family that I’d never shared before.

It was an epic fail really. And I’m still deeply sad and disappointed about it. Which became apparent when she touched on it again during her stay.

Another example of how differently we see the world. And why I feel the need for boundaries, even though part of me wishes we were like those mums and daughters who go for afternoon tea and spa weekends.

I just wish she accepted me for me. She says she’s proud, then picks at things I need to change. Expects me to ditch my values and need for safety because it makes life harder for her.

It was confusing growing up with such mixed messages. And it’s still confusing now.

How do you assert boundaries without coming across like an epic bitch?

Maybe you can’t. Or you don’t have to.

I remember a pivotal moment with one of my therapists a few years back. Talking about Mum and my challenges. She said, ‘sometimes you have to accept your Mum isn’t going to be the Mum you want.’

That floored me. Until then I’d never thought the issue was with my Mum. It was always about why I couldn’t cope better. Be better.

I didn’t realise how every relationship, even those with our parents need to go both ways. We can feel compassion for those who suffered, struggled, or were unwell.

But we can also feel sad that we didn’t get the parent we needed.

Mum knows this at some level. She’s said as much in the past. But it still hurts when you must parent your parent and need space to breathe.

I grieved then for the mum I wanted but didn’t have. She’s not all bad. I know that. It doesn’t hurt any less though.

Tentative steps towards reconnection can pay off

Mum came over at the end of that week for a few nights. We’d catch up, cook, and see how things flowed.

The day I picked her up was stormy as heck. Windy. Rainy. That kind of weather where you need an umbrella as sheets of water tumble from the sky, but the wind makes them barely usable. And it was cold.

By the time we got home, we felt battered. Sopping wet and body pain flaring up.

She got settled and I eased in. But I noticed she wasn’t herself. She was low. Depression is worse but also less focused. A decline over the years.

Mum hasn’t been the most focused person. But age is kicking in.

We’ve never had a lot in common. I always wished we did so we’d have more to talk about or do.

But we always ended up arguing because we’re so different. And she always had an opinion.

She treated Dad like that. Maybe that’s why we bonded because we were similar and just clicked. It was easy.

We found a common thread - Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em, a silly 1970s show we loved when I was a kid. For twenty minutes, laughing at Frank Spencer’s mishaps, I remembered what it felt like to just enjoy her company.

We burned through the episodes, chuckling away. It was nice.

She cooked and I realised how much I missed Mum’s food. She’s an excellent cook and I wish I’d learnt more from her. I really should now.

But I felt frustrated at other times. The same question repeatedly. Talking over something I was listening to. Still questioning my life choices.

At nearly 50 years old, it’s weird how quickly we slip back into the exasperated 8-year-old kid when with our parents.

I was argumentative. We clashed. I just craved peace and wished I could suck it up and be kind. But I couldn’t do it the way I wanted.

She wanted to see Dad’s grave. It’s close to where I live but I’m the only one who’s been since he was buried. She felt ready to go and I was happy to take her.

The traffic was terrible, but it was a clear, sunny day. Gorgeous really. I love the view from his grave on days like this.

We drove in and stepped out next to his plot. She was nervous, commenting on the cemetery hall, the tree nearby. Things that weren’t new, but that she hadn’t noticed on that freezing December morning when we buried him.

With each answer, I realised how little she remembered from that day. My tone softened. I know this place. She doesn’t. I visit regularly. She hasn’t been here once in four years.

I felt compassion at last. Real compassion, not obligation, and my heart broke for her. The weight of her loss. The fear of life without someone she’d spent 50 years with.

For a moment, the resentment lifted, and I just saw a scared, grieving woman at her husband’s grave.

She wants to spend more time with me. For me to visit her more. But I feel conflicted.

Accepting ‘good enough’ instead of perfect

I said this to her last year, and it upset her: ‘I don’t trust you.’ She didn’t quite get it and pushed back. Oh well.

But I still feel it. I don’t trust her. Not with my self-esteem or sense of self. Or feeling that unconditional love that I had with Dad. It always feels conditional with Mum.

So, when she calls, guilting me about not calling and her having to make the effort, it still hasn’t sunk in. Her default mode is to be the victim. Even if she hurt others, however unintentionally, her pain and needs still trump ours.

Confusingly, she’s also loving, caring, and nurturing in pockets, but in other times, grasping, critical, demanding.

What does a sustainable relationship look like now?

I’m working out what boundaries even look like here, when there’s so much emotional and cognitive conflict bouncing around. Desire to reconnect and minimise regret.

Not cutting her out, as I don’t want that and she’s getting closer to 80. But also, not saying yes to everything out of guilt or obligation.

And right now, it’s about trying to figure out how to spend time with her, and when, without feeling forced.

Because years of disappointment and guilt are clouding that desire. And it’s not nice to tell someone you don’t feel great spending time with them, when they want to be with you.

I’ve done it, maybe not in the calmest way, but that also didn’t go down well. It’s confusing when someone simultaneously holds so much power over you but also seems helpless somehow.

Relationships are hard. But boundaries aren’t rejection, even though people might try to convince you they are.

They’re about trying to find a way to have a relationship that doesn’t drain you completely or make you eternally resentful.

It’s normal for family dynamics to change after loss. We’re forever changed and feel the full force of that person being gone.

Losing one parent can make the relationship with the surviving parent harder, not easier. We wish it didn’t but life’s not fair.

Accepting it might never be ideal, but we can still choose how we respond.

It’s OK to need boundaries with your surviving parent, even if they’re grieving too. Especially if you’re used to over-giving and self-sacrificing for others.

The Gratitude Trap is real. The thought creeps in… “at least I still have a parent”...but it doesn’t mean you absorb everything.

You can love someone and still protect yourself, as these aren’t mutually exclusive. You can want some connection without constant dedication.

And it’s OK to find this frigging hard to work out. None of it feels great with a TV movie ending and zero crappy consequences.

Final thoughts and questions for you

What’s one thing in your relationship with your surviving parent (or a family member) that you’d want to improve?

Not fix completely, just improve.

What would that look like for you? How might you start working on it, even if you don’t have all the answers yet?

I’m working on mine too. Navigating the mess of loving someone whilst needing boundaries, wanting protection whilst protecting yourself.

You’re not alone.

We’re figuring this out together.

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P.S. How are you working out healthier relationship boundaries? What’s the hardest part for you?

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My pottery teacher in Greece stared at the conch shell piece I’d just made.

‘I can tell you’re used to working with clay,’ she said. ‘You know exactly where the edges are and how far you can take it.’

I hadn’t made a pinch pot since school. Hadn’t hand built something this tricky for over 10 years.

But my hands remembered what seven years away couldn’t erase.

As a third-generation potter, even when I walked away, the clay didn’t forget me.

And that’s what 2025 was. The year I came back to the pottery wheel and breathed a sigh of relief.

My grandfather studied ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent in the 1950s, then brought those skills back to the ceramics factory he ran in Bangladesh. Dad followed him into the business as ceramics manager.

But by the time I came along, he’d walked away from it. Restaurant and retail work paid the bills, but I could see the regret in his face when we talked about it.

I started pottery in my late 20s partly because I knew he’d like one of us to keep the tradition going. I’m the only one in the family still doing it.

I tried to get him back into it once. He refused. ‘Part of a past life,’ he said.

Like so many of his generation, once they walked away from something, they never went back.

I’m determined not to do that.

So returning to clay after years away was significant on many levels.

Reconnection to myself, my dad, my creative grief processing, and rebuilding something new for the future.

What kept me away from clay and creative recovery?

Getting back to pottery wasn’t simple.

Pain and fatigue have been constant companions for as long as I can remember. Nerve damage, a steroid injection that went wrong, joint conditions that make physical work brutal, and emotional tension often unbearable.

I’ve spent years expecting my body to keep up with everyone else. Getting frustrated when it couldn’t. Pushing too hard then crashing even harder over and over.

I know it doesn’t make sense but do it anyway.

At the start of 2025, after a convoluted journey to a specialist consultant, I left with a diagnosis: hypermobile EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome).

It clicked everything into place. The hitting a wall suddenly after feeling OK. Hours of stiffness after any physical work or just sitting on the sofa.

The foot pain that appears for no reason and lasts for days. Stomach issues that wreck the end of a lovely meal. Decades of random symptoms suddenly made sense.

But after the initial aha, I had weeks of grief and conflicting emotions.

Sadness at how I didn’t know and wasn’t self-compassionate with the body I had. Relief that it wasn’t all ‘in my head’ and just being unable to cope with work and life stress.

Realisation of an understudied and varying condition that makes it hard to get answers to every question.

Recognition that I now needed to listen to my body more keenly and work with its wisdom, not against it.

And after days of pain every time I’d tried to return to the wheel previously, I was deflated. I’d tried in February, but it was too much.

Grief again that I might never return to a hobby with such deep familial roots and endless possibilities.

But if 2025 taught me anything, it’s adaptation. Not taking no as the first answer. Replying with ‘how about this, instead?’

In June, I went to the Aberystwyth International Ceramics Art Festival with my pottery buddies. We’ve done this for years. Watching others work with clay, hearing them talk about their practice and experimenting with new techniques. Something lit up in me.

I had all this creative energy and nowhere to put it.

ChatGPT helped me find Sophie’s studio nearby. I visited the next day and signed up for summer classes that week.

To try again. See how my body reacted. Ease back in.

I felt a sense of pride. Dad would be happy I’d committed to getting back to it.

After he died 4 years ago, I’d lost the person I learned from. The one who could pick up a piece and know instantly what to improve or what had gone wrong.

God, I miss his subtle but kind criticism. It was the only time it came out from him, but I so respected it.

Creativity is a balm to a broken soul

But as often happens in life, just as one thing starts working, another falls apart.

Weeks after joining the studio, my entire team was made redundant. Including me.

I went from back-to-back meetings and legal contract reviews to persistent silence in my kitchen.

There’s something about redundancy, whether you know it’s coming or not, that knocks the wind out of your lungs.

It’s a holistic rejection.

Your role identity. Your sense of usefulness. Your dedication to being part of something bigger. Your professional values. Your self-esteem as a leader. Your sense of being a team protector.

You.

Even though I was relieved on one hand, as frankly, I was miserable and exhausted, I felt like a failure. That I’d let my team down. That I wasn’t good enough, either technically or at the office politics game.

And when you’re a sensitive over-giver, you feel rejected even from things you didn’t want to be part of, but accepted for bills to pay, for the chance to implement something new, or to achieve something challenging.

Once I knew the team were OK, I made a decision.

Stop. Step back. Be the total opposite of the last three years.

Lean into creativity. Lean into slowing down. Lean into building something different.

When life foundations collapse out of your control, you’ve got no choice but to sit in the rubble for a while and work out how to rebuild.

So I looked at the rubble of my life choices, with my aching body and tired soul, and realised the future had to be different.

To honour my dad and my needs, I dove back into clay.

With space to breathe and a different perspective, my body held up better during the summer classes. Sure, I still ached for days after sitting at the wheel on a Saturday morning.

But it was less intense, and boy, was it worth it.

Just being with the creative process. Reconnecting to my clay conversations with dad, missing him terribly but knowing he’d be happy I’d found my way back.

Realising that avoiding hard feelings doesn’t make the pain go away. It just stores it for later. And getting distracted by what I thought mattered but ultimately didn’t.

A solid lesson learned and felt.

Bruised, aching, confused, and fed up. Yes.

But also quiet, patient, and leaning into my intuition more. Better.

And as I eased back into my creative groove, loss returned to my life in a way I wasn’t expecting.

Our beloved cat Poppy, a white rescue medium haired moggy we’d had for years, quickly became sick and was diagnosed with heart failure.

I couldn’t believe it. Another loss tied to dad, as we’d gotten her from the RSPCA to give my parents company and a buddy for their wild black cat, Billie.

Poppy used to greet my dad in the middle of the night when he got back from midnight prayers. A watcher for the family. And I took her on some years ago when mum went overseas for a few months.

Quiet, assured, calm and curious. She was a constant until her body failed.

I found the sudden shift in her health jarring. And again, it felt like life was punishing me for finding some positive traction. Like when dad died during COVID after feeling like our family had managed it as well as we could have.

A quick, sharp reality slap to the face.

Poppy’s health declined fast, poor thing. Mum came to see her when she was thin and zonked out on meds. Geez, the fear and anxiety around anticipatory grief is a different beast altogether.

Like an alarm waiting to go off but you have no idea when it has been set for.

Constantly on alert, waiting to kick into action to handle something awful.

She fought hard on the meds, seemed to settle, but by the end of November, her demise was swift when that alarm rang.

I was with her at the end. Watched her slip away and her heart beat one last time. In the same room at the vet’s hospital where I’d said goodbye to my black cat Leela a couple of years ago.

A few days before my dad’s fourth deathiversary, compounding the sadness and grief that was already percolating and sitting heavy in the air.

My body reacted in a similar way. Guilty thoughts that I hadn’t done enough, soon enough. Physical shutdown wanting to pass out at every opportunity.

The pain and sadness washed over me like a cold shroud from a wintry painting.

Returning to the studio in the weeks that followed helped me do something with the pain. Channel it into something practical and physical.

That’s what creativity gives us. An outlet for the difficult stuff that sits heavy in the body and soul.

Deconstruction allows us to build something new

When you’ve been splattered by life, it’s hard to see where your skills and talents actually sit.

But this year, I had the right conversations at the right time.

Or maybe I’d finally had enough quiet to listen. Definitely this.

I’d felt off in my business for a while. I was coaching people through burnout, something I’d lived through many times over the years.

But after dad died, grief shaped everything. My sleep. My body. How I showed up in the world.

I found it harder to coach burnout without talking about loss. I’ve explored research on how loss types influence burnout patterns. They’re inseparable.

And I couldn’t ignore what had shaped my life for the past four years anymore.

Those conversations helped me realise I wanted to, needed to, lean into grief awareness and moving forward after loss.

To build self-compassion in our darkest times. To use creative coaching to unblock our pain.

I pivoted this Substack and lost people along the way. But I’ve connected with others in ways I never could have imagined.

I’m building my grief and resilience coaching business differently now aligned with my revived values, my energy, the legacy I want to build.

Not chasing viral content when I want to be quiet in the studio. Not convincing people they need to change their entire worldview.

Just meeting people where they are. Resonating where it makes sense.

So even though this year has been littered with endings, it’s been sprinkled with new beginnings.

Returning to travel after being scared to leave home.

Connecting to amazing, interesting, and loving people.

Exploring creative collaborations with local art galleries.

In September, I went to Greece for a ceramics workshop. Pinch pots I’d never made before. Techniques I’d never tried.

But my hands remembered. The intuition built over years with clay was still there.

Phew.

Another unexpected joy of deconstruction and doing something new while trusting what I already knew.

I’m still figuring out my next ceramics project. But I’m keen to cross over clay creativity with my grief work somehow.

A project is brewing. Quietly solidifying.

‘Grief vases’ popped into my head yesterday. Not in a macabre way, no. Instead, exploring how to express grief and loss in ways we don’t expect.

In everyday items we use without thinking. A cup. A mug. A plate. A dish. A vase full of dying flowers.

And looking back at an up and down year, I’ve survived what could have crushed me. But it didn’t.

Instead, it gave me time to breathe and accept what a fallible yet resilient human I am.

Final thoughts

I’m back at the wheel now. Hands in clay. Experimenting with glaze. Dad would be proud.

And time away from what we love doesn’t mean we can’t return.

Just like clay, I’ve been malleable, delicate, flexible but hardened through fire.

And it’s not always the final form but evolves in the space it’s placed within.

Once we’re long gone, what we’ve created persists and that’s truly a beautiful, healing thing.

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P.S. Thanks for being here. I appreciate it more than you’ll realise.

What are you thinking about returning to in 2026? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have issues with sleep. Usually it’s insomnia, but after dad’s death, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Turns out hypersomnia or oversleep isn’t studied as much as lack of sleep in the grief space. Most people struggle with insomnia during bereavement so focus sits there.

And when I’ve coached people with sleep issues, the solution often begins hours before we even get into bed.

Sure sleep hygiene matters, the habits, environment, routines and so on.

But through my years of sleep disruption, I discovered something deeper that most people don't talk about: the connection between grief and safety.

Grief-related sleep increases our need for safety

How we think about sleep has a big influence on how easily it happens.

And during a session with sleep expert Dr. Nerina Ramlakhan, when I was an inpatient at The Priory some years back, I realised how important feeling safe is to getting quality sleep.

Deep grief after loss feels like a physical and mental assault. To our emotions, our body, our sense of who we are.

It changes how we perceive the world at a fundamental level.

Doesn’t sound very safe, does it?

So no wonder we struggle with sleep, either staying asleep, or staying awake when we’re overwhelmed.

My thoughts in deep grief ranged from thinking I might die soon, or how delicate life actually is.

I became scared of life in a way I hadn't expected.

Suddenly, the background hum was a feeling of dread and not knowing what the future would bring.

Of course our ancestors would need to feel safe enough to nap and rest when living in more dangerous environments.

But modern threats tend to come from within, and grief makes us feel fundamentally unsafe in many ways.

Those anxious thoughts, and overthinking loops. I remember being distracted by the ways I'd “let dad down” and didn't make the most of our time together.

That time I'd missed his calls when he came to have lunch near the office. How I took his thoughtful gifts for granted and had a go at him for spending money on me.

Now just thoughts and ideas with no resolution or off switch.

So even though we might be physically safe in our beds, our minds and bodies still register threats after a loss because the world has shifted beyond recognition.

I often turn emotional confusion inwards and blame myself for how I respond.

But self-blame doesn’t help, and ramps up the stress and threats we feel.

Instead, self-compassion, reducing pressure and sleep expectation weirdly improves it over time.

So instead of beating yourself up for having disrupted sleep, get curious instead.

Explore your relationship to sleep, not the sleep

Art and creativity have always helped me make sense of the world. Or helped me express what I couldn't say in words.

And after losing dad, creativity brought me back to life after I'd descended into a dark, lonely pit of grief.

Training as an art-based coach deepened my appreciation for how powerful art and mark-making are in shifting our emotions and world views.

I love how acceptance-based approaches to sleep focus less on forcing rest, and more on changing our relationship with the night.

So when we drop pressure on ourselves and soften the struggle and frustration, sleep often follows.

But that isn’t the actual goal. The goal is entering the night with less fear and more care.

A gentle creative practice for difficult nights

So how do you actually explore that relationship?

For me, art and creativity help, not because I'm trying to 'fix' my sleep, but because it's a way to be with the difficulty differently.

Especially when words don't come.

It’s a way to soften your relationship with the night, for less pressure, less struggle, and a little more room to rest, even if sleep doesn’t come.

Here's how.

And:

Then:

Before you start (2–3 minutes)

• Find a quiet spot where you won’t be interrupted.

• You don’t need to do this at bedtime, earlier in the evening is often better.

• Grab a piece of paper and a pen, pencil, or anything you like to draw with. You don't need fancy cartridge paper. A biro and A4 pad is enough if that's all you have.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this.

You’re not aiming for insight, beauty, a work of art or improvement.

Just expression and noticing.

Step 1: Draw your relationship with sleep

Close your eyes and breathe deeply for a few breaths.

Reflect on your relationship to sleep. Allow an image or sensations to appear.

Open your eyes, and on the page, draw or symbolise your relationship with sleep right now.

Not sleep itself, but what it’s like when you reflect on your connection to sleep.

It might show up as:

• an object

• a figure

• a scene

• something abstract

Let it be rough. Stick figures or random shapes are welcome.

Don't self-censor, just express.

If you can't see a mental image, focus on what you feel in your body and how to represent that as colours, shapes, textures, marks etc.

Step 2: Add the rules and pressures

Around the image, pause, and write any thoughts or rules that tend to appear at night.

For example, things like:

• “I must sleep.”

• “Tomorrow will be ruined.”

• “I should be over this by now.”

• “If I don’t sleep, I won’t cope.”

• “I'm so exhausted, I can't function without it.“

Try not to argue with these or try to change them.

Just let them be seen on the page instead of bouncing around in your head in loops.

Step 3: Shift from sleep to rest

Now gently ask yourself:

• If sleep didn’t come tonight, what might rest still look like?

Rest doesn’t have to mean total unconsciousness either.

It might look like:

• softness

• dimming

• permission

• stillness

• lowering effort

• drifting

Add something to the image that represents rest without trying or forcing.

Step 4: Choose how you want to be with yourself

One final question that leans into self- compassion:

• On hard nights, what kind of person do I want to be with myself?

Write one or two words somewhere on the page.

It could be:

• kind

• patient

• gentle

• steady

• non-judging

No need to act on it.

Just name it. Externalise it.

When you’re done

Take a moment to look at the page.

You don’t need to interpret it or make meaning from it right now, but insights might come over time.

The act of putting this down on paper is enough.

You've represented what might be a challenging experience, to get some distance from it.

Now this practice won’t guarantee sleep. But by reducing pressure and struggle, it can make nights feel less demanding, and not a personal failure.

Those tired-and-wired nights will still creep in here and there. But being gentler takes the edge off when things are already hard. It offers a different focus.

And that matters more than we think.

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P.S. What words, feelings or images come up for you when you reflect on your relationship to sleep? Share in the comments or reply to me directly.

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Many people can’t sleep after losing a parent, but I couldn’t stay awake.

This was weird to me as I’ve had insomnia for most of my life. Either struggling to get to sleep or stay asleep.

But after dad died, and after other losses I’ve had, I can’t seem to stay awake. Day or night.

Like wading through treacle, I couldn’t summon enough energy to get out of first gear for months.

My body heavy and my thoughts slow and clunky. My entire being dragged downward into the sofa or mattress.

Grief wasn’t keeping me awake but pulling me under.

Speaking to others who’d recently lost a parent, I realised they also struggled to sleep.

Racing thoughts. Panic. Worry. Loops of “what ifs” or “if onlys” cycled minute after minute.

And looking at the research, sleep disruption is one of the most common grief symptoms.

However, the research skews towards the insomnia, restless version.

There’s not much on hypersomnia, or oversleep, so I’ve done more digging to work out what’s going on.

Here’s how these sleep disruption patterns show up.

Sleep disruption after loss doesn’t follow one path

There isn’t just one way grief shows up in your sleep.

Some of you might follow a resilient path where sleep is disrupted for a bit and then settles into a normal rhythm again. It’s actually the most common pattern.

Others follow a recovery path, where the nights are rough at first, but gradually improves over months or even years.

And then there are some of you who might have a chronic sleep disruption path, where sleep issues linger for a long time after the acute loss has happened.

This is why one simple “fix” doesn’t work for everyone.

And more recent research shows that sleep disruption doesn’t just reflect grief. It can shape it, increasing both the intensity and how long it lasts.

The “restless, wired” version of sleep in grief (insomnia)

Losing a parent is one of the most stressful life experiences you’ll have.

When it happens, you might find yourself caught in a frustrating loop of deep exhaustion alongside an inability to fall or stay asleep.

My neighbour fell into this camp after she lost her dad at Christmas.

She was in a hyper-aroused state where her nervous system couldn’t stand down or rest.

Maybe it’s the shock of the loss, what was going on beforehand, or even personality traits. Or all these influences how long and intensely you stay in alert state.

Thinking habits like ruminating (so many “what ifs”), loss processing, and desperately trying to make sense of it becomes a problem your brain struggles to solve.

And yet, it keeps trying.

It bounces around trying to find logic in a confusing process. It tries to update maps of someone who was there but is now gone.

If you’ve got this sleeping pattern, you might notice:

• Difficulty falling asleep despite intense exhaustion

• Middle of the night waking up with racing thoughts

• Early morning waking up but unable to get back to sleep

• Rumination thinking loops about the loss and related changes, maybe about you, them, or something else

If you’re struggling with persistent grief, this intense stress response system gets stuck in the “on” position.

Hypervigilance and that “always alert” state, helps you scan for threats to keep you alive. It’s a key survival mechanism of the stress response.

But when you’re still scanning for the person who should be there but can’t find them, your mind and body take a hit.

The connection to your important people works against your ability to rest and recover from intense stress.

And it’s not the only way our sleep gets messed up.

The heavy, “walking-zombie” version of sleep in grief (hypersomnia)

What I discovered nosing around the research is how little there is about this other sleep disruption pattern.

The one I had with overwhelming fatigue and an increased sleep need that never felt satisfied.

I realised it wasn’t laziness or depression (though it might accompany depression if you have both).

And boy did I keep Googling it when I couldn’t focus and got bored of anything outside my weird thoughts.

But just because it’s a lesser-studied physiological response, it doesn’t mean it’s not normal.

If you’ve got this sleeping pattern, you might notice:

• Difficulty staying awake and a constant pull towards sleep

• Feeling exhausted even after long sleep or deep rest

• Never feeling fully alert, even during the day

• Sudden drops in energy meaning you need to lie down or nap right now

There might be a few things going on if you’ve got this exhausted sleep pattern.

From a biological perspective, grief and bereavement is physically expensive.

There’s a huge cognitive and metabolic load when you’re paying out these grief taxes from an overwhelmed body budget.

Making sense of loss and continuing your everyday activities on top of this needs a lot of resources.

And your brain gobbles up any energy it can find to essentially restructure your new world reality after loss.

Other studies have found grief triggers body-wide inflammation and stress responses that present as deep fatigue.

If you’ve had “bereavement fatigue”, you know it isn’t just feeling tired, like after you’ve had a few late nights partying with pals.

It’s a bone-deep exhaustion that covers your whole being as you navigate the physiological impact of loss.

Sleep disruption is a normal response to loss, but it does get better

Many of you will experience one end or the other of sleep disruption. It can happen within the same week or even the same day.

I found I couldn’t sleep for a few days, especially after we buried dad. I kept thinking he’d be cold in the ground, and that I should go check on him, just in case.

But suddenly I couldn’t stay awake for more than a few hours at a stretch.

I wanted to face plant where I was and pass out from exhaustion.

Neither sleep pattern suggests you’re handling grief “wrong.” There’s no right way to grieve, and our minds and bodies do unusual things under extreme stress, sadness, and panic.

Grief and loss are one of the most intense versions of these.

So, these disruption patterns aren’t character flaws or signs of weakness.

It’s your body’s attempt to stabilise itself after a fundamental earthquake has shaken the ground beneath you, your identity, and your daily life.

It’s no small feat to rebuild yourself and keep doing the everyday stuff on top of this.

Whether you’ve got insomnia or hypersomnia, realise it’s a normal, physiological response to loss.

And yeah, it’s bloody annoying and sometimes scary. But your body isn’t betraying you, so sprinkle in some self-compassion if you feel frustration or fear creeping in.

I had to relearn talking to myself as a kind friend would and lean away from self-criticism.

From my personal experience and working with coaching clients, beating up a stressed mind and body with more stress rarely works.

And from the longer-term studies, sleep quality does improve for most bereaved people.

It might take you longer, or maybe you need to put in specific effort, like cognitive behavioural-based practices, but sleep can and does get better.

Don’t lose hope if you aren’t there just yet.

A small and quiet sleep check-in to try tonight

Of course, check with your GP if things are troubling or confusing, but you don’t have to jump straight to sleep aids or fixes to get a sense of what’s going on.

Try this simple reflection as you prepare for bed to understand your sleep pattern right now:

• “Does this feel like my system is wired, or wiped out?”

Noticing is the first step. You don’t need to fix anything right now. Just work out which way your sleep pendulum is swinging tonight.

The goal here isn’t to force normal sleep patterns immediately after loss. That’s often impossible.

It’s to work with your body rather than against it. And recognise these disruptions are part of your grief process rather than a separate problem to solve.

Key takeaways

Grief affects sleep in opposite ways, from stubborn insomnia to overwhelming fatigue. Both patterns are normal physiological responses to loss.

But sleep disruption during grief isn’t a coping failure, but your body attempting to process enormous change. And most of you will recover with better sleep over time.

When you notice whether your system feels “wired” or “wiped out” on any given night, you have a useful data point.

You can choose to work with rather than against your body’s current needs.

It’s one of the most compassionate gifts to give yourself when everything seems bleak.

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P.S. What sleep pattern shows up for you after grief and loss? Let me know in the comments or hit reply.

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After dad died there wasn’t a sofa nearby that I didn’t want to pass out on.

My body wanted to go offline and recharge for a few months.

My neighbour lost her dad a month after mine on Christmas Day.

She was close to her dad too and it was a sudden death. I’d seen him the morning before dropping things off for Christmas dinner. Then he was gone.

My neighbour and I spoke quietly over the garden fence about our loss.

I told her about my extreme tiredness. But she was the opposite. She couldn’t get to sleep.

Wired and mind racing every night, unable to switch off.

But we were both off our food. Appetite vanished and uninterested in eating other than for basic fuel needs.

I didn’t realise how physical grief was until it hit me like a truck.

And it’s taken years to understand what shows up with each random grief wave.

Wait, grief is physical too?

Grief isn’t just an emotional tsunami that washes over you while you’re sobbing into a soggy tissue on the sofa.

It’s a full-body experience that makes you feel like you’ve been wiped off the board.

Even when you’re just standing still in your kitchen wondering why you went in there or realised you left the gas hob on for hours and grateful you didn’t burn the house down accidentally.

Oops, I did that a few times.

We’re pretty rubbish at discussing all the aspects of grief in our society until we are impacted by it.

Sure, everyone expects you to have a little cry, take some days off work, and then crawl back into life like you’ve just had a bad flu rather than experienced a soul-shattering loss.

My mates who’d gone through it knew the truth though. They told me to take my time and recognise how much it might impact various aspects of life.

But I don’t recall talking much about how grief actually feels in our physical bodies.

And not just the sleep disruption I’m sharing here.

But the gut issues, muscle aches and pains, constant colds and flus, skin problems or brain fog that descends when we’re trying to make sense of it all.

Your list might be different, but it’s rarely ever just emotional.

It’s confusing as heck.

The exhaustion no amount of sleep can fix

The physical manifestations of grief are totally bewildering.

One minute you’re kinda fine (for someone grieving), and the next minute your body is staging its own mutiny.

During COVID when dad died, most of us were still cooped up at home.

I could mooch about the house with my limited energy and log onto work during office hours through my laptop.

Once I left work and my coaching contract ended, I had no incentive to leave the house or interact with the world.

I felt as though I’d run a marathon, climbed a mountain, and moved house all in one day.

Except all I’d done was sit on the sofa and stare at the TV and wall for hours.

I’d get the urge to nap all the time and got into a daily sofa pass-out habit.

But that bone-deep fatigue isn’t laziness or depression (though it can sit alongside depression).

And I remember Googling depression symptoms because it felt like when I’d had depression in my 20s and 30s.

Heavy body, heart and no interest in going on.

But nope, it’s your body processing grief in the only way it knows how.

If grief is learning how life works for you now, your nervous system is working overtime trying to make sense of it all.

Working out how to survive and pay attention to the boring probate tasks you’re avoiding.

In my zombie-like state, I couldn’t focus, was irritable with my family, and wanted to crawl into a cave and hibernate.

So, grief’s intense learning process uses loads of energy to recalibrate to a world that suddenly makes no sense.

No wonder you need a nap after making a bloody cup of tea.

It’s basic body budget maths.

Permission to rest because your body needs it

I didn’t know grief meant a full-body shutdown.

We expect tears, maybe, sadness and longing, but not this exhaustion that makes existing feel like an endurance sport.

Whatever goes on for you, whether you can’t stay awake or can’t get to sleep, your body is trying to process something impossible.

This is totally normal. And it’s how bereavement does its work.

It won’t fix itself overnight. It might take months or longer.

But the key point here is to listen to what your body needs, even if that’s just staring at the wall for three hours.

Rest isn’t weakness.

It’s how you survive this difficult process and come out the other side.

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P.S. I'm creating a 60-minute(ish) on-demand workshop to help you Navigate Grief With Compassion. Hit reply or comment below if you want to be one of the beta users to help me build and review it.

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Poppy, my 16-year-old rescue cat, died quickly last Sunday, just before midnight. It broke me as she slipped away, laying between me and the vet.

Finally at peace.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the guilt and self-blame thoughts and feelings. If only I’d booked her heart scan a few months earlier or pushed back on her dental treatment. Her heart wouldn’t be under so much strain.

Bob is the only cat in the house again. Gazing longingly at the hallway waiting for his buddy/nemesis to pad into the kitchen slowly as he plots to steal her tuna when we aren’t looking.

Mixed into this is a small relief that she’s no longer suffering the twice daily meds, tiredness, and impact on her kidneys.

The sight of her fighting to stand right till the end, even though her back legs were paralysed, is burned into my mind’s eye.

But there’s nothing more I can do. And she’s taught me much over the past few months about how grief seeps into every part of life when you don’t realise.

It was also dad’s 4th deathiversary on Thursday, and new grief ignites old grief like nothing else.

I recall the times Poppy and dad mooch about the house, or how she’d wake up when his car pulls into the driveway to greet him on the pavement.

The pangs of guilt and self-blame creep in, as they quietly do, and I wish they were both still here.

Whilst Bob snoozes and snores quietly behind me, I reflect on the practices I’ve used this week to explore these familiar guilty distractions.

I re-listened to Neuroscientist and Psychologist Mary Frances O’Connor’s excellent book, The Grieving Brain (The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss), and it inspired today’s healing practice.

One section in particular hit me differently whilst in the ceramics studio, trying to turn over-damp pots on the wheel.

I pause next to my storage shelves and decide to use her “accepting” approach to manage the guilt monster when it inevitably arrives.

What’s driving the guilt monster?

When you’re grieving a lost loved one, your predictive brain tries to regain control from the chaos.

Uncertainty causes your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours to bounce around and latch onto anything that brings relief or a sense of order.

Guilty thoughts and self-blame often offer a taste of control, when you imagine “what I could’ve or should’ve done differently,” as if you have absolute power over events, but didn’t use it.

It makes the world slightly less unpredictable. Psychologists call this avenue of thought processes counterfactual thinking.

Even if it’s illogical or means you failed in some of the infinite scenarios and counterfactual thought loops, failure still gives you a sense of control.

O’Connor’s research also suggests the grieving brain struggles with death’s finality. You try to mentally seek or search for the lost person or loved one as your routines and habits skew off their axes without them.

Guilt fuels that search loop to keep you looking for solutions, and a way to bring them back to life somehow. This is why guilt and self-blame persist because they serve a useful purpose.

They give you the illusion you can still change something in your mental simulations i.e., in this one, the ending will be different and they’ll live.

Plus, when you’re a sensitive over-giver, you’re used to being the responsible, capable, and attuned one.

Loss throws that belief structure out the window and removes your agency. Going from the reliable one to the powerless one is an epic shock. Guilt steps in to bridge the gap.

Even though I know I did my best for Poppy and her care, I can’t let go of the thought that I could have and should have done more medically and emotionally. Done better. Kept her alive and safe.

It’s the same with my dad when I look at the plants I’ve bought in his honour over the years.

If only I’d done xyz, he’d still be here instead of the distracting guilt monster.

Accepting as a simple act in the moment

I knew the waves of grief for Poppy and dad would be strong this week, so I wanted to do something positive with the grief energy.

We bought a houseplant for each to nurture and grow, as that’s my way of creating a ritualised memory box to tend over time.

O’Connor describes how she used the process of “accepting,” shared in her book, when the waves of grief about losing her dad and now being an orphan crashed over her.

She makes a point of using the word “accepting” and not “acceptance.” It’s not forgiveness, approval or moving on.

Nor a grand permanent step that ties a weird but neat bow over everything.

It’s a practical, in-the-moment acknowledgement about what already happened and how you view it now.

Guilt tells you the brain is still questioning the past. Accepting allows you to gently step out of the argument and see it from a new perspective.

O’Connor describes it as setting something heavy down, knowing you might want to pick it back up in the future.

And that resonates, because you’re recognising the painful thought, emotion or feeling, or action in the moment when it appears, not avoiding it.

When the thoughts about not doing enough for Poppy arose, I paused, did the accepting practice, and noticed the tension in my chest soften slightly.

I wasn’t healed, but I stopped fighting enough to let the stress ease a little.

The weight lifted briefly, and I could breathe a bit deeper.

A simple accepting practice to lighten guilt when it spikes

When guilt or self-blame appears, it can happen fast. A sharp, niggly little thought that gnaws away at your psyche pretending to be truth when it isn’t.

A tiny “if only I’d…or I should have…” sneaks in to press against your chest and swipes your breath away. Or the urge to sob uncontrollably appears when you’re doing something unrelated.

I’m using a two-sentence accepting ritual when grief spikes out of the blue, like when you’re moving a barely made pot, unloading the dishwasher, or scrolling for a Black Friday offer.

It’s a simple way to quietly stop your brain from rushing to counterfactual thinking land or self-criticism that keeps you stuck in the past.

This is how the practice works when a grief spike hijacks. Take a pause, and say to yourself:

1. “This has already happened, and nothing I do now can change it.”

2. “I notice this wave of grief is here and I know it will eventually pass.”

That’s it. Noticing what appears in the grief spike, whether it’s a thought, an emotion, a sobbing heave, or something else.

No analysing why you feel or think this way.

No trying to problem-solve whether you “should” feel this sad, confused, or upset.

No barrister-level questioning of every decision you made while they were alive.

Just a pause or break to recognise what’s going on. That it’s real. It’s grief and you don’t have to fix it.

After Poppy died, my brain drifts into counterfactual thinking often. Replaying decisions, looking for clues, trying to find the one moment where I could have done something differently.

This little practice doesn’t stop the sadness or other heavy emotions, and it doesn’t stop the tears.

It just stops me piling on a second layer of self-blame over an already difficult experience.

The grief still appears, but when I notice it’s here and don’t get into a wrestling match with it, it doesn’t last as long.

I’ve tried the same practice when grief waves about dad rise this week, and it’s helped to ease the pain slightly in my mind and body.

A tiny relief is still relief.

Key takeaways

Grief waves will arrive, even when you least expect them. But when a memory or pang of guilt catches you off guard, try this quiet reframe:

• Pause.

• Say the two “accepting” sentences, even if you don’t fully believe them yet.

• Let whatever is happening be there without fighting. Be it tears, tight chest, that hollow drop in the stomach, or coulda/woulda/shoulda thinking.

• When it softens, even slightly, gently bring your attention back to whatever you were doing.

Accepting grief in the moment isn’t resigning yourself to a miserable life without them or avoiding they exist.

It’s acknowledging your loved one is gone, and that regrets and unfinished conversations belong to the past.

You’re allowed to keep living without forgetting them, as grief will hover just out of sight.

You just don’t have to turn every wave into a problem to solve or stick to beat yourself with.

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P.S. I’m working on a 60-minute(ish) on-demand workshop to help you Navigate Grief With Compassion. Hit reply or comment below if you want to be one of the beta users to help me create it.

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It'll be 4 years since my dad died this Thursday.

Every deathiversary feels different. But a constant is some form of guilt or regret about how I didn't appreciate him enough when he was here.

I'm faffing with headphones he gave me and feel sad I’ve left it it so long to charge and try them.

I look at the bay tree finally planted in my garden and feel a guilt pang because he wanted me to take it five years ago.

Regrets are part of life. But guilt and grief are constant companions.

And I’m starting to understand why.

Guilt is baked into “being a good son/daughter”

When my dad died, my guilt wasn’t just about medical decisions. It linked into a bigger story, namely the Was I a good enough daughter? Did I show up enough, appreciate him enough, call enough? one.

Researcher Jie Li defines bereavement guilt as:

“…a remorseful emotional reaction in grieving, with the recognition of having failed to live up to one’s own inner standards and expectations in relationship to the deceased and/or the death.”

Jie Li, 2014

I still feel guilt about that Monday night I’d absentmindedly turned my phone to silent while dad was in hospital. I’d missed the early morning calls from them sharing that he’d slipped into unconsciousness overnight and was now in ICU.

I didn’t realise it was the last time we’d speak on that Monday night when he called early evening. He seemed more coherent than previously, so I remember thinking he was taking a turn for the better.

How wrong I was.

It must have taken so much effort for him to call and share what was on his mind.

Damn.

Research consistently shows that guilt is one of the most common emotional themes in grief, not a personal glitch or character flaw.

It’s a normal emotional response after parent loss especially around the idea of, “I should have done more for them.”

It shows up enough that we even have a Bereavement Guilt Scale to measure different flavours of it, like responsibility, indebtedness, survivor guilt, general guilt.

If you’re in a culture with strong expectations about how you should care for your parents, the guilt ramps up even further. It might not show up as “I killed them,” but more quietly as “I didn’t live up to what a good son/daughter should be.”

Aspects of guilt, such as responsibility guilt, indebtedness guilt and degree of guilt feeling, can predict prolonged grief disorder or depression.

This resonates with my Asian background and my deep need to be a “good daughter”.

Even when my mates tell me I did enough, those ridiculously high inner standards are hard to shift. Guilt slots straight into that void.

Caregiving for a parent: guilt, relief, and the “did I do it right?” loop

If you were or are involved in your parent’s care, the guilt script gets even louder.

Studies with adult children in caregiving roles, and young adults who lost a parent to cancer, all point the same way: the more responsibility and love you felt, the more likely you are to carry thoughts like:

• “I didn’t do enough.”

• “I chose the wrong thing.”

• “If I’d pushed harder, they might still be here.”

This story revisits me regularly when I replay my time as dad’s next of kin, with the hospital decisions, the consultant conversations, the complex shitty options chats over the phone.

Maybe if I’d broken the quarantine rules and parked myself in the ICU waiting room, I could have advocated for him more directly in person. There might have been other tests I wasn’t aware of that could have indicated the multi-organ failure earlier.

I know logically that I did what I could with the information I had and the restrictions in place. But grief doesn’t care about logic.

The research suggests this kind of guilt is strongly linked with more intense grief and depression, not because you actually failed, but because the brain quietly turns:

“I wish it had been different”

into

“Their death proves I failed them.”

It’s not particularly helpful or correct, but a story that fits a wonky self-story we don’t challenge when we’re grieving and exhausted.

And because the outcome (their death) is final, the brain treats it as “proof” that we picked wrong, even when no option would’ve led to a happy or different ending.

Relief and guilt can coexist

There’s another layer people don’t talk about enough: relief.

Depending on our personal grief experiences, caregivers for elderly or very ill parents commonly report feeling relieved the suffering is over, and guilty for that relief.

When the doctor told me dad had passed, my first thought was “Oh god, no. Please no.”

A second thought floated through: “Thank god he’s not suffering anymore.”

My third thought was “What kind of daughter feels relief? I’m terrible.”

It’s a totally normal emotional conflict, and not proof you didn’t love them enough.

It’s actually compassion in action. You didn’t want them to suffer. Of course there’s relief when the pain, confusion or indignity ends.

But then we twist that into a story that we “wished our person away” or “didn’t fight hard enough to keep them here.”

The more you avoid, suppress or obsess over the painful bits, the easier it is for guilt to take over and write the script for you.

Part of bereavement is gently challenging these narratives when they start to harden into facts:

• Is this guilt telling me the truth?

• Or is it just the loudest voice in the room right now?

If we don’t question it, guilt quietly becomes the judge, when really it’s just one witness with a very narrow perspective.

One small thing to notice if guilt is noisy

If guilt is loud right now for you, try this:

Pick one guilt thought that keeps circling or looping (for example, “I should have done more”).

This week, when the headphones guilt kicked in, I tried something different. Instead of spiralling with the “I should have used them sooner,” thought, I reframed it and myself: “What does this guilt show me I cared about?”

I realised it showed me how much I valued his gifts and what a caring, kind dad he was. Whether it was big or small, he thought of something I might like and need.

That’s not failure, but a wistful love looking for somewhere to go.

So, maybe explore what guilt is really trying to tell you.

Key takeaways

Guilt is often baked into how many of us define being a “good son/daughter”, especially if we were carers or decision-makers. It’s common, not a character flaw or moral failing.

The research shows that intense, ongoing guilt, particularly “I failed them” self-blame, is linked with heavier grief and depression, even when you did everything you reasonably could.

Feeling relieved their suffering is over doesn’t mean you loved them less. It usually means you cared deeply and wanted the best for them.

This Thursday, when the guilt shows up, and I know it will, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to ask it what it’s really protecting.

Because underneath “I should have done more” is usually just love that hasn’t found a peaceful place to land yet.

And maybe that’s enough.

Subscribe now

P.S. I’m working on a 60-minute(ish) on-demand workshop to help you Navigate Grief With Compassion. Hit reply or comment below if you want to be one of the beta users to help me build it.