A Derry woman has used the hardest experiences in her own life to help others through their personal journey with grief.
Sharon Tosh left a career of over 20 years after losing her passion for it. She made the decision to become a Life Coach, and ended up establishing Sharon Tosh coaching to help others through difficult times.
Sharon spoke to MyDerry about this new career and using her own life experience to help others.
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She said: " The grief specialism came very natural to me, having experienced a great deal of grief myself over the last decade or so, I had become an expert in my own grief.
"Grief is very rarely spoken about, someone dies, there’s a few days of focus around the people left behind, then life goes on, everybody goes back to normal and life goes on. But for the grieving, life is never the same again."
Through her own pain, Sharon wanted to change how people experience grief and the loneliness that can come with it. She wanted to use the feelings that she felt to make the journey easier for others.
Sharon said: "I knew how I struggled with that and that everyone must struggle with it, so why are we not talking about it? Why are we not changing how we support each other in our darkest times?
"I want to normalise talking about grief, I want to educate people on how to support each other better in our grief, we all grieve differently, but we can all be more understanding and supportive of each other's pain and be there for each other."
Though a lot has been done to help those grieving talk about it and share their experiences, Sharon expressed that there is more that needs to be done within our society and workplaces to help people through this process.
She said: "I think we as a society need to learn to open up more and talk about grief in general. We also need to learn how to support each other better, by normalising talking about grief and pain it will help us to understand ourselves and each other better, to listen and communicate effectively with compassion.
"We need to teach our children that it is OK to grieve, it is OK to show emotion, to be sad, to miss someone, to talk about someone you’ve lost and not to suppress their feelings and emotions and pretend everything is OK.
"Workplaces and employers should implement supportive measures for grieving employees. Although some do this already, there’s still a lot of work to do."
One of the aspects of grief that Sharon tells her clients is that no two journeys with grief are the same. Each client's journey that Sharon takes on is unique.
She said: "There is no timeline with grief. E verybody’s grief is different, even if you’re grieving the same person, your relationship with them will have been different, your grief is as individual as your fingerprint.
"With my grief clients I can see that talking about their person, about how they’re feeling, about certain struggles they experience, feeling heard and understood helps them feel validated, that what they are feeling is real.
"Then they can start to move forward, to shape and live their new ‘normal’ living alongside their grief."
Sharon was recently a guest on Bronagh Burke's podcast Memory of Me, set up to allow people to discuss their individual journeys with grief.
More information can be found on Sharon Tosh Coaching's website.
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