A few months ago I read a quote by Cheryl Strayed who wrote the book and movie ‘Wild’. She was being interviewed about her new TV series, ‘Sugar’ and her perspective really resonated; ‘The only thing we can do when we lose somebody who is essential to us is take the ugliness of that loss and make something beautiful. And Sugar is my beauty that I made of my mom’s death. Sugar is the beauty I made of my sorrow.’
Less than a week after my mum died (it’s a bit of a blur) a friend came to see me, and we talked about our bereavements. And she cried, it was only 6 months since her dad passing. And I remember thinking, god, how will I cope, still crying in 6 months?
Since then, when I’ve burst into tears unexpectedly and inconveniently (in a Spanish lesson, playing volleyball, at the school gates) I’ve been quickly gathered into the arms of people often who I barely know, and held. It’s what we CAN do, when there’s nothing else that can be done. Just hold on. Often, those holding me will whisper through tears, ‘I lost my mum 20 years ago and I still miss her’.
It was around four months after my mum passed that the idea for a Loss Circle started to form. It was a natural place for me to land as I went through the process of trying to make something beautiful from the pain, to give a shape to the sorrow. And whilst that sadness would remain at the heart of it, the healing and beauty (for myself and others), I hoped, would grow around it. Through a series of strange coincidences and (unusually!) intuitive action, I created a safe space for the bereaved to be able to tell the stories of their loss, and talk about the lives their loved ones had lived.
I turned my love for my mum into the Circle Space.