I didn't go to university after college. I did various retail and admin jobs. The last job I did before I went to university opened my eyes to the discrimination and treatment of people. After seeing the injustice and equality for those going through difficult times, I decided I wanted to contribute to anti-discriminatory practice. That's what led me to social work.
When I started my career, I never imagined I would end up working in grief and bereavement. In fact, there was a time I thought I couldn't handle it at all.
I started my career as a social worker for Deaf people. That was my plan when I applied to go to university and the path I was committed to. At university, I took an optional module on loss and bereavement. I didn't know it then, but that decision would shape the rest of my career. I saw how devastating loss could be and how isolating grief often was. I knew then that supporting people through grief was important, meaningful work. But I didn't think it would ever be my work.
Still, I kept coming back to it. Alongside my job as a Sensory Services Social Worker, I trained with Cruse Bereavement Support and began working one-on-one with grieving people. I was learning how to sit with people in their pain, how to listen, and how to help them navigate all the difficult circumstances and complications loss brings.
When a social work position opened at a children's hospice, I knew I had to apply. I got the job, and for a while, I thought I had found the work I would do forever. I loved my role. I worked with children with life-limiting conditions and their families, offering support through some of the hardest moments of their lives. It was meaningful, and I was fully committed to it. I could see myself in that job for the rest of my career.
Then, after a few years, I hit burnout. Pretty spectacularly.
The work was heavy. That's inevitable in end-of-life care. But alongside other factors in my life, I started struggling in a way I never had before. Panic attacks, dissociation, insomnia-it all became part of my daily life. I felt completely overwhelmed. I couldn't keep going, so I left. And when I left, I grieved.
I wasn't just grieving for the children and families I had worked with. I was grieving the loss of a job I thought I would do forever. I believed it meant I couldn't work in grief and bereavement anymore, that I wasn't strong enough to handle it.
So, I moved on. I worked in a range of different social work roles-hospital discharge (including end-of-life care assessments), community support, crisis intervention, brain injury rehabilitation, and mental health education. These roles looked different on paper, but underneath, they all had one thing in common: grief and loss.
As a social worker, you meet people in crisis. I worked with people who were grieving their physical health, their mental health, their relationships, and their futures. I saw people mourning the life they had expected to have. And I walked alongside them as they figured out how to rebuild and adapt.
Then my mum died.
I had been caring for her for months, and the anticipatory grief had already been weighing on me. But when she died, I fell apart. I experienced deep sadness, suicidal thoughts, and a complete loss of meaning and purpose. I withdrew from my friends and family for months. I stopped doing everything I once loved. I could barely function.
And this was me-someone who had spent years working in grief support, who understood loss, who knew how grief worked. But none of that stopped it from hitting me harder than I ever expected.
I had to find a way through. So, I did the work.
Therapy helped. It gave me space to process emotions and to work through things I had been carrying for years. But therapy alone wasn't enough-I also needed to figure out how to live again.
That's when I started applying the tools I had used for others to myself. I used coaching techniques, resilience skills, and everything I had learned in my social work career and coaching work. Slowly, I began to see a way forward. I made small changes. I found ways to engage with life again.
Then, less than three years later, my dad died.
I was terrified that I would end up back in that same place. But I didn't. Not because I loved him any less but because I had resourced myself. The grief was still there, and it was still hard. But this time, I knew how to carry it. I knew how to let grief exist without letting it take over my entire life.
That's when I knew I could do this work again.
For years, grief work had been calling me back. I had spent my career supporting others through loss, and now I had lived it in a way I never had before. I understand what it's like to feel lost in grief and think that you'll never be able to get through it. And I understand what it takes to find a way forward.
This work matters. People deserve to be supported and witnessed in their grief. And I'm here to do exactly that.
