On the 4th of May, my husband lost his father, his final living parent, after his mother passed away a decade earlier. There is a particular finality that comes with losing the last parent, a closing of a chapter that can never be reopened, and a grief that carries its own unique weight.

For the past six weeks, we’ve been navigating the reality of grief. As a wife, mother, business owner and caretaker of this land, I’ve continued supporting my husband while caring for our children, tending to the farm, welcoming guests to Prana Estate and somehow keeping life moving forward.

Grief has a way of changing the atmosphere of everything.

It slows time.

It asks us to stop.

And yet, as a society, we haven’t really learned how to embrace death.

We all live and die. It is the one certainty we all share. Yet death remains one of the most uncomfortable and taboo topics in Western culture. We avoid talking about it until it arrives at our doorstep, and then we’re left trying to navigate something we were never taught how to process.

The older I get, the more I realise that grief isn’t actually about the person who has passed. They have moved on. They are no longer suffering. Grief is often about our loss. The space they leave behind. The conversations we’ll never have. The milestones they’ll miss. The love that still exists but now has nowhere obvious to go.

For generations, it felt as though grief was something to be endured quietly. Something to push down, get on with, and carry on.

Today, thankfully, more people are learning to feel their feelings fully.

To allow sadness, anger, shock and heartbreak to move through them rather than become trapped within them.

Because the body keeps the score.

The mind may forget. The subconscious stores. The body remembers.

This understanding sits at the heart of two modalities I work with regularly: The Emotion Code and Spiritus Breathwork.

Both help release what has been held, often for years, sometimes for decades.

Recently, I worked with a client who had lost her father to suicide late last year. She had spent years in therapy and months in grief counselling, yet still felt there was something deeper needing to be addressed.

She found me online and booked a Spiritus Breathwork session.

Before we began, I explained the process. The breath would be her guide. She would only go as deep as she felt ready to go.

What stood out most was her willingness to trust the process.

She didn’t hold back.

She allowed herself to fully surrender to the experience.

Afterwards, she told me that the single session had provided more movement and relief than the previous six months of counselling. She was amazed at what her own breath had uncovered and released.

Three weeks later, she returned.

The second session was completely different, yet equally profound.

The body knows exactly what it is ready to process, and when.

The past six weeks have also stretched me personally.

There have been moments where I’ve felt like there are three children needing my care. Moments where my own capacity has been tested. Moments where exhaustion has met me head-on.

Supporting someone through grief can feel helpless at times.

You witness the suffering and wish you could take it away.

But that isn’t the human experience.

We must feel what is ours to feel.

We must move through it.

Not around it.

Not over it.

Through it.

Because it is through these experiences that we are changed.

Not broken.

Changed.

As I write this, we are approaching the seventh week.

I know the grief my husband carries will never completely disappear. The loss of a parent changes you forever. The grief doesn’t go away. It simply changes shape over time.

Right now, we’re still in the thick of it.

And witnessing someone you love move through that pain is its own journey.

Grief isn’t new to us.

In our thirties, we experienced a miscarriage and lost seven immediate family members over four years. Between us, we each lost a parent.

Years later, PTSD arrived unexpectedly following the loss of my father.

Back then, talk therapy and spiritual guidance helped me cope.

But it wasn’t until I undertook my Spiritus Breathwork training, which involved twelve weeks of intensive breathwork sessions, that layers of grief, trauma and emotional pain I didn’t even realise I was carrying finally began to surface and release.

Every session revealed something different.

Every session allowed another piece of me to heal.

Breathwork saved me, you could say.

Today, as I support my husband, I have a different awareness.

Through my own healing journey and my exploration of Parts Work, I can recognise the different parts of us that emerge during times of grief. The angry part. The numb part. The overwhelmed part. The exhausted part.

Each one simply trying to process what has happened.

Seeing this has allowed me to witness the experience without taking it personally.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts during this season has been this land.

Every day, my husband sits by the fire.

A ceremony of his own.

Lighting it. Watching it. Sitting with whatever emotions arise.

The land quietly holds space for it all.

The sadness.

The shock.

The anger.

The love.

If we were still living in Sydney, I know this experience would look very different.

Here, nature has become part of the healing.

The stillness, the trees, the birds, the changing light.

They ask for nothing.

They simply witness.

And sometimes that is exactly what grief needs.

So if you are carrying grief, I see you.

If you are carrying trauma, I see you too.

I wish our culture approached grief with more ceremony, more understanding and more compassion. I wish we allowed it to be part of life rather than something to fear.

Maybe one day we will.

Until then, know that you do not have to carry it alone.

There are people, places and modalities that can help support your journey.

And if you feel there is grief, trauma or emotional pain still stored within you, perhaps it’s time to explore what healing could look like for you.

Whether through The Emotion Code, Spiritus Breathwork, or simply spending time in nature and allowing yourself to feel what needs to be felt, healing is possible.

Here at Prana Estate, I hold space for those seeking peace, clarity and a deeper connection to themselves.

Sometimes all we need is a safe place to breathe, feel and begin again.