One of the most painful parts of grief is not always the grief itself. Sometimes it is the silence that can begin to grow around it. After miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, or difficult pregnancy experiences, many mothers quietly notice the same thing. People who once felt close suddenly seem uncertain. Conversations become awkward. Invitations slow down. Some friends stop checking in altogether, not because they are cruel, but because they simply do not know how to s

Understanding parental dysregulation, nervous system overwhelm, and the fight, flight, freeze response. When Your Child’s Distress Feels Emotionally Overwhelming Many parents expect parenting to be emotionally demanding. What they do not expect is how overwhelming it can sometimes feel when their child cries, screams, protests, withdraws, or becomes emotionally distressed. For some parents, their child’s distress can trigger feelings of panic, anger, shutdown, helplessness, o

As human beings, we tend to organise life around an expected sequence of events. We anticipate beginnings before endings. We expect birth to precede death. We expect a life to unfold gradually through relationship, experience, identity and belonging before its eventual ending arrives. But what happens when death comes before birth?

Learn how approval seeking, people pleasing, and low self-worth can leave you emotionally exhausted, disconnected, and struggling in relationships.

Why does Mother’s Day feel hard for some people. Mother’s Day can be difficult when there has been loss, estrangement, trauma, or complex relationships with a mother or child. The day can highlight what is missing, unresolved, or painful, especially when social expectations focus only on celebration.

Making sense of difficult family dynamics In some families, there can be a sense that one person holds more control in relationships, or is experienced by others as critical, hard to please, or difficult to be around. At other times, it may not be as clear-cut, but there can still be recurring tensions that seem to circle around similar themes. When this happens, it can be easy for one way of understanding a person to take hold and become quite fixed over time. But family re

Life sometimes brings moments that feel too heavy to carry alone. When grief or trauma touches your heart, finding a gentle, understanding space to heal can make all the difference. In Mandurah, there are counselling services designed to walk alongside you, offering calm, compassionate support. I want to share what makes these services effective and how they can help you or someone you care about find peace and resilience. Understanding Grief and Trauma Counselling Grief and

Sometimes, words alone cannot capture the depth of what we feel inside. Our bodies hold stories, memories, and emotions that may not always find their way into conversation. Somatic therapy offers a gentle invitation to listen to these silent whispers. It’s a way to reconnect with yourself, to heal from within, and to find peace in the present moment. I want to share with you the somatic therapy benefits that have touched many lives, including my own. This approach is not jus

The Depth of Grief There are some experiences that sit outside the edges of ordinary language. The death of a baby is one of them. It reshapes everything quietly and completely, often without the world around her fully noticing. From the outside, she may look the same. Inside, nothing is as it was. If you are speaking to her, really speaking to her, it helps to understand what lives beneath the surface. She wants to speak freely. Not in fragments. Not in ways that make others

There is something quietly confronting about the 11-minute animated Disney movie, ‘Versa’, not because it demands attention in a dramatic way, but because it draws you into a space many instinctively turn away from; the devastating stillness that follows the death of a baby just before birth. Versa helps illustrate the emotional experiences of Malcon Pierce and his wife Keely Tateossian, whose son, Cooper, died at full term on his due date. Theirs is a loss that defies compre

Healing from complex trauma is a journey that asks for patience, kindness, and gentle guidance. When the past feels heavy and the present uncertain, finding the right support can make all the difference. Here in Mandurah, there is a compassionate space where you can begin to untangle those difficult threads. Together, we can explore what complex trauma therapy looks like and how it might help you or someone you care about find a path toward peace. Understanding Complex Trau

I recently attended a webinar on grief in the workplace, facilitated by Grief First Aid, and it prompted a deeper reflection on how loss is carried into professional spaces. Grief does not remain neatly outside the office door. It arrives with people, sits quietly beside them, and often goes unseen or unspoken. I recalled how it was for my husband to go back to work carrying his grief over the death of our daughter, and I wondered if, 22 years later, whether anything had chan

Honouring Grief for Couples and Sole Parents This reflection is written primarily for couples who are in relationship together and who may still engage with Valentines Day in its traditional sense. At the same time, it is important to name that sole parents, and those grieving without a partner alongside them, carry the same depth of love, attachment and heartbreak. The loss of a baby during pregnancy or shortly after birth holds equal weight, regardless of relationship statu

When I was in high school in the UK, one of my teachers (Mr Leonard) shared something personal that stayed with me. He said that he not only loved his wife, but that he genuinely liked her. He spoke about friendship as the backbone of their relationship. At the time, it felt simple. Over the years, I have come to understand how quietly profound that idea really is. When Care Remains but Connection Fades In my work with couples, I often meet people who care deeply about one an

This blog is a little late. And honestly, that still feels right. Each January arrives with a familiar cultural rhythm. Conversations fill with words chosen to carry the year ahead with focus, intention, growth, softness, courage, alignment. For some, choosing a word for the year feels steadying or hopeful. For others, it can quietly introduce a sense of pressure, a feeling that clarity should already be present, that we should know who we are becoming or what we are aiming f

Why it’s ok to feel Joy at Christmas For many people who live alongside the death of someone they love, there’s an unspoken rule that grief should hurt - especially at Christmas - like there’s an expectation that grief should be front and centre of your life, forever. But…over time…something quietly is taking place. You notice yourself laughing. You enjoy the taste of food. You feel present and more connected to life. You may even realise that your loved one is not at the fo

Untangling The Tinsel Tango Together As the year edges toward Christmas, many of us find ourselves pulled between excitement, stress, nostalgia, and the weight of “so much to do.” For many, the holidays can bring joy and connection - but possibly also financial pressure, disrupted routines, school holiday stress, family tension, loneliness, or the ache of missing loved ones who are overseas or no longer here. In the middle of all of this, it’s easy for our intimate relation

When I speak openly about pregnancy after stillbirth and miscarriage, people sometimes hear a story with a beginning, middle, and hopeful end. What is harder to see is the decades in between - the raw, unfiltered years where nothing felt resolved, where my nervous system was stretched thin, and where my relationship with my body, mind, and the people I loved was constantly being rewritten. I’m 21 years from my first birth trauma now. Twenty-one years from the day everything c

There are many things’ people don’t tell you about grief, but one of the hardest truths is this: after someone you love dies, your life becomes threaded with The Terrible Maths. You count everything. Not out of choice, not out of ritual - but because time suddenly becomes the only thing tying you to them, and yet it also becomes the thing taking you further away. Time seems to change You mark the minutes, because in the beginning that’s all you can do. Minutes since you las

What especially resonates with me about grief is the part about crying. You know, those moments when tears just appear, and your first instinct - or maybe someone else’s - is to hand over a tissue. We do it because we care, right? But sometimes what we’re really conveying, without even meaning to, is: “Don’t cry”, “Please stop - this feels uncomfortable.” Tears aren't weakness And here’s the thing: crying is one of the most human, sacred, and physiologically wise things we ca