Grief trips

​Integration​

Trigger warning: This text discusses death, bereavement and loss.

This week I am sharing the inspiring story of Rachel Tan, whom I contacted for an interview. I am delighted she agreed. Raised with a strong work ethic, she worked hard to get a degree from Uni, build a stable career, following a traditional formula many of us were taught to pursue. Soon she landed a job which brought her to corporate London, living as an expat overseas. There was no resting on those laurels. A fast-paced environment, work was competitive with no margin for error. “It was fine, steady.” Family was also important for her, so Rachel became used to taking ~13-hour flights to go visit her parents and little brother in Hong Kong. Life kept going like this for a long time, there was predictability, even if it was happening in the fast lane.

Until the unexpected happened and her father fell ill with pneumonia. This coincided with the global Covid pandemic when worldwide borders started to close up. I was also living in London and remember this period vividly myself. In an attempt to curb the spread of the virus, a national lockdown was announced. Residents were ordered to stay inside, all businesses, schools and non-essential shops closed. Outdoor movement was restricted, social distancing strictly enforced and living in home confinement became everyone’s reality overnight.

Throughout spring 2020, Rachel kept in close touch with her dad, but as the potential lifting of lockdown kept being pushed forwards, she was uncertain of when she would be allowed to travel to see him in hospital. Many months later, when restrictions eased, a trip was finally booked. Travel was expensive and stressful as passengers had to follow all kinds of mad rules around anti-gen testing. The window of validity for those early tests was only 24 hours, so getting on and off a long-haul flight was far from straightforward. Rachel managed to arrive in Hong Kong. But she was only two days into her ten-day quarantine hotel stay, when she received the devastating news, her father had suddenly passed away.

Feeling shocked and overwhelmed in quarantine confinement, Rachel went into survival mode. She tried to be as helpful as she could by keeping busy inside that hotel room. “There was so much to take care of. I had to arrange government permissions, agree the morgue visit, find funeral parlours and negotiate costs. I was helping my mother deal with my father’s bank and pension, also supporting my little brother with his grief as best as I could. I remember constantly doing things.”

While she was grappling with this new reality of having lost a parent, dark feelings of hopelessness and loneliness emerged. “I don’t remember crying. The pain was so deep, it was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I also thought that I’m never going to be happy again.”

From that feeling of not wanting to accept permanent bleakness, she made a commitment to the contrary. One week after her father’s passing, Rachel opened a new, anonymous Instagram account naming it Happy Grieving. Without expectations as such, she simply wanted it to be a place where she could share about what she was going through, talking about sorrow at her own pace.

Grief changed every aspect of life as she knew it, from personal to social.

Life back in London was never the same after losing her dad at age 27. “It shifted my priorities, my dreams, the way I wanted to spend my time. Everything.” Dealing with intense grief and insomnia also made her realise that the pressures of her job was no longer sustainable, fulfilling or even feasible. She ended up taking a year’s sick leave.

She soon became acutely aware of how awkwardly people respond to grief in social settings. “I could feel friend groups change when the topic came up,“ she explained. “The mood would shift.” Even basic interactions became emotionally complicated.

Mitigating people’s reactions sometimes took centre stage to her own grieving. “Everyone always start by asking: Where is your family? What do you do? Where do you work? All my answers are connected so; Do I lie and give a sanitised version, and in doing so betray my dad and his story? Or, do I say it, and risk making people feel very uncomfortable?”. We reflected on the difference between sympathy and empathy in this context. “You’re always going to encounter people who don’t get it. Even people who consider themselves deeply empathetic may still struggle to understand grief unless they have personally experienced it. That’s not a flaw, it’s a blessing too.”

It was a hard dynamic to navigate though, and it exposed how isolating grief truly is, even when you are surrounded by people.

Many are unprepared to feel, unsure of how to meet the moment.

Regardless of most people knowing they will face some form of grief in their lifetime.

Going back to work had come to symbolise time away from what mattered, so Rachel made some big changes and went solo travelling. At first, feelings of numbness and guilt followed her around. Especially watching others who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Looking at sunsets, she no longer felt the beauty. Going out to dinner may have been enjoyable, but she felt bad that her father couldn’t taste the food she was eating. “Then, slowly, travel changed me. I managed to meet others, young people like myself, who had gone through similar loss.” She finally had conversations with people who understood bereavement first-hand. “Travel connected me back with the human experience and I found myself slowly healing. Meeting others who have gone through something similar can be very powerful.” Travel became an important part of her grief journey.

Simultaneously, her social media account was growing. There, a community of grievers seemed to be finding each other. Steadying ourselves while we open up about emotionally charged topics like death takes a lot of resilience. I asked Rachel how she found the inner strength to lean into the pain. “It was exactly that. The more it felt difficult, the more I leaned into it, in society and publicly. Amazingly, the more I leaned in, the more things started to open up. It became accepted and celebrated even.”

Strength also came from having done the emotional work, which is so important as it may otherwise lead to deep-set emotional scars, something I wrote about in the recent article Fascia. “I had done a lot of self-work prior to this; I went to therapy and also tried group therapy. It took many small steps, like being happy for the smallest things and practising gratitude.”

It was through her online community though that she realised speaking openly about grief could create connection rather than push people away. Creating more spaces where grief was normalised then became increasingly important to her. Bringing the Happy Grieving community together in real life, felt like the natural next thing to do. Two and a half years in, Rachel launched Grief Trips, organising trips for people navigating bereavement. While there are many types of grief, these retreats are dedicated to mourning the death of a loved one: partners, siblings, parents, children, pregnancies, friends, grandparents and pets.

Today, people have joined Grief Trips from all continents, apart from Antarctica, which reflects the universal nature of grief feelings. Participants range from the ages of 20-65, the majority in their 20s-40s. “People perhaps book the trip, thinking they will only connect with people in their own age group, but we can all grow from diversity. After sharing a letter I wrote to my younger brother — how I had felt responsible for taking care of him, supporting him in his grief feelings while carrying my own — a woman in her 60s who had lost one of her sons, shared how it had been useful for her to learn about secondary grief. My letter had helped her gain an understanding of how to engage with her other children, his siblings.”

Organic connection is strengthened on Grief Trips by shared villa living. “That place becomes home. We all do the grief work together.” Participants are encouraged to listen to their own needs, taking a break for alone time or choosing to join others when it feels right.

Grief Trips have an agenda that is divided into three parts: grieving time, travel time and free time.

During intentional grieving, time is set aside for guided experiences. Participants learn to express grief through art, journalling, writing letters to their loved ones or to the grief itself. For example, they do sharing circles where they talk about their individual experiences. I asked how Rachel handles conversation topics that might be triggering. “I’ve accepted my emotions, it’s ok if I cry sometimes, it doesn’t enhance mine or take away from other people’s experience. Emotions do come up and if something triggers in me, I take it as valuable information. I am not a therapist or a licensed therapy provider. That is not the point of Grief Trips, I’m very much participating as much as I am facilitating these trips.”

All of us experience grief at some point in life, and we eventually learn how to live with it. “At a Grief Trip we don’t avoid the grief, nor do we push it down, we bring it in as part of the day.” With trips taking place in many beautiful corners of the world — Africa, the Indian Ocean, South-East Asia and Europe — the time is intentionally designed to give authentic insight into both country and culture.

In Portugal, alongside the tasting experience of Porto’s distilleries, Rachel uses winemaking as a metaphor for the grief journey. How the journey of a grape, from vineyard to bottle, can be seen as a maturing process of our selves. Some dreams may get crushed along the way. We have little choice in the destiny we each face. We know nothing about how things turn out eventually. But as with wine, we can all mature into something beautiful with value to give. She explained how even the tasting pipette on the barrel can be used as an analogy for daily coping mechanisms, “What are you doing to check in with yourself? Therapy? Rest? Community? Reflection?”. Also, if the activity is wine tasting and somebody has been impacted by alcoholism, the group talks about it, experiences are never shying away from reality.

Eastern and Western philosophy also meet at Grief Trips. For example, Hindu rituals and spiritual practises informed a Grief Trip to Bali. There, she brought participants to temples and a holy waterfall where a Balinese priest led them through a cleansing ceremony. First, they called present any emotions that they were ready to release. Then, as water washed over them, they let them go in the flow. In a fire ceremony, they also learned how all matter transforms with energy, releasing and transforming their grief with heat.

Travel is also for travelling. People come for the marine life in the Maldives, so there, the group does swimming and snorkelling. “We’ve gone fishing, which was such a funny vibe as some ladies didn’t quite know what to expect and turned up in long, floaty dresses”, she smiles.

Often time passes quickly having joyful experiences, they’re cool reminders that time is not linear or broken. We are not broken. Joy can coexist with grief.

The last third of the trip is for free time. “That is really important. Everybody has different energy levels, so this helps to create boundaries. You take from this experience what you need. Some might need to journal, others need sleep, others might want to do more travel experiences — all of it is encouraged.” That flexibility is central to the philosophy of Grief Trips. Nothing is forced; people are given freedom and permission to engage with the program however they need to.

I would have been amiss not to ask Rachel about what grief lessons she learnt along the way. She pauses. “The most basic ones are so cliché, but there is no right or wrong. There’s no timeline for grief; it is just whatever you need it to be. It’s only now, 4-5 years later after he passed, that I’m starting to feel like my nervous system is getting back to rest again. The sense of community has also given strength in my grief. I now have support and a safe space for it, a group of people that I stay in touch with so there is less pressure for me elsewhere to offload or lead with grief. I’m glad that Grief Trips has allowed people to build meaningful connections, lasting friendships and many continue to travel across the globe to go see each other. I’ve been invited to weddings, and some of my past participants have even come back for more Grief Trips.”

Another insight has also shaped the way she thinks death continues to enrich life. “I now try to think of the grief as a bridge of communication with my father. He used to always make sure I was prioritising my sleep, going to bed early.” Now, when she takes care of herself, she thinks: “That’s what he would have wanted.”

“I didn’t choose these circumstances, but I’ve done my best in spite of this loss.”