Motherland. The Podcast. How Michelle Moriarty Learnt To Love Again.

Since 2018, Michelle Moriarty’s life has been split into two halves. Before the love of her life, Nathan, died, and after. Michelle and Nathan were raising their family in regional WA after a romance Michelle says was for the ages. Michelle was working as a social worker, and Nathan and she were a team. Life was pretty good, but on the 10th of June 2018, everything changed.

Michelle’s grief was all-consuming and isolating, despite the village she had around her, and she knew then that she didn’t want any other person to feel that way. So she founded Grief Connect, a young widowed support group and online hub where widowed men and women could come and have honest conversations about the realities of losing loved ones. Then, four years later, after losing her father, she founded a similar group for widows over 55.

Michelle recently won the 2024 Innovate with NBN Grants Program Women in Regional Business category and the overall Champion category. This is Michelle’s story.

Steph: Michelle, welcome to Motherland.

Michelle: Thanks, Steph. I’m really excited to be here.

Steph: Very excited to have you. You and I have been in touch the last couple of years in some way, shape or form, and I’m really glad we finally found the time to sit down and do this. I remember seeing a post a few months ago saying you’d had a bit of a tree change and found yourself on a little farm, and I thought this sounds like a really good time to have a chat about the next chapter. But before we get into that, just introduce yourself – where you’re based, what you do and your family.

Michelle: I’m Michelle Moriarty. I’m a partner, a mother, a widow, a social worker, a friend, a daughter, all of those things – and I’m a farmer now as well. My fiancé Ross and I moved to a hobby farm in the south-west in February. I’m the CEO and founder of Grief Connect, so my services are grief and bereavement support – three arms under the organisation. Counselling, which is online and available across Australia; the widowed support groups, of which there are two online peer groups, the Grief Connect Young Widow Support Group and the Grief Connect Over 55s Widow Support Group; and the Grief Language Project, which is my education and keynote speaking and training component, and I’m really excited about that because I’ve just launched the Grief Language Project Connect Cards.

Steph: I can’t wait to talk about your work, which is all intertwined with your personal story. It’s kind of confronting, right – even you introducing yourself so confidently, as you should, as Michelle, widow, and then straight into grief stuff. It’s such an uncomfortable topic to navigate, so thank you for being so open with your journey. Before we get there – you’re in WA, you’ve got two boys, I believe. How old are they?

Michelle: I do – an eight-year-old and a thirteen-year-old now. We’re living in a very small town just outside of Bunbury called Roelands.

Steph: Did you grow up around there, or where are you from originally?

Michelle: I grew up in Bunbury, a regional town in the south-west, and spent all of my childhood here. I had a really fortunate upbringing – I feel very blessed in terms of how my younger life and teenage years were. I’m an only child, so I didn’t have any brothers and sisters, and quite a few people ask if I miss not having one, but to be honest I didn’t have that to miss, so I didn’t know any different. I had a lot of opportunities and my parents took me travelling, and I felt really loved as a child. I grew up into a bit of a rebellious teenager, not entirely to my mum and dad’s happiness, but then I came back and realised I wanted to study social work. As a teenager going into year 11 and 12 I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I remember so much pressure around knowing what subjects to select – we didn’t have social work or psychology options back then. When I realised social work existed at university I jumped in, gave it a go, and absolutely loved it. It was what I was supposed to do, and that was the beginning of my career.

Steph: So how does a rebellious teen go from rebelling to actually helping others in social work? Was there a tipping point, or a moment where you went from being that rebel to thinking “this is what I want to do with my life”?

Michelle: I think it sort of coincided together – around 19 I thought, okay, I need to focus rather than just carry on, and finding something at university that I was passionate about was probably the tipping point – going, right, this is actually where I’m meant to be, I fit in, I love and I’m interested in this, so it made me want to study it, rather than being forced to study something I didn’t really enjoy.

Steph: So what was your vision with social work? Obviously your personal circumstances later dictated the course of your career, but before all that – what did you want to do, what impact did you want to have?

Michelle: I started out working in disability and also with young people, and really enjoyed both of those fields. After graduating I moved north and worked in the wheatbelt, doing outreach to small country towns. Then I saved up some money and travelled overseas to London, where I ended up living and working for about four years as a social worker, in probation and youth offending – juvenile justice, similar to here – in East London. The social issues and challenges were fairly different from rural Australia, but I really enjoyed my job over there and I’m still really good friends with a lot of my colleagues from that time.

Steph: And you came home eventually? Where did you live, and what was the next chapter?

Michelle: I ended up working with children and families in Bunbury, and spent quite a few years in that field.

Steph: Before we get to 2018 – when did you meet Nathan? I know you two have a really beautiful love story.

Michelle: The truth of our whole story is that we hooked up on my 18th birthday, and that wasn’t okay at the time for several reasons, so we didn’t speak for a little while – there was a bit of a gap. He had this Holden Premier, so loud, and I’m pretty sure the exhaust was illegal, and he was always doing burnouts in the green patch – a bit of a rebel, a bogan too, black skinny jeans and his Doc Martens on. I just always loved him ever since I met him, I had this chemistry, I thought he was the hottest guy around, and he had this aura about him that was really attractive – he was just a really cool guy in his own right, didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, and I really loved that about him. That was there immediately. So past my 18th, we hadn’t spoken for a while, it was a bit awkward, but we were in the same social circles – Bunbury’s still small and we kept crossing paths. We ended up hanging out a little and that grew more and more, and once our friendship grew we realised we wanted to be together, and that was pretty much it for quite a while. We moved in together while I was studying – I had my desk set up and we had a great time, young and free and naive and all those things. Then I moved up north and Nathan was working as a firefighter – he’d always been in mining – so he’d come up north and we were still together, I was around 24, 25 at that point. We decided to save up and travel, went over to London, and the plan was that he was going to go to South America and then meet me in Scotland, and we were going to live in London together. But he ended up breaking up with me before that – I got to London and he broke up with me, and I was just so devastated. I remember my mum saying to me, “Michelle, you’re not coming back, you’ve saved so long for this trip” – I was crying, saying I just wanted to come home, and she said no. So I sold my car and did a Contiki tour around Europe and stayed there, and Nathan and I, our relationship was over at that point. I had to build a life on my own, and that resilience is something I’ve been able to carry forward through other challenges, but it was really hard, not how I’d expected it to be. I left London, was in another relationship, and had my first son. Unfortunately that relationship ended, and following on from that, Nathan and I started to rekindle our friendship and hang out more, and things grew. It was at a friend’s 40th, he’d come down from Perth, and I was so excited he was coming to hang out – we ended up having this huge conversation that night, expressing our love for each other and that we wanted to be together and have a family. And that’s what we did. All of our friends were so happy for us, because they knew what we’d had when we were younger, and people would say they were quite envious of our love, because it was such a sweet love.

Steph: And then your son Cody came along?

Michelle: Yes, fairly quickly, and he brought a whole heap of joy to our lives. We were living in a four-by-two, loving camping, and Nathan had a Harley he’d go riding on with his best mate. One day he decided to surprise me – he sold his Harley and bought us a family caravan.

Steph: Not many blokes do that, Michelle.

Michelle: I was surprised, because that Harley was his love. So we started doing caravanning trips – I remember the sleepless nights still, because the boys were young, but we did our best and really enjoyed camping.

Steph: What was motherhood like for you? You already had a child before rekindling with Nathan, which must have been a whole other thing to navigate – what was motherhood like for you the first time, and then having your second with Nathan?

Michelle: I grew up always thinking I was going to be this earth mother – carrying my children strapped to me naturally, all natural, I was just going to handle this and manage this, and I couldn’t understand why other mums were complaining or being honest about the reality of it. Going into motherhood, it was not what I expected, and it wasn’t as easy as I expected at all. I know how important sleep is for me – I can turn into a monster if I don’t get my decent seven to eight hours, or if it’s broken, I just have to warn everyone the next morning to be gentle with me because I can be a bit snappy. I’ve absolutely adored my children and travelling that road through the stages of life has been so rewarding – I wouldn’t change a thing, it’s just around my own self-management of those expectations. That peer support, the honesty and being real around the challenges of motherhood, has been key to staying sane, if you can call it that – but I think I’m doing pretty well.

Steph: I think you are too. What was Nathan like as a dad? I think you’ve mentioned before that both boys are his – tell me a bit about him as a dad.

Michelle: He just adored the boys. He was a really hands-on dad – playing with them, doing nappy changes, very much teamwork with parenting. He’d do half the nappy changes for Cody, play with both of them, take them fishing and to activities. We worked as a partnership as parents. I remember, especially as Cody was growing up to about two, he was able to sit up in the bath, and I’d sit in the bathroom with him while Nathan cooked dinner, then he’d do the dishes, and my job was bathing the boys and getting them ready for bed. He loved cooking, he was a master chef, to be honest – we just complemented each other really well working together as a team.

Steph: Michelle, life obviously changed for you in 2018, and we want to be really respectful of what we’re not going to talk about – can you tell everyone what happened?

Michelle: It was the 10th of June 2018, and Nathan died that night. It was a huge shock, to him and to us, and every single aspect of my life changed that night – and I changed that night too, because everything I knew about my life was no longer, especially my hopes and dreams, and missing my best friend and my person was overwhelming. I don’t like talking about the details because it does bring up a lot of trauma memories for me.

Steph: That’s okay, we don’t have to.

Michelle: I think people need to understand that when you see someone who’s grieving, one of the most unhelpful questions is “so what happened?” – I got asked that a lot, quite often by people who didn’t know me that well, or that I’d bump into in a shop. It’s really important that people think and are considerate around asking that unless they’re someone personally involved in the immediate family or friends, and unless that person makes it clear they’re okay to talk about it.

Steph: Absolutely, and I think this conversation is really important because it might help those of us who have to support someone who’s grieving to navigate it with respect, but also allow someone to share their story in a way that makes them feel comfortable. So tell me about that next chapter – there was life before Nathan died and life after. How did you get through it, given you know grief better than anyone and support other people navigating it?

Michelle: Terrifying. Overwhelming. Words can’t even describe what it was like. It was awful, and it was really around having to get through each minute and each hour at a time – I couldn’t see through to the next day in my early grief. I remember being in shock, and I had a lot of people coming to my home, and I was okay with that, I gave permission for that – I needed people around me, and not everyone is like that, some people don’t want people around as much, but for me it was important. Nathan’s sister Linda moved in with me for three months and helped me with the boys.

Steph: Wow, that’s extraordinary. Talk about a village.

Michelle: I was very fortunate to have her support and Nathan’s family – his other sister Lisa, and my mum and dad were instrumental in supporting me intensively, daily, throughout the day. I had a lot of friends and other family too who deserve acknowledgement, but we could be here all day doing that, so I’ll stick with them. Linda and Lisa and my mum and dad really helped with care of my children, because I needed a lot of time and space to process what had happened, and I wasn’t able to be present as I hoped or wanted to be for my children at that point in time. To be honest, I feel like grief robbed me and stole some of my memory around the ages my boys were – Cody was two, such an important age. I’d quite often look through phone memories that pop up so I can refresh my memory around the beautiful stages my children were at. It really did take a village – one of my girlfriends pretty much stayed in the kitchen preparing food and dishing it out, I had people coming to help with housework, and at one point there were a couple of laundry baskets full of meals that had been brought around. One Christmas, a girlfriend had arranged donations of toys – I arrived home to find them all on my front porch, because I didn’t have any capacity to do Christmas shopping. I asked her if it was her and she was being very humble about it, but I reminded her I had security cameras at the front of the house.

Steph: That’s the village for you.

Michelle: It really helped me along my way.

Steph: I imagine at some point the meals slow down, your sister-in-law moves out, and you’re faced with your new life on your own with the boys. Was that shocking, when the intensity of that village support naturally tapered away – what was that chapter like, facing your new normal?

Michelle: When Linda moved out, we were both at a point where we’d had a really open conversation and felt it was time – I’d rebuilt some of my ability to function by then, and was ready to take some next steps forward, so it was quite a smooth and wonderful transition. But then I’m having to find my new normal, of course, and that’s a very lonely experience – that feeling of terror remained for quite some time. I struggle sometimes with academic timeframes around grief – I understand there’s a purpose to them, but it can be really unhelpful when you’re experiencing widowed grief, or any very intense relationship loss. Looking at timeframes can be detrimental, because we don’t want to compare our grief. For me, grief is lifelong – it’s as long as I’m going to miss the people who’ve died, which is forever. It’s just around managing the grief as it ebbs and flows – certainly very much a rollercoaster at times.

Steph: I imagine there’s a lot of unwarranted, uneducated judgment around grief, particularly when someone’s lost their partner – judgment around how quickly they move on, if they find a new relationship, how quickly they find joy and laugh. I imagine there’s guilt around experiencing joyful things despite having suffered such a devastating loss. Have you felt that? It’s such an unfair thing, because everyone grieves differently.

Michelle: Yes, and my point here is that the person experiencing grief, like myself, is already judging themselves harshly – I’ve already got a strong opinion on what I’m doing or not doing, so having judgment put on us is really unhelpful, because we’re already doing it quite often ourselves. In terms of widowed people, we’re allowed to love again – and I think this is a really important point. My experience is that I really enjoy and love sharing my life with someone. I don’t like being on my own – it’s something I’m capable of doing, but I actually enjoy sharing my life with other people, and re-partnering has been a part of that. Especially in my early period of re-partnering there was guilt, because of course I still love Nathan – but a widowed friend earlier on had said to me, when she remarried, “my heart is so big, Michelle, that I have so much love to give, and I can love again.” That really resonated with me, because I thought, that’s how I feel – I’m always going to have a special connection with Nathan, nothing is ever going to change that, and no opinion or judgment is going to change that. But I also have room in my heart and my life to re-partner and move forward and fall in love again.

Steph: What was it like falling in love with Ross?

Michelle: So amazing – we’re getting married, we’re engaged. Ross and I also have a history, so I don’t know if this is a pattern, but he had a Harley too – well no, he doesn’t have a Harley, he does like motorbikes, motocross type, but now it’s farming equipment. We were together when I was about 17 – I took him to my TAFE ball, I’ve got photos of us back then, though I don’t think he remembers that night, so I’m glad I’ve got the evidence. We were together for about three months, this was when I was really young, and it fizzled out – I was teasing him that he didn’t talk much, it was just so awkward. But I always thought he was a cutie. To be honest, we met again on Tinder as adults.

Steph: Wow.

Michelle: I was feeling ready for that at the time, and I quite often talk to people about how online dating sites are okay to access – it can be a great rebuilding of confidence, chatting with someone and rebuilding skills in that area, and if it makes you feel good, do what makes you feel good. Of course there are lots of things to consider with safety online, there are dodgy people out there, but I know so many people these days who met that way. Ross happened to be separated and single, and I saw his photo and thought, wow, I still felt this huge draw to him, and we started chatting and it went from there. I got to a point of thinking I just wasn’t going to be able to enter into a relationship properly, given my grief. Ross was very patient with me, and very clear that he wanted a relationship and wasn’t about playing the field – I really appreciated his honesty and his stableness, he’s always known himself and is clear on that. Our relationship grew, and at one point, because I wasn’t sure, I said to him on a phone call, “you don’t message me back very often, why don’t you message me back when I message you” – a bit demanding and needy, probably – and he said, but you weren’t sure if you wanted a relationship, Michelle. From that conversation I remember him asking, do you want to give it a go? And I said yes, I do. And it’s been on from that point, no looking back.

Steph: What a beautiful story – that full circle, the connection from all those years ago. I imagine there were two challenges for you – falling in love again and allowing yourself to experience love as you deserve, and then having your two boys to think about, who’ve lost Nathan and are navigating all of this with you, and introducing them to someone who’s now an enormous part of your life. What was that like?

Michelle: The introduction part went fairly well – because my boys were younger it was a lot easier than if they were older. Cody especially was two, so his memories are what we give him – the stories we tell, the photos and videos we share. My family, and I mean Nathan’s family too, are all very good at that – we talk about Nathan regularly, so Cody gets to know who his father was and is. But he’s also been able and supported to develop a beautiful relationship with Ross as a father too, and that’s been something very beautiful – I understand that’s not the case for all widows with children, but for me in this scenario it has been.

Steph: It’s beautiful that he’s got that relationship. And thank you for sharing so openly about the fact that you didn’t want to be alone – I think that’s such an important message, that no one needs to explain themselves for having love to give and enjoying sharing their life with someone. I think it’s really important for people listening who’ve lost someone and don’t think they’ll ever be happy again or find love again – because grief can be such a dirty word, always tainted as all bad, all negative, all awful. What I love about your story is you’ve found happiness again, but you’ve also managed to hold onto that grief to help others and work through it. Why did you want to help others? I imagine navigating your own journey is more than enough mental load – why go that step further?

Michelle: That’s a good question. It’s very much felt a natural progression, and I think that comes down to my social work career too – it’s always been important to me to connect with people, and I’m okay being honest that it’s important for me to be around people and connect with people because it makes me feel good. When grief hits, it can be so socially isolating – grief anxiety, grief depression, grief fury, all of the additional intense emotions we feel just create isolation. So it’s been around not wanting anyone to have to go through that without knowing they have support accessible to them, that they don’t have to do this alone. That’s something we need to keep pushing with grief awareness in our communities – we don’t have to grieve alone, there is support out there. And for those of us experiencing grief, we have to be able to go, I need help, I’m not okay. Quite often when I’m talking to people in counselling they say they don’t want to be a burden, don’t want to put too much on other people – but the people around you who care about you want to help, and if they know you’re not okay they’re going to want to help, and it makes them feel good too, as human beings we’re built to feel good with that altruistic view. It’s around this social isolation we’ve got in Western society – we live in individual houses, do everything separately, and we’re not supposed to live individually, we’re supposed to live as a collective society. It’s simply around connecting with each other again.

Steph: Absolutely, whether it’s through motherhood or grief or whatever it might be, it’s that connection piece. You’ve dedicated your life to supporting others, and now there’s a new chapter, the farming chapter. Why did you decide to buy a farm?

Michelle: It’s funny how it works – we were always dreaming about it, Ross has always dreamed of a farm, and I grew up in my teenage years hanging out on a dairy farm with my best friend, not far from where we’ve ended up buying. I’ve always loved being outdoors in space, so that lotto dream everyone’s got, of buying a farm, we talked about so much. At one point we’d taken a dinghy up the river that we’ve ended up buying on, and it was just a dream back then. We kept an eye on real estate, saw this property, thought we probably couldn’t quite afford it, but went to have a look anyway – and I’ve had this happen before with rentals, you just know it’s going to be your home, and I had that feeling here. We managed to make it work and move here – we’ve got 52 acres, Ross has put in a cattle crush, and we’re getting to know how the farm works. We’ve done the grazing match with MLA and Western Beef, which has been a lot of learning because we’re not farmers by family or history, we’re new to it. We’re really lucky to have the guys up at Arleigh Farm up the road, commercial and stud Speckle Park breeders, who’ve helped us so much with our steers and given us a hand with advice, because there’s just so much to it.

Steph: There sure is, and careful what you wish for – before you know it you’ll be looking at another farm. Maybe keep it in the sweet spot, Michelle, because bigger farm often means bigger headaches. But it’s so beautiful to hear you in this next chapter, having worked in and been connected to rural communities, and now being part of the farming community too. How has life been for the boys, given this is all relevant to your motherhood journey of raising kids on the land?

Michelle: Especially with Cody, he’s really interactive – always out with Ross on the farm, very involved in the farming activities, using equipment as safely as possible. It’s been a change for him, because he missed where we were before, the kids across the road he used to play with, but there are just so many benefits to being on the farm, getting to know the cattle and the herd, which has been really interesting. I’m just really pleased we’ve got this opportunity.

Steph: I’ve loved seeing your little cattle updates and photos, it’s been so beautiful to follow along. Michelle, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you to tell us how we can connect with you and your business, if someone is struggling with grief, or we know someone who is.

Michelle: The best way is my website, griefconnect.com.au – the counselling, the two widowed support groups and the Grief Language Project are all accessible through there. Keynote speaking and training to workplaces and communities too – if anyone’s interested in having me speak at their event, please reach out, send me an email, also accessible through the website. What I’m really excited about, Steph, is I’ve just launched the Grief Language Project Connect Cards. These are a deck of cards that fit into your handbag, that you can put on your farm table where employees are around, or on your family meal table in the kitchen – 50 cards full of helpful guidance to increase confidence in knowing what to say and do when supporting someone who’s experiencing grief. They’re categorised into four areas around communication – well-being cards, body language cards, statement cards and activity cards, and each card gives a suggestion around what you can say to help support someone through grief. Some cards will fit better for you, some might fit better for someone else – it’s just around picking what fits your language and feels comfortable, and acting on it. If you’ve got someone in your life who’s experiencing grief or might not be quite themselves, ask a question – and then it’s up to them to give feedback, and you can make your judgment on how you move forward, but it’s just around initiating that first question.

Steph: It’s so, so helpful, Michelle. It can be really bloody awkward to know what to say – my mother-in-law passed away a couple of months ago, and I had to go through that awkward stage of grieving myself while also trying to support my husband, and you don’t know what to say, neither of us had lost a parent before. So I totally appreciate how important the language we use around grief is. I wanted to say a huge thank you for sharing your story with us, for being so open about your journey, and for all the work you do to support people around the country. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you a bit more, Michelle.

Michelle: Thanks for having me, Steph. We’ve got some raw stuff there from my history, so I hope that’s helpful.

Steph: It is, it will absolutely help others. Thank you so much again.

Michelle: No worries, thanks, Steph.