Happy New Year - Final Words For 2025 From Michelle.

Final Words From Michelle for 2025.

There’s no “new year, new me” here. This is a “new year, let’s be even more ready to support people in grief” post.

As 2025 comes to a close, I wanted to share what this year has meant — not just for me, but for the thousands of people Grief Connect® exists to support.

Here’s what that has looked like in real, practical ways:

• Being recognised as a finalist for Australian Association of Social Workers – Social Worker of the Year Award which reflects the professional standards, ethics, and care that sit behind every Grief Connect service you engage with.

• Completing Sessions 1 & 2 of the Australian Rural Leadership Program across NSW and New Zealand has strengthened how Grief Connect supports people in regional and rural communities — where access to grief-informed services is often limited, too far away to access, and really needed.

• Taking the stage at the Innovate with nbn® Awards reinforced national recognition of grief innovation — helping ensure grief support is not only compassionate, but modern, accessible, and scalable.

• Contributing to national media and radio conversations supported by Media Stable on grief-informed practice means fewer people feel invisible or misunderstood in their grief — and more workplaces, services, and communities are learning how to respond better.

• Collaborating with my AgriFutures cohort in Bali strengthened strategy and innovation so Grief Connect can continue growing sustainably — ensuring support doesn’t disappear when people need it most.

• Growing the Grief Connect® Widowed Support Groups to over 2,000 members nationwide means more people can find safe, moderated, professionally guided peer support — without having to explain or justify their grief.

• Providing ongoing Social Work oversight ensures psychological safety, ethical care, and mental-health awareness are embedded into every group — protecting vulnerable people while fostering genuine connection. This is a core foundation of all Grief Connect services.

• Facilitating in-person widowed support groups across Australia brings grief support out of the screen and into local communities — reducing isolation and creating real human and life changing connection.

• Delivering specialised bereavement counselling through NDIS and Employment Assistance Programs supports people navigating complex grief, trauma, and life transitions with professional care.

• Serving as keynote speaker and MC helps organisations, communities, and workplaces understand grief better — so fewer people are met with silence, discomfort, or harmful clichés.

• Distributing the Grief Language Project® Connect Cards nationwide gives people simple, safer words that fit for them. Helping friends, families, and colleagues show up with confidence and without fear of “saying the wrong thing.”

• Launching After the Funeral: The Unspoken Next Steps eGuide provides clear, gentle guidance during the most overwhelming days after loss — because no one should have to figure it all out alone. Thank you to William Barrett & Sons Funeral Directors for supporting this launch.

Looking Ahead: Grief Connect® in 2026

Behind the scenes, I’ve been deep in development of the Grief Language Project Online Education Program, supported by the Innovate with nbn® grant.

This program is designed to help individuals, workplaces, and communities become more grief-informed — turning confusion, avoidance, and silence into confidence, compassion, and connection.
It launches next year (woot woot!), and I’m incredibly proud of what’s coming.

And my other big news is that yes, after years of being asked “When’s the book coming Michelle?” I can finally say: my first book is officially on its way. So stay tuned!!!!

What I’m most proud of is this:

Grief Connect services offer something different. Support grounded in lived experience, professional practice, and academic knowledge — but always centred on human connection and life after loss.

This year alone, Grief Connect has supported thousands of grieving Australians.
I won’t list outcomes or statistics — but I will say this plainly:

There have been lives saved because of connection and support.

That truth is what continues to drive everything we do.

Before I sign off, there have been countless people who have quietly given their time, wisdom, and guidance to strengthen Grief Connect along the way. You know who you are, and I am so very grateful.

Wishing you all a gentle and meaningful New Year’s Eve.
I look forward to connecting, online or in real life in 2026.
LET’S GO 2026!!

So here is the write up from me and my share for International Widows Day: Widowhood is grief, and one of the deepest forms of grief a person can ever experience. It is a type of grief that I would never wish on my worst enemy. It is unfathomable to explain just how horrendous, devastating and lonely widowhood grief can feel. Yesterday, I did not write this blog like I had planned originally, because I was out spending time with one of my children. And let me tell you, as a widowed parent, I have spent most of my early widowhood feeling like I was the shittiest parent ever.

Firstly, because suddenly I was doing a job that I never signed up to do on my own. What a joke that was. It was supposed to be two of us. Nathan and I – riding the rollercoaster of parenting together. He was supposed to be alive and keep working as a parenting team alongside me.

Secondly, because even though I tried my best throughout all of my parenting, it was not always great. My children were not only managing their own grief, but they were also experiencing their mother’s grief. At times it as not pretty and was damned right ugly at times. I’m not proud of that.

My window of tolerance very small with irritability and impatience a go to in my mothering survival. I know what they have seen is a mum who has struggled with grief missing their Dad (and Step Dad). They have had a mum who has not ticked all the boxes of being a perfect parent. But lets face it… that’s a load of rubbish as there is no such thing as a perfect parent, only an ideal.

As a young widowed parent, I was forced to be questioning how I was going to continue find ways to keep feeding my children? How was I going to keep a roof over our heads long term? Could we stay living in our family home? Because one half of the household income is no longer there to pay the bills and Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs was under threat. Because there is no crisis widowed payment from Centrelink (another issue for another write up) and it’s walking away from Centrelink with no support and in deep grief after asking for help with a “too bad, so sad” response.

Let me tell you that the feeling of not knowing if you can keep your house, some kind of continuing lifestyle for your kids, or how you are going to pay the car registration and many other bills that keep arriving, is absolutely terrifying and only serves to compound grief missing your person.

And that is just scratching the surface of what widowhood is about. Because when our person dies, our entire life turns into something we do not recognise, do not know, did not ask for, and never wanted. Within this deep grief, we are forced to continue pushing through to the next day. But quite often, that is too much. People wanting to help around make statements of good intent and say “just get through the next day”… NO. This is about getting through the next hour or the next minute. It is survival mode at it’s purest.

Yes, time has gone on for me. I never thought it would. But here we are, me writing, you reading, 8 years after Nathan died. My life has changed immensely in ways that I never thought possible. And also, as a widow, when I have days like yesterday, where I am functioning and multitasking like a boss again, and also spending quality time with my kids, that has to be celebrated, and means that it’s OK to write this blog a day late.

To non-widowed parents, yesterday, might have seemed like just another average day. Just another day of doing routine tasks. But for me, and for many widowed people out there, it is an achievement in grief, and in life. Maggie Dent, an incredible Parenting Expert advocates that ‘You just have to be a good parent 30-40% of the time’ on her “Good Enough Parent” podcast. So, yesterday, as a widowed parent, to be able to get through the day and feel like a “good enough parent” is something worth celebrating and I’m high fiving myself. I know Nathan would be high fiving me right back from the heavens. So I’ll take that and embrace it.

Because the reality is that for many widowed people, we can lower those percentage numbers… because running on empty and still making it to the end of the day.. or the end of the hour in one piece and only ‘just’ functioning is a huge achievement when experiencing deep grief.

To all of my widowed friends and peers out there who are pushing hard though each day, please know that you are freaking amazing. Huge credit to you for arriving at this point in time, right now. You are doing great, even though it doesn’t feel like it. I see you. Remember that you are not alone.

Celebrate the small wins. And remember that although it might not feel like it, there is hope and there is a future ahead.

As we move into the day after International Widows’ Day, others may move forward, but we remember.

We live being widowed every single day.

If you know someone who is widowed and grieving, please let them know about the Grief Connect® Community. A space for grief to be shared and supported by peers in live online conversations and posts. Access the community by clicking the button below.