When grief becomes a calling: Why I started volunteering with Cruse Bereavement Support

My mum died, and somewhere out of the deep dark depths of grief, I found my purpose.

Grief is like nothing else most of the time; it's just there in the background, those little waves lapping at the shore, a constant dark cloud in the background. You learn to live alongside it because you get up, you make your coffee, you answer your emails, and all the while it's just there, in the background.

Then something catches you off guard, it might be a sight or a sound, maybe a smell, and suddenly it's a huge wave, the kind that knocks you completely off your feet, one that takes your breath and your bearings all at once, and you can't quite get your feet back in the sand to stand up.

But then, slowly, you're up again, with your feet placed firmly in the sand, and you're forging forward, until the next wave comes, and so the cycle repeats.

Meaning

After my mum died, I knew I had to do something with it, but not to fix it, as I realised grief is not an illness to be fixed, or a problem to be solved, you don't fix grief. I just wanted it to mean something for me. To take the most painful experience of my life and ask: what can I do with this?

So, for me, the answer was to change everything. My whole career and life path changed, and it has been magical. I've never felt so privileged because I now work with truly incredible people every day.

I left a career that had always been just that, a career for me, something I was good at, something that paid the bills well, but never something that set me on fire, to be honest. I've now developed a passion for work I didn't know was possible for me. I discovered that working in grief and loss and sitting with people in some of their darkest moments of their lives, helping them find their way through, wasn't just something I could do for work; it has become my entire life.

I feel like it's the difference between having a job and having a calling, and grief, of all things, gave me that. If you'd have said to me 5 years ago, " This is what you'll be doing in the future", I think I would have left the conversation!

Why I Volunteer with Cruse Bereavement Support

Volunteering with Cruse seemed a natural next step for me because once you've lived through something that is devastating and that words can't describe, and once you've found your way into a different part of grief, there becomes a need to give back to others. To be, for someone else, what you needed when you were in the dark.

I think this is the place where many volunteers come from, the place of lived experience, where we turn our wounds into a way of helping others, and we become the wounded healer.

To every volunteer

This week is Volunteers' Week, which is a moment in time to celebrate the amazing people who give their time, their energy, and bring their lived experience to make someone else's life a little lighter.

Whatever brought you to volunteering and whatever your reason, your loss, your pain, your lived experience, it all matters, because You matter. The hours you give, the broad shoulder you offer, the presence you offer when someone has no one else to turn to: it's amazing and you are very special.

So here's to you, someone who took their pain and made it into something.

Cheers to you.