<p>You know the feeling of having a good day, everything is fine, nothing out of the ordinary, and your body begins to trust, just for a moment, that it’s okay to slide out of fight-or-flight mode. That it’s okay to let your soul settle with a warm cup of tea or a slow, gentle walk.</p><p>And then, just as you begin to allow yourself the confidence to step into a space of trust—boom—the gut punch.</p><p>Your stomach drops and your mind lights up like a thousand fireflies, electrifying every single neural pathway, exploding into a chaotic frenzy of thoughts:</p><p><br /><i>“But what if?”</i><br /><i>“Stay alert.”</i><br /><i>“You can’t be happy.”</i><br /><i>“Don’t let your guard down.”</i><br /><i>“Hurry up.”</i><br /><i>“Hurry up.”</i><br /><i>“Hurrryyyy uppp!”</i></p><h3>When the Mind Spirals</h3><p>As I write this today, my three young children have scurried across the field to see their granny and grandad. I watched them go through the field, climb over the wall onto the driveway, and turn the corner to go inside the house. I was happy, knowing they were safe.</p><p>Then suddenly, a wave of panic came over me—a surge of danger taking over my senses. All the <i>what ifs</i> darting through my vision and mind. I didn’t physically see them walk in the door.<br /><i>What if there was a tractor that didn’t see them in the driveway?</i><br /><i>What if a tree fell down in the wind?</i><br /><i>What if the door to Granny’s is locked and they decide to wander around the fields?</i></p><p>All of these scenarios crept into my body, heightening my senses and triggering my deep-seated fear:</p><blockquote><p><br />“Someone else that I love is going to die.”</p></blockquote><h3>The Need to Know</h3><p>So what did I do? I rang their granny. I had to check. I had to know. I tried to wait 15 minutes, but my thoughts gripped me and a distressed state of consciousness set in.</p><p>It has been, and continues to be, a work in progress to differentiate between reality and thought.</p><h3>The Body Believes the Thought</h3><p>Have you ever noticed that when you think a certain thought, your body responds as if it’s happening in that moment?</p><p>This has been proven by science.</p><p>Our bodies do not know how to separate reality from perceived reality.</p><p><i>For example:</i><br />If I imagine a lemon in my hand—look at it, hold it, smell it, and then take a bite—my body reacts as if I’m biting into a sour lemon. As you read this, do you notice your mouth has more saliva? There’s no lemon in your hand, but your body believes there is.</p><p>This is the same for anxious thoughts.</p><p>When an anxious thought appears, our body believes it to be true.<br />99% of the time, it is not true.</p><h3>What Can We Do?</h3><p>So what can we do to support ourselves in moments of anxiety or overwhelm, when fear creeps into our cells?</p><p>We notice it.</p><p>Yes, it sounds simple for such an active, stimulated state—but it really does start there.<br />We have to begin to stop and truly notice what is going on for us in that moment.</p><p>So many of us are on autopilot, stuck in a heightened state of nervousness due to bereavement. It becomes a way of life. In a way, it feels safe—because the perception is that we have control by trying to manage the situation. But in reality, our thoughts and lack of awareness are in the driving seat.</p><h3>Bringing Yourself Back</h3><ul style="list-style-type:circle"><li>We begin by bringing our attention to our thoughts.</li><li>Notice them.</li><li>Remind yourself, and your body, that this is not happening right now.</li><li>That this is not true.</li><li>That right now, I am safe.</li></ul><p>Bring it back to the present moment.<br />Then we can empower ourselves to take back our own authority.</p><p>For example:<br /><i>Right now I am safe.</i><br /><i>Right now my hands are typing on my laptop.</i><br /><i>Right now there is warmth in my mouth from my ginger tea.</i><br /><i>Right now the rain is bouncing off the window.</i><br /><i>Right now my feet are in fluffy socks.</i><br /><i>Right now I am in my house.</i><br /><i>Right now I am safe.</i></p><p>As you read that paragraph, could you see where I was and what my senses were experiencing?</p><p><br />This is the power of imagination.</p><p><br />It can bring us to terrifying, anxious places—and it can also bring us to warm, tender, soft, and nurturing places.</p><h3>You Have the Power to Choose</h3><p>You have the choice.<br />Take your power back.<br />Start with noticing.</p><p>Remind your body that you are safe in this very moment.<br />These are just thoughts trying to keep you secure and in control.<br />They have served you well until now—and now it’s time to let them go.</p><p>Try reminding yourself:</p><blockquote><p><br /><i>“Yes, [insert your name], of course this is how you are trying to make sense of the world. Of course this is absolutely understandable. You have been through so much. Of course this is how you would be trying to protect yourself.”</i></p></blockquote><h3>Remember Your Compassionate Voice</h3><p>A lovely, easy way to bring yourself out of anxious thoughts and back into the room is to use the five senses. Try it now:</p><ul><li>5 things you can see</li><li>4 things you can touch</li><li>3 things you can hear</li><li>2 things you can smell</li><li>1 thing you can taste</li></ul><h3>Rewiring Takes Time</h3><p>Remember: your brain does not know how to distinguish reality from perceived reality.<br />This takes time to rewire and practice—but the more you do it, the more naturally it will come.</p>

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When Grief Triggers Anxiety: Navigating the Body’s Response

<h3>Trusting the Grief Process</h3><p>When a death happens to someone we love, whether expected or unexpected, our sense of safety and belonging is rattled. In the place where trust once resided, a rolling and encompassing wave of fear can knock security out of our bones and take an uninvited front seat in our mind and body.</p><p>This fear can create uncertainty, panic, doubt, and mistrust in ourselves. It can beg us to fall to our knees, as the person we once were surrenders to the earth and begins to try to understand how this once strong, capable, and confident self has been transformed—without will—dragged and catapulted into a wave of confusion, bewilderment, and disorientation.</p><h3>The Questions That Haunt Us</h3><p>How can we trust in this process?<br />How does any of this make sense?<br />It is not fair.</p><p>Why are we left behind to try to find some meaning in our deep sadness, while yearning for the life we once knew—where we lived vicariously, free of grief, and without this hollow sorrow?</p><h3>Grief Is Both Full and Empty</h3><p>The grief that is felt is both full and empty. It is tinged with melancholy, flashed with regret, woes, and worry. The grief process can throw us into a spinning wheel of fear and discomfort. It is felt wholly within the crevices of our bones and our being.</p><p>How can we trust this?<br />How does this make sense?</p><h3>You Are Human—And Your Reaction Is Normal</h3><p>We can trust this by knowing that we are human. These visceral reactions to the death of a loved one are normal parts of the grieving process. There is no one way to grieve. There are no tick-the-box answers or exercises.</p><p>So many of you reading this article today are looking for answers—how to fix this feeling, how to transform despair into trust and love again. The first thing you need to know is: your reaction is normal. The second is: what encourages one person to heal may not work for another.</p><h3>Grief Is Not Linear</h3><p>Healing our grief is not linear. It is complicated. It depends on your relationship with the person, your beliefs, values, faith, personality, coping mechanisms, core beliefs, and your family of origin.</p><p>It starts with you. This process is yours.</p><p>You can take inspiration along your journey of grief from other people. However, if something isn’t working for you, it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. It simply means that, in this moment, it’s not what you need. This can change depending on where you are on your pilgrimage of grief.</p><h3>When Grief Feels Unbearable</h3><p>I can tell you that if I had read one of my own articles when I was in the thick of grief after losing my third sibling, I might have thrown the phone or laptop at the wall in anger—feeling invisible, misunderstood, destabilised, and scared.</p><p>I would have wanted to shout from the rooftops:</p><blockquote><p><br />“They don't get it! They haven’t a f*ing clue what I’m going through!”</p></blockquote><p>This passed. Slowly, but it did pass. I began to trust and realise that this reaction was showing me my anger and frustration. That this needed to be sat with and acknowledged compassionately.</p><p>Of course I was angry. I had to learn that anger and frustration made sense.</p><h3>Grief Comes in Layers</h3><p>All parts of your grieving process will show up when they are ready. There are layers. Some are more difficult than others. There is no need to force this.</p><p>It is hard to trust this, especially when your faith in the universe has been pulled from the soles of your feet and the ground beneath you has been shaken.</p><h3>Rebuilding Your Foundation</h3><p>And know this: it is here that you will build the foundation of your delicate yet dynamic whole being. The being that has been cracked open—and through learning to trust yourself again—you will begin to look back and notice just how far you’ve come in your growth, compassion, and changing relationship with grief.</p><h3>An Invitation, Not a Prescription</h3><p>As always, remember that my writing is here just as an invitation. There is no right or wrong. Depending on your personality, attachments, beliefs, and values, this may land with you—or it may not. Take what you want and leave the rest behind.</p><h3>Grief Takes Time</h3><p>When you are ready, the right word, article, song, or poem will show up for you. Take your time with your grief. It is not a race. It is a sacred piece of you that seeks time to be honoured, sat with, and seen.</p><p>Taking time to be with your grief will empower you to trust the process—and most importantly, to trust yourself again.</p>

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Trusting the Grief Process: Learning to Honour Your Healing Journey

<h3>The Day Everything Changed</h3><p>I was ten years of age. My brother Declan had died just a year before. My parents had just returned from a hospital appointment for my dad, Frank. The doctors called it “Broken Heart Syndrome.” He needed a triple bypass within 24 hours or he would die of a heart attack. My dad was just 40.</p><p>He did have the triple bypass the next day—and he is still with us, tenderly and gratefully, 28 years on.</p><h3>Understanding Broken Heart Syndrome</h3><p>This “Broken Heart Syndrome” makes sense to me now.</p><p>Of course, his son had died at just seven years of age from a brain tumour. He was heartbroken. There is no other explanation. As a young child, witnessing my parents’ health fears come to life after Declan died was extremely scary. My heart dropped into my stomach with fear. It made the possibility of another death feel real again.</p><h3>A Family of Shattered Hearts</h3><p>My dad Frank, my mother Helen, and all of us siblings—six of us remaining—had to find ways to tend to our own heartbreak. We were a collective, a unified shattered heart. But we were also individuals. We had to learn to cope in different ways and gain hope and strength from what brought us distraction from the pain—and hopefully some joy too.</p><p>There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to soothing our broken hearts in grief. For my dad, it was physical at that moment. For some of us, it was emotional and mental. So we found our own ways.</p><h3>Surrendering to the Pain</h3><p>A way that worked for me in calming and realigning this fractured muscle of love was to surrender into it. To genuinely feel it. Even though I was terrified of what I would find in there—worried that the desolate pain would capture my entire being. I feared that going to that gut-wrenching place would lead me to a shadowed life of despair and suffering.</p><p>I believed if I could ignore it, then it would go away. I learned that this is not how it works.</p><p>Allowing myself the space to really acknowledge the emptiness and disintegration of what was once a whole, strong, and immaculate source of love—and coming to the reality that this was now different.</p><p>Yes, a piece of me had been internally fragmented. And along with this, I noticed the physical pain in my chest.</p><h3>A Grounding Practice for Grief</h3><p>What you can do right now:</p><ul style="list-style-type:circle"><li>Ensure you are in a place where you feel safe. Sit down with your two feet on the floor.</li><li>Notice your heart. Allow yourself some space to feel into this shattered part of your anatomy. Name it and claim it. This is yours. This is a part of you, and it is there through the absolute love and purity of connection that you had the honour of knowing through your loved one.</li><li>Notice if it is physically painful. It may feel overwhelming. Take a breath. Yes, breathe into that overwhelm. As you read this now, take a deep, intentional breath of acknowledgement—right down into those broken parts of your heart. Hold it, and release the sense of freedom and connection you feel as you allow your shoulders to drop into this reality.</li><li>Don’t be afraid to feel into it. You have already been feeling it, but often you’ve tried to push it away. Today is different. It is safe to tune inwards. This is sadness. This is loss. Your heart needs to be acknowledged, felt, and held.</li></ul><h3>Holding Your Heart with Intention</h3><p>Hold your heart intentionally. Place your hand over your heart. Notice the warmth from your hands entering the skin, moving down through the blood and deep into the muscles and chambers of your weary heart.</p><p>Give yourself this space, this time. You are here right now. Breathe in and breathe out.</p><p>Remember—you are feeling this pain for a reason. Tune in to yourself. Through connection to your own body, soul, and energy, you can begin to bring soothing and healing into each of your cells and crevices.</p><p>It is okay to feel that release. It is okay to let that go. It does not mean that you are letting them go. It means that you are letting the pain of the absence go—not them.</p><h3>A Balm for the Heart</h3><p>Think of soothing as though you are placing a calming, loving balm around your heart. It is safe, and it is mending. Your nervous system will begin to regulate.</p><p>Each of us has a different connection to our loved one who has died. However, where we notice their absence is internally—in our hearts, in the emptiness, and in the sense of numbness.</p><p>By tuning into your heartspace, it can reawaken the sensations and the energy flow, which in turn offers your body and soul vitality and movement. The blood will start to flow again where it once felt cold and shaken, as you gently and delicately soothe your broken heart with contention, intention, and warmth.</p><h3>Healing Begins Within</h3><p>These are grounding techniques that are simple and accessible. Your intentions are available to you at all times.</p><p>As a co-founder of <a href="https://www.jacintassmile.ie/">Jacinta’s Smile</a>, it is important for me and my sisters to remember to tune into our hearts and offer soothing. By doing this, we can offer support and regulation to others.</p><p>Healing begins by going inwards—and in turn, we can illuminate from the inside out.</p>

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Soothing a Broken Heart: A Child’s Journey Through Grief and Healing

<h3>The Day Everything Changed</h3><p>I was eight years of age when I found out that my little brother Declan had a malignant brain tumour. He was six. He died six months later at the tender age of seven. The day my parents received the diagnosis was the day that would echo throughout every essence of each of our beings. They tried all of the challenging and demanding treatments, and they would do it again in the morning if they knew it would save him. It didn’t work.</p><h3>A Family in Crisis</h3><p>We spent six months in and out of hospitals, hearing hushed conversations, feeling left out as he received all the attention (remember this is a child's perspective), and feeling confused. We were a family of six children, ranging in age from three to twelve.</p><p>The youngest sibling, in her early development and attuned to her parents’ energy, felt the drops in their stomach after each consultation. The oldest sibling, on the cusp of her teenage years, craved independence but was held back by fear. The worst had actually happened, and it might happen again.</p><p>Jacinta, Fintan, and I were in the middle, followed by the birth of our brother Sheridan the year after Declan died.</p><h3>Why I Became a Therapist</h3><p>I decided to become a therapist because I was desperately searching to understand what happened to my family. It changed in front of my eyes, and neither my younger self nor my adult self understood why.</p><p>As I leaned into my therapy work, as terrifying as it was, I learned that this change is what can happen in families. I thought it was just us. Discovering this offered me a sense of peace. I now knew that when a child dies in the family, life as it once was has been uprooted, altered, and disturbed. There is now a new sway to the family dynamic, and it can bring direction or disruption. For us, it was both.</p><h3>How Children Grieve Differently</h3><p>When a child dies in the family and the remaining children are still young, this fragments or cements their internal language and perceptions even further. This will have an impact on how the remaining sibling grieves.</p><p>It used to confuse me how all my siblings reacted so differently to losing Declan. We grew up in the same house, had the same parents, ate the same dinners, had the same holidays, and even wore the same clothes. We had loving parents who treated us equally. How did we all behave and view our lives so very differently?</p><h3>My Quiet Grief</h3><p>My grief for Declan was quiet, hidden. I unconsciously decided to stay small and not cause any further distress. This meant I was always seen as the good child — independent and able to look after myself. In turn, I wasn’t always offered help, and I certainly didn’t learn how to ask for it. Even into my adult life, I struggled with this.</p><p>I now know it’s my responsibility to sit with this shadow side and learn that it’s okay to be vulnerable. This is a part of me that still needs compassion and healing.</p><h3>Louder Grief and Coping Mechanisms</h3><p>For two of my siblings, their grief was louder. It poured into the sitting room with early use of alcohol, self-destruction, and harmful behaviours. Yes, part of this is associated with the early teenage years, striving for independence and yearning for belonging, but it was exacerbated by the sense of loss within the household.</p><p>Another sibling’s beautiful and kind exterior masked the fear of love. She knew the realities of what it was like to really love and care for someone and have them taken away so unexpectedly and unfairly. She was older, so she could comprehend the intricate delicacy of what an unnatural loss can bring. She fought hard to keep us balanced and, as the oldest and being a girl, believed it was her job to emotionally fix everyone.</p><p>It is now her responsibility to care for herself as well as she has cared for all of us.</p><h3>Healing Takes Time</h3><p>This all takes time. It takes awareness of destructive patterns learned through crisis and fear of another loss. So it will take time to unlearn these coping skills. They have served us well thus far, but there comes a time when they are no longer healthy and are holding us back.</p><p>This is the work: awareness and compassion for our young selves. Remember that the brain is flexible and can create new neural pathways of love, safety, and calm. It will take time, trials, and errors — but it is possible to learn to regulate your nervous system again.</p><h3>A Beautiful Analogy</h3><p>I was once gifted the knowledge of how to explain the impact of sibling loss by the wise and humble Brid Carroll of the Irish Childhood Bereavement Network. She told me that siblings represent the fingers on our hand. Each finger has a different print, different lines, and different sizes. This represents the personality, core beliefs, and coping mechanisms of the individual sibling. Even though they come from the same body, they are all unique.</p><p>This is how siblings experience the loss of a brother or sister — uniquely.</p><h3>Support and Compassion</h3><p>There is no single approach when it comes to experiencing loss as a child, and each situation may require a tailored approach. Take time to read articles by the Irish Childhood Bereavement Network on what you can do to support grieving children. And remember to do so with compassion and kindness to your tender heart.</p><p>And also remember to contact <a href="https://www.jacintassmile.ie/">Jacinta’s Smile</a> services to see how we can support you.</p>

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Sibling Loss in Childhood: A Personal Reflection on Grief, Growth and Healing

<p><i>What is it like to lose a sibling? Well, it's like swimming without a float — you can do it, but it's not as sturdy or buoyant.</i></p><p>I only knew my life with Jacinta in it. She was 17 months old when I was born. Our lives grew together. I was 28 when she died. I never had to protect myself, she did that for me. She was allowed to call me names or push me around as siblings often do but, my God! If someone did that outside of our family, she would be the first one to ride over on her BMX bike and swiftly wheelie them out of my life.</p><h3>The Void She Left Behind</h3><p>When she died, I felt exposed to the world. Vulnerable to a part of me that never had to show up before, because she always did it for me. I didn't need the confidence to speak; she did it for me. I now had to find a voice, and I didn't know what that sounded like without her tone joining in with mine.</p><p>Losing a sibling brings a sense of unmasking. An unwanted unfolding of a barrage of questions:</p><ul><li>Who am I without her?</li><li>Where do I belong now?</li><li>Where is my place in the family?</li><li>What roles do I have to step into now that hers is vacant?</li><li>Where will I stand in our family photo?</li><li>Are they her friends or my friends?</li><li>Do they still want to be friends with me?</li><li>Where is my place? </li><li>Where do I belong if it's not beside her? </li><li>Where will I share all of our memories and stories?</li><li>Who can I laugh with about the mom joke she made up in our bedroom when we were six and supposed to be asleep?</li><li>What will I do with the song in my head that she used to ask me to sing to put her to sleep every night?</li></ul><h3>The Small Things Are the Big Things</h3><p>These questions may seem trivial, but that's the way a sibling relationship blooms. It's always the small things. Together, they are the big things, the shared memories. There is a bond there that cannot be filled.</p><p>From childhood to death at an old age, we imagine our lives together floating through love, rivalry, shared joy, shared pain, misunderstandings, disconnections, and reconnections.</p><p>This is how we believed it would be. There was safety in that. A sense of belonging, teamwork, partnership, and a bittersweet symphony of all of life's moments. The struggles and the strengths were felt and witnessed by each other. In place of this, there is now a loneliness that feels hollow and yet substantial.</p><h3>The Secondary Grief</h3><p>These moments were experienced by two connected members — members of a union. When this membership is broken, there is a sense of being outcast and different. It can cause a sensation of losing the person you once were. And in that, there is also a secondary grief.</p><p>And then, seeping into the field of bereavement, arrives the harsh truth: our parents are no longer the people they once were. Especially as an adult, it feels like our responsibility to help them through their deep pain and sorrow. They are broken too — they have lost part of their own birthed tribe.</p><p>As siblings, we feel the weight and acknowledge the full sense of helplessness. We have to witness this, knowing there is no fixing their broken soul. This can be excruciating.</p><h3>Ten Years On</h3><p>It has been almost ten years since Jacinta’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm. Even writing this seems like I am lying or making it up. The moments of reality hit deep. However, now, they are met with a sense of compassion for myself and my grieving heart.</p><p>How do I do this?</p><h3>Leaning Into Grief</h3><p>Acknowledging that the pain and emotion behind each interaction with loss is safe. It is safe for me to go there. It is safe to be in this. I had to lean into it. I learned that the thought of going to that deep place was actually worse than the moment of it.</p><p>I did this by breathing in and acknowledging.<br />Give yourself the time to be with your own grief.<br />Learn to accommodate it.<br />Notice all the feelings that surge through you. The confusion, the anger, the gutted stomach, the hopelessness, the love, the disconnection, the fear.</p><h3>All Feelings Are Welcome</h3><p>All of these feelings are welcome. They all have a place. One is not worse than the other — they simply are, and they are there to be felt.</p><p>That is when bravery comes in. That is your strength.<br />Notice your courage to feel all of the complications.<br />And breathe. Release. Let yourself go.<br />Remind your inner critic to be kind.<br />Slow down and let yourself feel into the emotions.</p><p>You deserve this space and time to reconnect with yourself.<br />Yes, you are different — but you are different with a strike of lightning now running through your veins.<br />Feel this light, this power, and this burst of energy. It is also yours.<br />It is okay to feel the light and the darkness at the same time. It is all welcome.</p><h3>A Note on Guilt</h3><p>As I write this, I am also highly aware that whilst I have lost three siblings, in this article I only speak to the loss of my sister Jacinta. And with this, I notice the guilt seeping in.</p><p>Does that mean I didn't love my brothers as much?<br />Does that mean their death did not impact me?<br />Why did I choose to write about Jacinta?</p><p>And... I notice these thoughts. I acknowledge them. And I let them go.<br />Life is complicated, and not everything has an answer. Just like grief.</p><p> </p>

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Losing a Sibling: A Lifetime of Grief, Love and Identity

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When Grief Triggers Anxiety: Navigating the Body’s Response

Trusting the Grief Process: Learning to Honour Your Healing Journey

Soothing a Broken Heart: A Child’s Journey Through Grief and Healing

Sibling Loss in Childhood: A Personal Reflection on Grief, Growth and Healing

Losing a Sibling: A Lifetime of Grief, Love and Identity