About Michaela.
I come to this work from my own experience of living with grief. Grief is a language I’m deeply acquainted with, an intimacy that was once my greatest fear. The terminal diagnosis that my three month old received and her death at age three, led me into the long dance of tending to my grief. Prior to becoming a mother, I had lived with grief in a different way. My spine was fused when I was 16, and I was told I had to stop dancing. It was a pain and limitation that would be lifelong. I was angry and stunned that ‘God would allow this to happen’. I spent years searching for answers as to why these things happened, outrunning the depths of the pain, spiritually bypassing, staying distracted and finding other ways of managing.
After the birth of my fourth child, during another difficult postpartum period, I knew the anxiety I was experiencing was tied to a much deeper story. It wasn’t until I began somatic psychedelic work and turned toward grief in community, that I began to recognize how often I needed to acknowledge my grief. That it was an integral part of life. The more time I spent with it, the less complicated it became.
For 25 years, grief lived like a windstorm inside of me as I birthed and mothered my four children. As a deep feeler, it was a shock to me that so much grief was still stored inside of my bones, heart and the stories I carried. I had mourned but had I worked toward accepting the losses?
Turning toward my grief threw the windows wide open. We can’t change the power of grief, but we can learn to allow it to blow through our homes, instead of getting stuck inside the kitchen, where it’ll grow frenzied. We can live alongside it, alchemizing the fear, sorrow and anger and allow it to change us. Soften us. Flow through us. Tending these tendrils of grief has illuminated the profound beauty and goodness of life. Instead of feeling overwhelmed or stuck inside the grief, there is a sense of hope, relief and acceptance when done together. Grief tending has been a source of joy and connection that keeps the doors open.
As a grief mentor or ‘midwife’, I bring my lived experience, the cyclical power of the seasons & our senses, movement & writing exercises & my training and apprenticeship in grief tending facilitation to my work in groups and 1:1 containers.
As a Parent faculty member at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice, I have the honour of using my lived experience of parenting a medically fragile child and as a bereaved mother to facilitate meaningful and grief informed conversations with clinicians across the country and train them to have an effective and compassionate Serious Illness Conversation.
My previous work as a DONA certified doula and global experiences as a traditional birth attendant, formed my great love and respect for welcoming life and death cross culturally. I’ve owned two small businesses, one creative and one holistic. Both inform how I tend to detail and wellbeing.
I’ve had the pleasure of speaking numerous times about my grief experience to small and large gatherings. I’ve held seasonal sensorial retreats as well as embodied movement workshops in faith safe spaces.
My approach to grief tending is informed by some dear teachers: my motherhood experience, the work of Francis Weller (‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’), Dr. Hillary McBride, and Sophy Banks.
Grief Tending Facilitation training:
Apprenticing to Grief mentorship with Sophy Banks, Jeremy Thres, Sarah Pletts and team.
Current: The Art of Grief Tending with Nici Harrison and guests.
My grief story.
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I began my own intensive grief work after the birth of our fourth child, and second daughter. My body could no longer maintain the crisp edges, and I began to bleed outside of the lines.
My cup was full of joy and grief that manifested as anxiety. I found I could no longer hold it all. I wanted the anxiety gone, and quickly. I was desperate for relief. The only way through it, for me, was to face it head on. Nothing else was working: medication, prayer, counselling, wine, distraction, or doctor’s appointments to address the physical discomfort.
I was deeply grieved that I was carrying so much inside of me, and it was changing my body and mental health. I could not outrun it, and I no longer wanted to. I rolled up my sleeves, while weeping, while the pandemic raged, while trembling, while nursing my baby, and dove in.
In the middle of the vast ocean of grief, I recognized I felt a kind of addiction to feeling my grief. It felt spooky and kind of shameful to say aloud. I knew other bereaved parents might feel offended. I knew it sounded strange, but it’s what made sense to me. I liked to pull off the cork and take a big gulp, feeling the depth of my pain, crying, longing and then, euphoria would flood in. It was akin to how I felt in early motherhood after being told my baby was going to die. Unfathomable sorrow in my heart, and then, pure joy in my arms.
This dipping in and out kept my memories fresh. But I needed more than letting it out. The catharsis that came after these releases left me feeling depleted, and that felt a lot like healing at the time. It was surprising to me how far down the roots of grief went, how unseen and intertwined they were. Surely grief was good? Grief was love. Life seemed to be ticking along. I couldn’t go back, could I? Who would sit, stand, rage, move through this with me now? But that’s exactly what I needed.When the acuteness of grief wears off, the stark reality sets in, the secondary losses seem to pile up and it can feel overwhelming.
I always considered myself to be a big feeler, an open book, and I had written often and honestly about my grief. I wanted to stay close to the feelings of sorrow, pain and the euphoria that comes after, because so often those were feelings I carried in my body as I mothered my dying daughter. It felt necessary and normal to keep this part of her alive. The alternative felt unbearable and I didn’t feel equipped to do it on my own, nor did I want to. I was unconsciously holding onto the grief, because I felt that if I went all the way in, I would lose a sense of connectedness with my daughter.
The emotional release I speak of can feel powerful in the moment, offering a sense of relief, but integration is what I really needed. I needed my body to fully accept this part of my story, and allow it to settle. I worked to metabolize my emotions, which essentially meant I turned toward my pain and allowed it to transform into understanding and acceptance. This process required patience (it took years), presence (I had to learn to stay with the discomfort, sensations and truth) and willingness (I had to keep showing up, when I felt good and when I felt awful).
I wanted to be fully alive and accepting of my life, experiences, body and spirit after a loss that society calls “the worst”. I wanted to find the skills and resources to fortify myself, knowing full well that I would be companioning with grief again in my life.
I remember thinking, I just want someone to hold my hand, hold my face, be with me in this, whatever this is, whatever it sounds like.
I know the loneliness that often accompanies deep grief, particularly as a bereaved parent. Having a neutral and loving witness moved the needle immensely for me in my own grief journey. No friend, parent, pastor could seem to reach me. Even counsellors didn’t feel like a good fit. It took some time, however, and I found a therapist to guide me through my compounded grief. Being on the other side, I feel such awe, curiosity and expansiveness when I look back at how I survived and coped, how my body allowed me to carry on, until there was enough room to tend to myself and the lodged grief and fear inside.It took me close to eight years to find my way back to myself after my daughter’s death. When I was able to move through the losses that came with that monumental experience, I could then turn to other grief that needed attention: physical pain in my body, death of dreams, difficult pregnancies and postpartum periods, changing faith, disappointment.
There was no framework I could follow, no checklist or formula. I had nowhere else to turn but toward myself, into the wild unknown of my inner being. I had to learn the art of nursing joy at one breast and grief at the other.
For over four years I kept turning toward the pain, learning from incredible teachers, matriarchs and guides. When I recognized that I was fully accepting my grief, it began to release its grip on me. It flowed through me, like the breeze flows right through the open windows of a home. Instead of being caught up inside, where it had no real room to breathe, the cross breeze, as they call it, gave relief.
My work with Tender Realm was born out of the desire to sit with others and witness the kaleidoscope of grief in their lives.