On loss, the body and what we learn along the way.
Throughout the last three years of Root Beginnings, I have always tried to share the experiences that have shaped me — not just the frameworks and the research, but the real, felt truth of human-centred transformation.
I believe that sharing our stories with heart and honesty helps us connect more deeply, have more meaningful conversations, and learn not just from cognitive understanding but from the lived experience of loss.
This year has brought a great deal of loss – in different forms, at different times. Each one landing in the body in its own particular way.
What the body knows
What I am learning – and still learning – is how much I used to avoid the pain of loss. To push it away. To pretend it somehow wasn’t as significant as it felt.
But something has shifted in these recent months. I have found myself leaning in instead. Being with myself fully – through the discomfort, through the moments where the body wants to do things the mind doesn’t quite understand yet. Listening rather than intellectualising. Feeling rather than fixing.
My passion for somatic awareness began following years of feeling afraid of my own body. Not trusting its signals. Not listening at all. Until the result was burnout I couldn’t ignore any longer.
What I came to understand – slowly, and not without resistance — is how critical the mind-body connection is to the way we process loss. Grief is not only a psychological experience. It lives in the nervous system, in the tissues, deep within our bodies.
Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, demonstrated that loss and trauma are not merely psychological events – they are profoundly embodied phenomena, stored throughout the nervous system long after the event has passed, requiring healing approaches that go far beyond talking and thinking alone.
And so the practices I have turned to – mindfulness, breathwork, nervous system regulation, somatic awareness – have not been tools for avoiding the pain. They have been tools for being with it. For creating enough safety in the body to let the loss move through, rather than getting stuck.
Grief as learning
One of the most profound reframings I have encountered is from Mary-Frances O’Connor PhD, a Psychologist at the University of Arizona.
O’Connor proposes that grieving is fundamentally a process of learning – not a linear journey through stages, but the brain’s gradual, non-linear work of updating its understanding of the world in the absence of what – or who – it loved.
That framing has stayed with me.
Because it means grief isn’t something to get through or get over. It’s something the brain and body do together – making meaning, adjusting, learning how to be in the world without something we have been used to for so long. Whether that is a loved one, a lifelong career, or a place that held so much of who we are and where we come from.
Loss is learning. And it starts from within.
The wound and the light
As humans, to love, to feel and to connect feels more important than ever right now. And yet in a rapidly changing world – with so much shifting outside of our control – we have to learn how to be in the world without things we have perhaps relied on for so long.
Brené Brown’s research reminds us that without vulnerability there is no courage. And I find myself thinking about this often in the context of AI and the modern world.
If we continue to shut off, to not share, to keep our armour firmly up – are we really being human? The antidote to a world that is becoming more automated, more optimised, more efficient – is more of us. More heart. More honesty. More willingness to say – this is hard, and I am in it.
Connecting to our own hearts, and then to those of the broader communities around us – I believe that is our life’s work. To learn and to grow through the loss. To support and be supported. To share with vulnerability and courage.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~ Rumi
I dedicate this to anyone navigating loss in any form right now. To the love that was felt, and all we learn along the way.
