My story

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. Whilst 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, and I had a vague sense of knowing that it would be in my future, but I didn't know how.

I kept coming back to it. Alongside my job as a Sensory Services Social Worker, I trained with Cruse Bereavement Support and began volunteering with them, working one-on-one with grieving people. I learned how to sit with people in their pain, listen, and help them to move through 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, and insomnia became part of my daily life. I felt completely overwhelmed and due to various factors, felt that I couldn't continue in the role, so I left. And when I left, I grieved.

I grieved for the children and families I had worked with and I grieved 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 spanned different areas of social work, but they all shared one thing: 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 was a small part of helping them to adapt to new lives they had never dreamed would be theirs.

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; many types of loss I didn't know I was grieving. But therapy alone wasn't enough. I needed to start 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 and 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. And it wasn't because I loved him any less; it was because I had resourced myself and put into practice the things I knew. The grief was still there, and it was still hard. But this time, I knew how to work with it and live with 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.