Coaching is a co-creative conversation where the seeker (a.k.a. client) wants to understand and grow in a particular area of life. The coach provides a safe space for investigation and sharing of thoughts. Together coach and seeker explore questions and possible answers with the common aim of building a pathway to a healthy and re-imagined life. The interaction is typically short term, with the opportunity to check in on how the seeker feels about their progress.

Counselling shares a common approach with coaching but is more long term and diagnostic in nature. The process often delves into childhood experiences that are unconscious drivers of adult actions. The aim is recovery from trauma and develop alternatives to dysfunctional thinking and behaviours.

Grieving is an individual experience. How we grieve depends on so many factors which are unique to our own life experience. Some people let their feelings out; they cry or get angry, or both. Others go on about daily life, keep it all inside, trying to make sense of what has just happened in their own way. But they are not comfortable sharing their feelings with anyone, or maybe just a select few. Still others get busy. Action helps ease the feelings that are roiling around inside.

The best way to manage these differences is to let them be. No judgement. They will find their way back. If you are someone who needs to talk and share, a grief group may be the best solution, rather than depending on family members who do things differently than you.

That is what grief does to our brain. It is wired for ‘fight, flight or freeze’ and ‘rest and digest’. Grief is the brain’s freeze response to a perceived threat that is so devastating that it doesn’t know what to do to protect us. So we slow down, take to our couch, maybe barely eat and certainly curtail most activity. We experience brain fog and fatigue. It may take a few days to slowly come back to life. If it takes many weeks or months some professional medical assistance is likely warranted. However long it takes we want to see a progression from intense fatigue to restoring an active life.

I had a miscarriage a few months ago. While people expressed sympathy when it happened, no one wants to talk about it any more. But I still mourn the loss of that baby. I want to say I have 3 children, not only the two who are alive. People just don’t understand.

I cannot imagine how hard this is for you. Absolutely you have three children. I encourage you to search online for support groups for miscarriage support groups. They meet online and there may be an in-person group in your area. A supportive community is so important for any grief, especially the ‘disenfranchised’ ones.

The process of grief is different for each person. The intensity and duration can depend on how much trauma was involved in the initial event. For example, the death of a spouse is so much closer to our sense of wellbeing than the death of an acquaintance. It can also depend on how that death occurred – was it expected, was it natural causes, was it an accident, or murder?

When I was asked what it was like for me to lose my husband I would say it was like having a leg amputated. Now I have never had that happen, but I would never want it to either. I cannot even imagine what that would do to my sense of bodily integrity and self image. But it was the best simile I could think of that the questioner might relate to.

There may be some comfort to know that the initial pain and shock eventually softens and is integrated into memory. The event or person will never be forgotten, the intensity of emotion will ease.