When I tell people I work in domestic violence advocacy, the response is rarely neutral.

Folks sometimes pause awkwardly + change the subject, but more often than not, they dive in with questions or stories of their own.

Just bringing up the topic opens so much space + permission to talk about what the world often doesn’t make room for:

The deep + unanswerable questions, the hard stuff (like pain, grief, and trauma), and the hope of healing + making meaning through devastation.

I’m finding the same to be true as I share more about my grief coaching work.

More + more, I’m finding that people are drawn to spaces where it’s safe to explore + engage the deep + raw realness of the human experience -- and all the questions + feelings + spaces that opens in us.

And this is why I think that is:

1) We long for truth-telling + realness.

When we engage what’s hard -- our grief, our pain, our trauma, our doubt -- there’s no hiding.

Doing that work requires us to tell the truth.

And there’s a deep relief in that.

The truth may not be easy. It may ask things of us we're not ready to give.

But it also offers deep realness + a grounding exhale that opens a way for healing, possibility, and meaning-making.

2) We sense that we're meant to participate in the full spectrum of our human experience.

Deep down, we know there's no escaping pain, adversity, and challenge.

Grief + hurt happen.

So it feels right when we make room for *all* of our human experience.

Because that’s real.

And when there's space for the fullness of life (hard stuff included), there's also space for healing + opportunity to deepen our capacity for all that life brings.

3) We want to experience + witness healing:

There's so much power + beauty in healing -- in finding a way forward + making meaning through the hardest parts.

There have been plenty of hard + heavy moments in my domestic violence + grief work alike, but there have also been so many moments of witnessing folks access the power, resilience, and magic that rises to the surface to meet us when we engage this deep processs + do the gritty work of healing.

And that's the beauty.

Doing grief work of any kind will likely ask us to dig deeper than we ever have before, but in return, it takes us to the most awe-inspiring richness + deepest possibility that’s alive in us always.

What might it mean to step toward that richness + possibility today?