Managing Personal Grief and Supporting Others – 2SM Breakfast Radio Interview with Ron Wilson

It is Father’s Day on Sunday and it’ll be a joyous occasion. There’ll be barbies and get-togethers and kids and grandkids and all of that, but for some it can be really a difficult day, particularly if you might have lost your dad or your partner. Michelle Moriarty lost her partner and the father of her two kids when he was 38 – he collapsed and died from heart failure. They’d first met when they were teenagers, then reconnected in their 30s, and I have Michelle on the line to have a yarn about all that. G’day Michelle.

Michelle: Good morning.

Host: Yeah, the cards that life deals to you, I guess you just learn to cope. You have to, don’t you?

Michelle: Yes, and quite often when I hear my story back I think, oh, did that really happen – and of course it did, and it’s my new normal and new reality that has brought us here talking about grief, which is really important.

Host: It is very important. Can you put into words what the initial feeling was like when that happened to you? I mean, the rest of us are going to say it must have been devastating.

Michelle: Oh, it 100% was devastating. I went into a great period of shock and my brain functioning and my daily life functioning changed dramatically, and that was accompanied by what we would expect with grief – that sadness and despair and hopelessness. It took some time for the periods of clarity and the grief felt to slowly lift. But it does lift.

Host: Yeah, and of course you have to deal with and look after the two kids as well.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. So parenting, and then solo parenting as a young widow. My kids were really small, only two years old and six years old, so there was a lot of adjustment – a huge adjustment period there, and yeah, it certainly was not easy.

Host: Yeah, so you set up the Grief Connect network. What was the period of time between losing your partner and realising you wanted to do something like that?

Michelle: I started four months after Nathan died – he was my late partner. I started an online widow support group for young widows, the Grief Connect Young Widow Support Group, and I started with a membership of four. I thought, wow, that’s a lot of young widows out there – then it grew to 30, and we’re actually coming up to nearly a thousand members in the young group, and the Grief Connect Over 55 group that I also founded has also come up to a thousand. But to put things into context in terms of how many people are grieving across Australia, there are well over a million widowed people, and if we think about not just a widowed person but the surviving family, friends, colleagues, most of us across Australia are impacted by grief.

Host: Is the grief from the people that you’ve met and looked after similar, or does it sometimes take a different pattern?

Michelle: Grief is different for everyone, so there are certainly some commonalities, but how we all process our grief and how it shows up in our body and in our thoughts and in our mood is very individual. So it can be very unhelpful to compare how we’re grieving against someone else, and vice versa – having judgments can be very unhelpful. It’s important to be able to simply acknowledge, witness and reflect back to them where they’re at, and to be present for someone.

Host: That’s an important point I’d like you to expand on – what about people who might say to someone who’s grieving, oh, you know, at some stage you’ve just got to get over that? What do you say to that?

Michelle: It can be really difficult, because that statement in itself is very dismissive, and it also suggests that grief has an end point. Grief doesn’t have an end point – if we are experiencing deep grief and missing someone such as our fathers, grief is lifelong. So it’s around being gentle and compassionate in what we say and do, and offering reflection statements around how you’re experiencing someone else’s grief that are supportive. It might be around, it sounds like a really tough day today, how can I help? So it’s coming from that different perspective, rather than being judgmental.

Host: We’re talking about Father’s Day here, but I know someone personally who lost a very dear partner around Christmas time, so for him Christmas is not a joyous time at all – in fact he tries to avoid it and maybe go somewhere and be by himself. What are some recommendations for people who’ve lost a father or a grandfather, coming to terms with Father’s Day specifically?

Michelle: Sure – one of the things we can do when we’re experiencing grief and really missing someone is planning. I call it the three Ps: plan, plan and plan. So we’re planning an activity, planning something to do for the day, and that might involve doing something solo, but it might involve doing something with family, friends or other people in the community. If you don’t have any of that, it might be attending a community event. Then we can plan an exit strategy – always plan so that if you go to an activity or event and you’re not feeling okay, it’s alright to leave, and it’s okay to say, actually I don’t need to be here right now. And we can then plan the third P, which is a safe place to return to. For many of us, and for me certainly, my home was my absolute safe place to return to – and it might not be home on Father’s Day, it might be going to somebody else’s home, or it might be even just going solo down to the beach and spending some time sitting in your grief and experiencing that.

Host: What would you say – and I’m pretty sure this happens – you just want to stay home for the day, but you get pressure from people, family or friends saying, oh, come on, come and join us for the day, it’ll be fun. It really might not be. What do you say to people who put that pressure on?

Michelle: If you’re the person putting pressure on, also be reflective – it’s important to be aware of that pressure, then withdraw back and give the person another option, and be supportive around, if that’s not okay, if that’s not what you want to do, that is also okay and I respect your decision. So if you’re supporting someone, it’s really about empowering the person grieving to be able to make their own choice and have a sense of control over life – when let’s be honest, when people die it certainly is mostly out of our control. So it’s really around empowering and giving choice.

Host: You’ve pretty much already answered the question, but I’ll rephrase it – that old expression that time heals all wounds, but maybe sometimes it doesn’t.

Michelle: I really struggle with the word “heals” when it comes to grief – it’s quite a challenging word, because for me grief is something that can be a constant. A better way of thinking about it, in terms of language and the words we use, is that grief can ease and grief can lighten as we move forward with time. So it’s not about necessarily that we’re going to heal and be back to how we were before the death of our person – it’s more around how we’re going to grow and move forward to a new normal.

Host: It’s been really great to talk to you. For listeners who want to find out more about what you do, where do they go, what’s the website?

Michelle: It’s griefconnect.com.au, and you’ll see the range of services there – we’ve got support groups, counselling which is online so anyone can access it from the comfort of their home, and the Grief Language Project – webinars and keynotes to workplaces. I’ve also got the Grief Language Project Connect Cards, so if you’re someone who’s struggling to know how to support someone who’s grieving, especially with the words and knowing what to say and do, these cards are 50 cards of helpful guidance that will help grow your confidence in knowing what to say and do.

Host: Michelle, it’s fantastic there are people like you around who care enough to set up something like this – griefconnect.com.au. Thanks for your time today.

Michelle: Thanks for having me.