Long before I became a counsellor on the Central Coast, grief was already part of my life.
I was born in a country that does not shy away from death, but faces it.
In Spain, where I grew up, death is not hidden behind closed doors. The coffin is often open. The deceased may rest at home or in a funeral parlour, surrounded by family and community. People sit together for hours, sometimes through the night, sharing stories, tears, silence, food, and prayers. Children are present. Grief is visible. It is communal. It is witnessed.
There is something profoundly human about sitting beside the body of someone you love. About touching their hand one last time. About allowing sorrow to exist in the room without rushing it away.
I was born into a family whose business was funeral services, so this was not occasional exposure; it was woven into everyday life. Death was not distant or whispered about. It was part of conversation, routine, and responsibility. I grew up witnessing families at their most vulnerable. I saw shock, disbelief, anger, and unbearable sorrow. But I also witnessed love — deep, enduring love — expressed through ritual, memory, and farewell.
Different cultures process death in different ways. Some gather loudly in communal mourning; others grieve quietly and privately. Some celebrate life with colour and storytelling; others emphasise solemn reflection. Yet across cultures, one truth remains consistent: ritual helps us metabolise loss. It gives structure to what feels unstructured. It allows the living to acknowledge what has changed.
Growing up in a culture that makes space for death taught me something important: grief is not something to be avoided. It is something to be honoured.
Over the years, I have experienced the death of loved ones through illness and age, and the devastation of suicide — losing people who were far too young to die. I have known the grief that follows relationship breakdown, where the person is still alive but the dream, the hope, and the vision of a shared future are gone.
I have lived anticipatory grief during serious illness — including my own early cancer diagnosis — and through the illness of close relatives, when uncertainty sits beside you like a shadow and the future no longer feels predictable.
Grief has accompanied me through different stages of my life.
What I have learned is this: grief is not one emotion.
It is a landscape — shifting, layered, and deeply human.
What Grief Really Is
In my work as a grief counsellor on the Central Coast, I often explain that grief is an attachment response. When we lose someone or something deeply meaningful, our nervous system reacts. The bond does not simply switch off.
This is why grief can feel physical. It may show up as tightness in the chest, deep exhaustion, disrupted sleep, intrusive thoughts, waves of yearning, or sudden surges of emotion. These are not signs of weakness. They are signs of connection.
Modern grief theory reminds us that healthy grieving is not linear. We move between confronting the loss and stepping back into daily life. One moment you may be functioning well; the next, you feel overwhelmed. This oscillation is not failure — it is adaptation.
The Grief No One Talks About
Some grief is socially recognised. Other forms are quieter — the grief of divorce, infertility, loss of health, identity shifts, or the grief that begins before death when illness lingers. There is also the grief that follows suicide, often layered with shock, unanswered questions, and complexity.
These losses can feel isolating because others may not understand their depth.
In my own anticipatory grief during illness, I remember grieving not only my health but the imagined future I believed was certain. Grief challenges our assumptions about safety, time, and control.
When Grief Becomes Complicated
Most grief softens over time, even though it never disappears completely. But sometimes it becomes stuck. This is more likely after sudden or traumatic death, suicide, multiple cumulative losses, loss during already stressful life periods, or when there has been unresolved relational conflict.
In my work on the Central Coast, I see how unprocessed grief can manifest as anxiety, irritability, emotional numbness, or depression. Grief does not always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like withdrawal. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like relentless busyness.
What Grief Counselling Offers
Grief counselling is not about “moving on.” It is about making sense of what feels senseless. It is about learning to regulate overwhelming emotional waves so they feel survivable rather than consuming. It is about processing guilt, anger, or unfinished conversations, and reconstructing identity after loss. It is about finding ways to carry memory without being consumed by it.
The goal is integration — not erasure.
In our sessions, we focus on emotional regulation and stabilisation first, especially when grief is layered with trauma. We gently explore unanswered questions and complex emotions. We make space to ask, Who am I now? because loss often reshapes identity, roles, and future plans.
Healthy grief does not require forgetting. Instead, we work on continuing bonds — finding meaningful ways to maintain connection, to honour and celebrate the life lived, while still engaging fully in your own.
Why I Do This Work
Grief shaped my childhood. Personal loss deepened my understanding. Illness refined my empathy.
When clients come to see me, they are not meeting someone who views grief purely as a clinical concept. They are meeting someone who understands that grief rearranges you.
It can break you open.
It can destabilise your sense of self.
It can also deepen your capacity for meaning.
If you are navigating loss — whether recent or long past — you do not need to do it alone.
Grief is the echo of love.
And love deserves space to be held safely.
By Lorena Fernandez Collazo (Registered Counsellor)
