Author: Trudie Bamford

Grief impacts every aspect of your life. Your body, your emotions, your routines, your cognition, grief bleeds into it all, like a drop of ink in a glass of water. But it goes much deeper than that. We live in a world that we’ve carefully constructed, from our earliest age. Its foundation is our family…

Stop telling grieving people they just need to accept their loss. We’re not playing a board game here, they don’t get a prize when they make it through all the stages to acceptance nirvana. Stop telling them that it’s time they moved on. First of all, there is no moving on. Second of all, their…

I’m reading a book about octopus at the minute; they are fascinating, incredibly intelligent creatures. They have so many neurons in their arms that if you cut one off it will continue functioning for several hours as though it was still part of the octopus. Out there, foraging for food, without a brain to direct…

I have a dog. He is so much more than a dog. He is a best friend. He is a child. He is a companion. He is a therapist. He is a teacher. He is a soulmate. I think daily about how precious the time we have together is. I live through losing him every…

There are no top trumps with grief. We were taught this in our Cruse Bereavement Support training. I used to state it plainly when leading Cruse Understanding Your Bereavement Online sessions. I make sure to say it to the clients I support one-to-one. But it’s a concept that lingers. We’re so used to comparing ourselves,…

Have you been triggered lately? That word has made its way from therapy speak into public consciousness. I hear it every day. That’s triggering. I’ve been triggered. Trigger warning. It makes me wonder if there needs to be a gentle shift in the language we use. It’s good that there is more understanding about cause…

“You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler We talk a lot about adaptation in the grief world. And that is a huge part of learning to live with grief by your side. What…