Loss? What do you mean loss?

It's a funny old thing loss. When I've been explaining what I want to do either people get it straight away, their eyes glaze over or they say "goodness that sounds depressing". I was reflecting on my personal and professional adventures and was trying to pin point what my drivers were and what had brought me to this point. I swiftly realised that there were some really significant links and that ultimately all roads led to themes of loss, for example:

- The loss of my beloved dog when I was growing up Misty.

- The loss of a long term relationship.

- The loss of my confidence and my sense of self.

- Working with people who have experienced significant losses and being friends with people who have experienced losses of loved ones.

- Seeing the grief and embarrassment of loss of pride and independence.

- The loss of connection and community.

The list goes on...

The interesting thing for me is that I have quietly recognised a sense of grief at various times in my life, without being able to articulate it or realised that, that was what was happening. I'm not sure even if I could have, that I'd have been keen to talk about it in that way nor whether people would engage in the conversation. Let's face it we just don't like having these conversations. We don't know what to say, what to do and at best we end up with the dreaded but well meaning head tilt (you all know what I mean). We're really interested to explore different forms of loss throughout our programmes, maybe through sparking conversations, building confidence so that people feel comfortable to talk about these issues and perhaps catalysing action.

We'll explore this more as we progress, and keep an eye on our blog posts for more musings on loss as things unfold. This is just the start of the conversation.....minus the head tilt of course.