Grief is one of the deepest initiations we experience as human beings. It is the price we pay for loving deeply and for allowing another person, another relationship, or another chapter of life to truly matter.
For many years, through my work as a Death Doula, transpersonal therapist, and grief educator, I have sat beside people in the landscape of loss. I have witnessed the bewilderment, anger, silence, longing, and profound tenderness that grief can bring. Yet my greatest lessons about grief have not come primarily through my professional experiences, but through my own personal journey.
Writer Joan Didion captured the mystery of loss when she wrote, "Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it."
The shock moved through me like an earthquake
I reached that place in 2016, when my childhood best friend died suddenly. I learned of his death through an email from his sister, who told me his body had been found washed ashore on a beach in the Pacific Ocean. There was no preparation, no gradual goodbye, and no opportunity to make sense of what had happened. The shock moved through me like an earthquake, splitting open the world as I knew it.
What happened next surprised me. I began to howl in agony. It was not a gentle cry or a weep, but a primal, wailing lament that rose from somewhere beyond thought and beyond my ability to control. In that moment, I understood something profound: grief is not simply an emotion of the mind. It is an experience that moves through the entire body.
Grief moves through the body
Grief travels through our nervous system, our breath, our memories, and our spirit. Sometimes it arrives as trembling, exhaustion, rage, silence, or a sound that feels ancient and as though it carries the voice of generations before us. The grief had to move. The love had to move. My body found a way to express what words could not contain.
My sister's courage, and the goodbye I missed
My second great teacher of grief arrived in 2022, when my older sister died after an eight-month battle with stage 4 breast cancer. I witnessed her courage through chemotherapy, serious illness, and the uncertainty of what each day would bring. One of my deepest pains is that I did not make it to her bedside before she died.
When I arrived at the funeral home the following day, my family gathered around my sister's body. We faced the painful reality that her soul had departed while honouring the sacredness of the body that had carried her through this life. Together, we gave ourselves permission to grieve fully and to wail, cry, hold one another, kiss her goodbye, and gently place wildflowers upon her as an offering of love and remembrance.
A ceremony of tears and love
In that sacred space, our tears, our lament, and our love became a ceremony of their own. Through compassionate presence, touch, and shared mourning, we began to find a way to heal together as a family.
The many faces of grief
Grief has many faces. It is the pain of losing someone, but it is also the grief of what we wished could have been different. Perhaps it's the goodbye we hoped for, the words left unsaid, the moments we will never have. And yet, grief is also evidence of love. It is the echo of connection.
We live in a culture that often asks us to move on, but grief does not ask us to forget. It asks us to transform our relationship with what has been lost. The people we love continue through our memories, our stories, our laughter, and the ways they changed us.
Learning to expand around loss
Grief is not something we get over. It is something we learn to expand around. The relationship changes shape, but love remains.
Healing does not come from avoiding pain. It comes from creating a compassionate relationship with it and allowing ourselves to feel, remember, honour, and be held. Grief is the shadow cast by love's light. If we are willing to sit with it, listen to it, and walk alongside it, grief can become not only a place of sorrow, but also a place of wisdom, connection, and transformation.
Because grief is simply proof that we have loved deeply.
Tree Carr brings this same depth, honesty and compassion to her workshops and courses at The College of Psychic Studies, offering a soulful and supportive space to explore grief, dreams, the stars, and the mysteries beyond. Don't miss the opportunity to learn with her - explore Tree Carr's full programme of courses, workshops and talks at The College of Psychic Studies.
