Australian Association of Social Workers podcast: Michelle Moriarty – Supporting widowed people in rural communities

Welcome to Social Work People, a podcast from the Australian Association of Social Workers investigating the diverse world of social work and connecting listeners to the people actively driving change and advocacy on the issues that impact the quality of life of all Australians.

Angela: It wasn’t that people didn’t want to help, it was that people didn’t have the language to ask me what help I needed. This was the conclusion that Michelle Moriarty came to when she reflected on her experiences as a young widow in rural Western Australia. Now she’s won an award for that work, but I was interested in hearing more from Michelle because of the generosity of spirit she must have had to come to that second conclusion. Good morning, Michelle. You won the AgriFutures WA Rural Women’s Award – can you start by telling us about the work you’ve been doing that led to you receiving that award?

Michelle: Yes, I’ve been a social worker for over 18 years, and I’m a member of the AASW. In 2018, my late partner Nathan died – it was a sudden experience, and it shocked my family, friends and myself to the core, and every aspect of my life changed at that point. I did take some time off, and my trajectory as a social worker moved to grief, trauma, loss and bereavement. I launched Grief Connect in May last year, and provide a variety of grief and bereavement services under that umbrella. The other part of my journey that changed where I was going, and I didn’t realise it at the time, happened four months after Nathan died, when I founded an online peer support group called the WA Young Widow Support Group. That came about after meeting another widow, because after Nathan’s death I’d felt really isolated and alone in my grief. I was 38, with a two-year-old and a six-year-old to raise and parent without Nathan, so I had to find who I was again as a person, create my new identity as a widow, and manage my grief alongside who I was as a person, including being a social worker. In those early days I reached out to another widow, and we met up, and I felt an instant connection – which was exactly what I needed, because being 38 and a young widow, I didn’t know anyone else who was a young widow, and neither did the people around me. It’s a very unusual circumstance to be widowed at 38, but it happens. From there, I created a Facebook peer support group, just four of us to start, purely for support and connection at that point, and to reduce the isolation I was feeling, and empathise with each other around the challenges specific to young widows. From there the group slowly grew, because I live in a rural area, Bunbury’s a regional city, and word started to spread, and people were joining, and it was all “me too” – there were other young widows out there, and I had no idea how many.

Angela: Are all the people in your group from rural Western Australia?

Michelle: No, people are from all over the state – anybody who’s a young widow in WA can join.

Angela: I’m guessing for women from rural backgrounds this is particularly important, because they may not be bumping into people who’ve had the same experience in their day-to-day life, the way you might if you’re living in a big city.

Michelle: Absolutely – being able to connect with people in rural and remote areas through the internet, through the online peer support group, enables people in those areas to have access to the support and connection that exists.

Angela: Now, through Grief Connect, do you also run groups in a professional capacity, as well as being a member of this online group?

Michelle: I don’t run groups in a professional capacity, but I do run them as admin through the WA Widow Support Group. They’re peer support groups, also led by other young widows – the mission and vision of the group is that we’re all equals as young widows, equally responsible for arranging a catch-up, or responsible for our own emotional wellbeing. So they’re not therapeutic groups in a clinical sense, but they are supportive in that peer support way.

Angela: I want to take you back to something you said – being responsible for your own wellbeing, which is a bit different to what people might think, because when we think of someone who’s been widowed, particularly young, life has served them this curveball that’s turned everything upside down. Can you talk a bit about how it’s possible for people to still regain a sense of being responsible for their own wellbeing in that context?

Michelle: Yes, absolutely. It’s very important for everybody to have the ability to self-reflect. As a young widow, this was a whole new territory I was having to navigate – my filter was not what it was before, it was a lot shorter and sharper, and because my emotions were so big, my behaviour had changed too, so people around me had to navigate grief along with me. In the earlier days it was also very important for me to communicate with people about my needs – whether I needed help with a task, or needed someone to leave me alone, or needed them to be there intensively. When grief is so big, it’s really important to be able to communicate your needs, and almost give people information on how they can help, because I found people don’t know what to do or how to help.

Angela: And that brings us to the other aspect of your project, the Grief Language Project, which aims to address directly what you’ve just been describing – tell us about that.

Michelle: I founded the Grief Language Project last year, and it just evolved naturally. I’m really passionate about it, because it’s an opportunity for me to talk about Nathan and share our story, and also talk about grief – what it does to the brain, how it can affect our behaviour, what that can look like, what to expect. And then, if you’re the person experiencing that big, overwhelming grief, how you can communicate with other people to have your support needs met, along with some practical, emotional and psychological grief management strategies they can incorporate into daily life. I also talk to people who are supporting someone experiencing complicated grief, about how they can support them with communication skills, and what their duty of care might be. For both, I talk about self-care, which as social workers we know is so important.

Angela: So the Grief Language Project isn’t just about the person who’s grieving, but also the people who want to help them?

Michelle: Yes.

Angela: And it’s designed to help those people become better at helping?

Michelle: Yes, better at helping, and developing fluency in grief language – because that’s something we need to get better at as a general society, being fluent in how we speak to people, how we support each other, what words we use, what we should and shouldn’t say. Those are the grief language skills it’s important we become more fluent in, and that’s what the project aims to do.

Angela: How did you come to the realisation that your friends wanted to help but couldn’t, and that this was the unmet need your project could address?

Michelle: It’s just been through conversation – I love communicating and talking, everyone around me knows that. I think it’s been about having really honest conversations, and sometimes those are really uncomfortable and can carry anxiety, but that’s okay, because those conversations have opened up connection and strengthened relationships. I’ve talked to my friends about things going on in their lives that, at the time, some of them hadn’t told me, because they were trying to protect me – which I sometimes wish they hadn’t, because I wanted to know about real life, something other than my grief. But also, my grief was sometimes so overwhelming that I didn’t have the ability to empathise as well as I normally would have.

Angela: So your friends said to you, we wanted to help and we didn’t know how?

Michelle: Yeah, we didn’t know what to say.

Angela: And so you saw that as the need to address – from your experience, you can tell people what to say and how to say it, and, as you said, be fluent.

Michelle: Be fluent – and one of the big things is that it’s okay to say “I don’t know what to say”, just being transparent and open and honest. That acknowledgement is so important in grief – having your grief acknowledged, or acknowledging someone else’s grief, is just so therapeutic.

Angela: Another thing I wanted to follow up on – were you nominated by somebody for this award, or how did that come about?

Michelle: I saw the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award on a grants website, had a read, and thought, hmm, could I do that? The old imposter syndrome kicked in a little, but I overcame that and thought, I’ve got nothing to lose. I put in for it, went through to the panel – the people involved with the AgriFutures Award are incredibly supportive of women succeeding with their innovative ideas and projects, so there was nothing but support from the start, which alleviated any anxiety I had. I made it as a finalist, presented the widowed support group projects to the panel in February, and in March I won the WA AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award.

Angela: The reason I ask is that I think we have a lot of AASW members running private practices in regional and rural locations, and the benefits that flowed to you didn’t just wait until you’d won – there were opportunities open to you even as a nominee, in terms of meeting other people. So if we’ve got members listening who don’t think they’ll actually win, would you encourage them to nominate anyway?

Michelle: Absolutely – put your project forward, you can do this. It’s that self-belief, that you absolutely can do this. Social workers are incredibly capable, intelligent and skilled, and we need to believe in ourselves and have the confidence to take the next step. For me it’s also about being really proud of being a social worker – I tell everyone I’m a social worker, and that I’m a registered member with the AASW. I think it’s so important that we promote what we do as social workers.

Angela: Yes, because the project flowed quite organically out of your experience, and now looking back, we can appreciate the innovative aspect of it, which is helping other people become more fluent about grief. I really appreciate you sharing that with us, Michelle, thank you very much.

Michelle: Thank you so much for having me, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you.