About Us
About Us
Grief to Growth Creative has been born out of losing my son to acute myeloid leukaemia in the summer of 2019.
Throughout our experience, I found myself gravitating towards writing as a method of self-expression; and after losing Ben, I was given some invaluable advice from a friend and teacher of Instrumental Living, Steve Lashley, who told me to ‘feel everything.’ It was the best piece of advice I could have received at that devastating time and helped me to process my grief in a way that has allowed me to remain present in all I do and to remain in balance as I navigate motherhood with my children and life as a bereaved parent.
Grief to Growth helps the bereaved community to find presence in their grief through creative outward expression, with a focus on bereaved parents, but is open to anyone affected by the loss of a child.
The Role of Creativity and Breath in Grief
In grief the part of your brain responsible for analytical thinking shuts down and you find yourself unable to manage usual day to day activities. Grief is a stagnant energy that forces you to stop. You might find that you are sleeping a lot due to a constant heightened state of awareness and will need to allow your whole nervous system to calm down and rest. This can take weeks and months, sometimes years.
When the world feels too overwhelming and your body’s response is to go into a state of numbness, creativity is the side of the brain that remains active, gently encouraging and protecting your heart and your memories, helping you to momentarily divert the agony of grief, to allow you to express in a different way.
Many of us who are grieving find that when we are able to express the creative side of our nature, it allows us to process the pain through valuable self-expression and creative exploration.
We, as humans, are instinctual by nature, but because of the pressures of modern daily life and expectations, we become reactively led. Over many millennia, man has only developed himself to work with what he can see in front of him, while essentially ignoring the side responsible for our survival and understanding of everything around us. As a result, the body is forced to develop stresses in the body system, which create imbalance in the body. The way this then impacts is through mental stimulation as we become reactive in our daily approach to life due to the constant pressures of modern-day living.
When we become breath-led and learn to be in the present moment, the entire body system is able to begin to process the grief and not just part of it. As we express outwardly, we allow the stagnant energy of grief to move, thus we are able to release it. Not let go, but just move it, so that we can move onto the next moment.
I created this piece after continually seeing an image in my mind’s eye of a group of bereaved families and those who have been lost, are represented as beings of light.
I personally feel that even if the physical person has gone, our relationship with them is still very much part of us and our lives.
