Building resilience through grief, loss and change
Sarah came to me seeking support for her sister who was living with pancreatic cancer. I cared for her sister through her final months, whilst also supporting Sarah to understand and process her sister’s illness. When her sister died, my relationship with Sarah changed. She began coming to me regularly for Shiatsu, which we’ve continued for the past three years. What started with end-of-life support became something much deeper: a consistent place for Sarah to be held, listened to and supported through one of the most difficult periods of her life.
How she arrived to me
When Sarah’s sister died, she was left carrying an enormous amount. Whilst grieving the loss of her sister she moved house to take on the role of a mother to her teenage niece. Sarah was suddenly responsible for navigating school, teenage life and caring for her niece, who was struggling to express what she was feeling. She was also left solely responsible for her parents.
On top of all this she was living with Long Covid, including exhaustion, headaches and a tendency towards depletion. There was very little space for Sarah herself.
How we worked together
My first priority was to give Sarah somewhere safe to be. I listened to her grief, anger and exhaustion, while helping her understand what was happening in her body.
I began with gentle, restorative touch, building her Earth energy and physical resilience while working with her headaches and exhaustion. As Sarah became stronger, I introduced deeper bodywork, working with the liver and lungs and gradually creating more space for the anger and rage she was carrying. On one occasion, I gave her a baseball bat to take it out on my pillows! Sometimes the body needs somewhere safe for that energy to go.
I adapted every session to her sensory needs: covering her eyes, wrapping her in a blanket, reducing light and temperature, and always taking time for her body to settle before we began. This became particularly important when Sarah received a new medical diagnosis. We also explored nutrition, resilience and small acts of self-care.
During our time together, she has also lost her father, which re-triggered her complex grief and fear around death.
What changed for her
Above all, I offered Sarah a consistent safe space. Month after month, she knows she has a place where she can stop carrying everything for everyone else. There was no quick fixes. Sarah has been able to bring the grief, anger and fear into a relationship where she feels safe enough to process them.
Understanding her diagnosis gave her a new lens through which to process the exhaustion of masking, over-giving and managing the world around her. Our work has become partly about unpicking a lifetime of beliefs about what she should be able to cope with and learning to recognise what she actually needs.
Sarah still has difficult days, but she is becoming more aware of the signs her body gives her before she reaches overwhelm. She describes our sessions as an “oasis” and often tells me that knowing she will see me helps her get through the difficult days.
In her words:
“I’ve been seeing Tasha for Shiatsu for over three years in her beautiful Cedar Shed. She has walked beside me during our regular monthly Shiatsu appointments through an extremely difficult and traumatic period of my life. Whatever state I have been in, Tasha has welcomed and listened to me and what my body needs with such kindness, sensitivity and wisdom. Her strong, loving presence always steadies and comforts me and, without fail, I feel less alone, more connected to my body and heart, more peaceful and more hopeful after a session. Tasha is an extremely gifted bodyworker and I can’t recommend her highly enough.”
Ready to try Shiatsu?
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