Walking The Labyrinth of Grief: Introduction to a Series on Living with Loss

Grief is often described as a series of stages we move through; but for many people, that simply isn’t how it feels. 

In this opening episode, we explore a different way of understanding grief: not as a straight line, but as a labyrinth.

A labyrinth has one winding path. It curves, it doubles back, and at times it can feel like you’re returning to the same place again and again. 

Grief can feel like this too; shifting, revisiting, and unfolding in its own time.

In this episode, we gently explore what it means to live with grief rather than “get over” it. We talk about why grief isn’t something to fix or finish, and how it can become part of your life in a way that allows both sorrow and meaning to exist side by side.

This is the beginning of a series that will explore the many layers of grief; including the losses we don’t always name, the idea of “stages,” and how we gradually learn to carry grief in our everyday lives.

Wherever you are in your own experience of loss, this episode offers a compassionate starting point: a reminder that there are no wrong turns, and that you are not alone as you find your way through.

I invite you to subscribe to the podcast to be notified as each episode is released for this series.

I invite you to visit my website to see what the Labyrinth Path looks like.

Thank you for joining me for this conversation.

My hope is that through each episode, you feel a little more seen, a little more understood, and a little more connected to yourself.

If you'd like to continue the conversation, I invite you to join Heart to Heart with Nicole, where we explore life's questions, challenges, and moments of growth together.

Until we meet again, be gentle with yourself, trust your journey, and remember: to feel safe is to heal.

Transcript

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You are listening to the Thrive with Nicole podcast, a place to explore the depths of you through spirituality, healing, and empowerment. A little about me, your host. My name is Nicole Ivans. And the best words to describe me are quiet, introverted, empathic, nurturing, and highly sensitive. And as a holistic counsellor, I am deeply passionate about spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being. So pop on those headphones as I take you on a journey of connectedness. Have you ever heard the saying that time heals all wounds? Now, time is part of it, absolutely. And you may have noticed that I have been gone for a little while. It's been about eight months now, I guess, since my last podcast episode, because I too needed to take some time for my own healing. And as I'm coming back now here to the podcast and to working with clients one-on-one, I wanted to start out with this series. So this is an introduction to a series on living with loss. So grief is often described as something that you move through a given time. And like I said, I'm sure you've heard people say time heals all wounds. But grief doesn't follow a straight line, like you are walking towards the finish line, stage by stage and step by step, and coming out the other side where it's completely resolved. Instead, grief can feel more like you are walking a labyrinth path. Now, a labyrinth is not a maze, even though it may look like that. There are no dead ends, no wrong turns, and no single correct pace. There is one path, but it winds and it curves, sometimes bringing you close to the center, sometimes leading you back out again. And at times it may feel as though you are retracing your steps, returning to places you thought you had already passed through. You know, have you heard the saying? And I know I've said it here many times on uh the podcast here, healing is not linear. And grief can be like this too. That is your labyrinth path. And you may have said to yourself, too, I feel like I've gone backwards. I feel like I'm back to the beginning, I feel like I'm starting over again. And what's important to understand about healing, not just in grief, is that that is what it feels like. Because it is like a spiral, it is not a straight line. So it does feel like sometimes that we are retracing our steps, that we've gone backwards and we're back to the beginning, but we're not. If you look at, you know, a labyrinth path, an image of it. Now I'll have this on the blog as well if you want to have a look at the image of the labyrinth path, you'll see that it goes round and round and round. So whilst it may feel like you're retracing your steps, you're on a deeper path than you were previously. So I think that's something that's important to understand. And when we come back to grief, if we think about there are days when it feels distant, softened by time and I guess the rhythms of daily life, and then without warning, something brings you right back to the heart of it. A memory, a date, or even just a quiet moment. And not because you are going backwards, but because this is the nature of grief. It revisits, it reshapes, and it reveals itself in layers. Remember that word layers, because that's going to be important. And this series that I'm doing, it is an invitation to walk that path gently. We are going to explore the many forms of grief and the forms that grief can take. Not only the loss of a loved one, but also the quieter griefs, the life we expected but didn't have, the paths not taken, and the changes that we never chose. We will look at the stages of grief, not as fixed steps to complete, but as experiences that ebb and flow, often returning in new ways over time. Remember how I said to remember that word layers? So instead of the traditional stages of grief, I want you to think about it like layers. And within each stage, there are going to be different layers, and we're going to move ebb and flow through those stages. It's not linear. We don't make our way from step one through step five, and then we're done. It doesn't work like that. And I think that's sometimes where people become a little unstuck or stuck, if you like, in the stages of grief that feel like I'm not making my way through, or I thought I made my way through that stage, and now I'm back here again. Remember it as layers and remember that it ebbs and flows. And that's really going to help you on your journey through grief. So, what I guess is the most important thing here is that we're going to explore what it means to live with grief, not to get over it, but to gradually make space for it within your life. We need to integrate it into our life here on earth. To carry it in a way that allows both sorrow and life to exist side by side. Because unfortunately, you know, the way earth is, the way the world is, the way society is, we don't get to just stop. We have to keep going. Even me, as I spoke about earlier, that I've taken some time away because there was healing that needed to happen. But there was still a lot of things that I needed to be doing. You know, I'm still a carer to my eldest daughter who has epilepsy. You know, I'm still a carer to my elderly parents. I still have a husband. I have another daughter that I look after as well. I've got a house to run. So, you know, not everything can just stop. So we need to be able to carry it in a way that we can feel what we feel. But we can also have life exist side by side as well. Now there is no finish line in the labyrinth, but there is movement, there is meaning, and there is over time a quiet kind of integration where grief becomes part of your story rather than something that stands outside of it. I think that's important. It's not separate from you. Now, wherever you are on your path, you are not lost. You are walking your way through. So this is going to be a gentle journey to uncovering and healing the pain you are experiencing. And in this series, we will cover grief in all of its forms and provide you with insight and guidance into your pathway forward on your labyrinth path. So I invite you to subscribe here on the podcast to be a part of this series. As each episode drops, you'll then get notified. Or if you like to read as well, I invite you to head over to my website, NicoleIvans.com forward slash blog, and I will be popping up the articles on there as well. So I look forward to you joining me on this very deep and profound journey. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to hear your one takeaway from today's episode. You can connect with me on all the socials at Nicole Ivan Solicit Counseling, and you can also message me here directly on the podcast. To learn more about working with me, you can visit Nicole Ivan.com.