How to mourn the loss of your counsellor

Mourning the loss of someone who you have trusted enough to reveal things that were unsaid and unheard. Things that you didn’t have words for; only an avalanche of feelings you didn’t understand. It was never going to be easy.

Allowing someone in to the depths of our inner world, to those dark and dusty crags and holes. Allowing your inner child and tormentors to be heard.

I think you do the mourning slowly and mindfully. You allow yourself to feel the feelings like the cardboard in a bonfire feeling the fire. Allowing it to rip through oneself knowing that you will be ok.  Burning, burning. It creates a spectacular light and heat.

You will be ok. You trusted and risked and because of it you have gained a treasure chest filled with inner resources. The inner wealth you have opened your eyes to was always there, same as you were always fixed but it took the unconditional, non-judgemental space in counselling to know you know it. You were never damaged or broken. Your fire was there always. You just didn’t know it’s strength or beauty.

It’s not an ending like ones you dreaded before, it’s a beginning. It’s a benchmark for future relationships; knowing that being seen and heard is possible, being fully embraced is thinkable. Being yourself is realisable and within reach. Your reach.

Just like the process of counselling was like an unfolding. Sometimes you felt that you were regressing even though you were actually making giant strides in healing. The gentle unfolding that can’t be forced in any particular direction because it has a life force of its own. I think the mourning too will have its own direction and spirit and still even still, long after you attend those weekly sessions, the magic and the healing goes on and on.

The psyche wants to heal, that’s been your life’s work even when you didn’t know it. Moving towards wholeness and integration. A warm embrace of all that you are.

So allow yourself to be sad, and feel the hurt, and what feels like loss. Allow yourself to be; both the fragile and the fierce. It was your great courage and commitment that walked you to those sessions. Your bravery was your constant companion and that is with you still.

What was possible in that room is possible outside too. Create that safe space within and without and allow all the feelings and thoughts to be. They will pass and you are not them. You are at the centre of the whole, healing and moving forward with grace and wisdom and beauty. You will be fine. You are fine.