20/05/2025
We really value our peer friendships and colleague chats ~ sharing support & deepening our skills and understanding. A conversation yesterday with Katie Costello - Soul Midwife and Funeral Celebrant unfolded and we explored the ways in which grief can create a ‘numb shuffle’ through the early days and ‘grief walking’ is so real.
Reaching out, or just stumbling across the right people for you, can be so valuable; friends signposting to good connections for authentic, compassionate support.
~ in the community, for the community.
‘Grief Walking’ – It’s like sleepwalking but it’s your heart that’s heavy, not your eyelids.
You move through the day on autopilot. Make the tea. Answer the emails. Walk the dog. Nod when someone speaks. But inside? You’re not really there, not fully.
When you grief walk, your body moves, your mouth says the right things, you do what’s expected and out of habit but really, it’s foggy, you feel numb.
That’s what grief does.
Grief walking, like sleep walking, is when your body goes through the motions, but your mind and heart are somewhere else. You can’t take in new information. You forget things. Noise feels louder or you don’t hear noise at all. You’re not present.
Grief walking is a protective state. It’s survival. It helps us function when it feels impossible. If you recognise someone else in this, don’t rush them, go slow, just like you shouldn’t wake someone up from sleep walking suddenly, they need a gentle soft approach, with understanding. Grief walking needs support and time.
But in that grief walking state, decisions still have to be made.
Which funeral director to use. What kind of service to have. And when you’re grief walking, you don’t have the headspace to really choose, you do what’s familiar. You do what you think you’re supposed to do. What’s quickest. What someone suggests or what is the ‘norm’ or traditional. You walk to what you know without considering if it is actually really what you or your person wants. You walk out of habit to places you think are right, you can’t see the other options or paths you could take.
This is why conversations matter before we lose our person
When you talk, plan, explore options ahead of time, you create a path through the fog and even create a new path to walk along. So then, when grief walking begins, you’re at least walking with a little more clarity. A little more knowing. A little less pressure. A little more direction.
This light bulb moment of the ‘grief walking’ notion came from a conversation with the fabulous Judith of Dandelion Farewells. We both recognise grief walking and we want to help people through it in the kindest, most honest way we can in all that we do ❤️
