In this deeply moving and illuminating episode, Sarah Mayfield—Nationally Certified Compassionate Bereavement Care™ Counselor and certified Thanatologist—shares how personal heartbreak became the foundation her life’s work rooted in personal heartbreak and profound healing. After the sudden loss of her 1½-year-old son Elliott, Sarah found herself searching for meaningful grief support for her surviving son, Bradley—and discovering how little existed. That moment became a turning point, inspiring her to become a fierce advocate for grieving children and families.
With degrees in Counselor Education from the University of Virginia and nearly two decades of experience, Sarah brings both professional insight and personal wisdom to the conversation. She shares how Bradley’s journey shaped her understanding of what children truly need in grief: acknowledgment, space, and the freedom to mourn in their own way.
We also explore Sarah’s beautiful debut picture book, This Sure Thing—a lyrical meditation on continuing bonds and the enduring love that connects us beyond death. Whether you’re a parent, counselor, or someone walking through grief yourself, this episode offers comfort, clarity, and a compassionate lens on the emotional terrain of loss. Don’t miss it!
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- The enduring connection and signs parents may experience after a child’s passing.
- Why children are often “the forgotten mourners” and how to support their grief authentically.
- The difference between guilt and regret in processing loss.
Practical ways to navigate the dualities of grief while staying present for living children. - How grounding practices like nature walks can help reduce trauma’s “loudness.”The myths of grief, including the misconception of “stages” and uniform expressions.
- Why acknowledging children’s grief openly is crucial for long-term healing.
- Using creative expression—like Sarah’s beautiful debut picture book, This Sure Thing—to give voice to grief and continuing bonds.
- Plans for integrating outdoor spaces and telehealth into grief counseling for youth and adults.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS SARAH:
- What powerful signs and enduring connections have you experienced with Elliot?
- What healing modalities helped you with your grief? Did you also see a medium?
- Please explain what you call the dualities of grief and how you’ve personally experienced them since Elliot transitioned.
- Would you like to share how children look like they aren’t grieving, even though they are?
- How does the courage and power of acceptance when it comes to loss open us to the possibility of life?
- What are the enduring myths of grief?
- What is grief’s nuanced relationship with anxiety?
- Tell us about your beautiful debut picture book This Sure Thing and how it explores love, memory, and healing through the eyes of a grieving sibling.
- How can we best support grieving youth?
- What do you think of the word “heal” as it relates to grief, and why is it important for each of us to heal?”
Begin your healing journey with Sarah. Starting January 2026 in Richmond, VA, she offers specialized grief counseling for adults and youth—available in-person or via Telehealth for Virginia residents. Book your appointment today! www.livethatlove.com
Get a copy of This Sure Thing at https://amzn.to/3JZy0w1
GRIEF AND REBIRTH LINKS
✨ Irene’s new anthology book, Good to the Last Drop! Embracing Your Life’s Third Chapter, is now available on Amazon.
✨ Get the audiobook version of Irene’s book, They Serve Bagels in Heaven for FREE when you sign up for Audible’s FREE 30-day trial using her link: https://amzn.to/4dG4l4w
✨ For a curated collection of Irene’s favorite books, music, healing events, and self-care essentials, head over to kit.co/GriefandRebirth.
✨ Find your next source of healing and inspiration at the Grief and Rebirth Bookshop.
Listen to all episodes of the Grief and Rebirth Podcast HERE:
● Spotify
● Grief and Rebirth Podcast Page
Find Irene on social media:
● X
● TikTok
✨ Get your copy of Irene’s book: They Serve Bagels in Heaven: One Couple’s Story of Love, Eternity, and the Cosmic Importance of Everyday Life
✨ Sign up for the Grief and Rebirth newsletter to stay up-to-date on forthcoming episodes, events, healing tools, and announcements.
Grief and Rebirth LLC is an affiliate, and we may earn a commission from purchases made through recommendations of products and services mentioned on the website, email, and social media channels including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. This commission helps to support the podcast and allows us to continue providing valuable information and resources to our audience. We only recommend products and services that we have personally used or thoroughly researched and believe will be helpful to our community. It will never cost you more to use our affiliate links and sometimes it will even save you money. Thank you for your ongoing support.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Supporting Children and Families Through Loss with Compassionate Grief Counseling
Everyone, I hope this finds each of you so very well. I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey, and I could not be more delighted to have the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Mayfield, who has been a nationally certified compassionate bereavement care counselor since 2007. Sarah has both a Bachelor of Arts and a master of Counseling Education from the University of Virginia.
Her certification is in Thanatology, a field that thoughtfully examines the emotional, psychological, and social aspects of death, dying, and grief. Before she entered grief counseling, Sarah spent nine meaningful years as an elementary school counselor. Her journey into grief advocacy was born from her heartbreak over the sudden passing of her one and a half year old son, Elliot. When Sarah sought informed grief support for her surviving son, Bradley, she found that little existed.
That moment became a catalyst for Sarah, who now works at a nonprofit grief center in Richmond, Virginia, offering compassionate counseling for both youth and adults, navigating the complexities of trauma and grief. Sarah often draws from Bradley’s journey to advocate for what grieving children truly need, acknowledgement, space, and voices that affirm their right to mourn. In her debut picture book, This Sure Thing, she offers a gentle and lyrical exploration of continuing bonds after death, shining light on childhood grief and the sacred thread of love that endures.
I’m looking forward to talking with Sarah, who is joining us from Richmond, Virginia, for a heartfelt conversation about Elliot’s passing, how her and Bradley’s journey through grief has unfolded over time, the powerful signs and enduring connections she still experiences with Elliot, the courage of acceptance, and practical ways to support grieving youth. We’ll also explore Sarah’s debut picture book, This Sure Thing, briefs nuanced relationship with anxiety, the different ways mourning is expressed, and more for what is surely going to be an enlightening, insightful, and deeply moving conversation not to be missed.
Sarah, welcome.
Thank you. First, Irene, I need to get you to write my bios from here on out. I’m sitting here like, “I need to tap into her talent.” That was amazing.
Thank you. We can make that happen. I can send you a copy or something.
I’m happy to share. Thank you so much for those kind words and the heart behind them. I heard a lot of depth and meaning in what you wrote. Thank you so much.
A Mother’s Heartbreak: The Story of Elliot and Bradley
You’re welcome. I feel for you, and I also admire your past. It wasn’t an easy path, but it’s good for you, and you’re helping a lot of people with it. I think it’s wonderful. It’s marvelous. It’s wonderful what you’ve done. Let’s begin, though, with the crux of this conversation, which is about your precious Elliot and your precious Bradley. Could you share Elliot with us? I know he was a very joyful, tender child. How did he pass?
Thanks, Irene. I’m within sessions that I lead with Grievers. I’m a firm believer in getting right to it. “Don’t leave it hanging. Get right to it.” The crux, as you said. First, let’s start with Bradley since he is our oldest child. My husband and I, Terry, got married in 2012. We started talking about building a family, and along came Bradley in 2014. He’s now a sixth grader. It’s hard to believe. After Bradley was born and after we dealt with his stubbornness and wild openness, we decided, “It would be great for him to have a companion and for us to build our family.”
Along came Elliot in November of 2016. My husband got it the best. He described him as a sweet boy. That was just his phrase for him. “Sweet boy. Hi, sweet boy.” Fundamentally, he was just the sweetest, very carefree. I can remember right behind me in this room in our living room, him running from room to room, and just his boisterous laugh. It was just so energetic and drew everybody in who was around him.
Everybody fell in love with him.
He was a lovable kid. There are so many cool pictures and images that I look back on, of course, of Bradley and Elliot playing together. That just made my heart sing, seeing them together and just what they were building and their relationship. That was exactly what we wanted. That’s what we hoped for and planned. It was February, when Elliot was almost a year and a half old, and he had a runny nose, not even perceptible, honestly.
Just still running around. We have pictures of him in the doctor’s office that evening. My husband lifted him up to touch the giant crown on the ceiling at the pediatrician’s. Just energetic, still having a great time. We are the helicopter parents who probably shouldn’t have even gone in. Who knows. Nothing to worry about, tested negative on everything. I gave him some ibuprofen and put them to bed. Nothing out of the ordinary.
My husband likes to say that his spider sense, like “Spider-Man never goes off.” He blames himself for that, but looking back, it’s taken a long time to say this because we looked for everything. There really was nothing out of the ordinary. Fast forward to around 6:00 AM, I remember thinking, “I didn’t really hear much.” We still had a baby monitor because once again, helicopter parents, even at a year and a half.
I could understand that.
I remember thinking, “That’s weird.” I never really heard anything on the monitor. He historically would maybe wake up once or twice in the night and then roll over and go back to sleep. I went in to check on him, and the first thing that struck me was that his legs were still tucked up under him. When I went to touch him, he was cold, and he had been gone for some time. I picked him up, and I just knew it was final. It was done. There was nothing I could do. I remember distinctly, it’s almost like you’re out of your body and you’re above, and you can picture it. I can still do that, right?
Of course.
With time, it’s gotten easier to picture it. I can remember standing at the top of our stairs, in the other room, and just screaming for my husband, who had already gotten up and had started working. He does IT. It’s never off hours with that. I looked down, I handed him over to my husband when he arrived, and I said, “He’s dead.” My husband collapsed in the middle of the flight of stairs.
That was another image that’s marked in my brain of my husband sobbing over his body and holding him. I’ll be honest, I never thought once to call 911 because what’s the point? What’s the point? I can be very logical, and my thought was, “What would they do?” We still called, and the MO, as I’m sure you’re aware, is for CPR to be performed even if it’s not necessary. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is for the survivors to know that they did everything they could.
My husband has his own trauma and his own memories of doing CPR on Elliot, obviously to no avail. The day just enveloped, and luckily, so here’s the thing. You can see little protective factors here and there, little things. My son, Bradley, at the time was almost four, and he was sleeping in the room right next to the top of the stairs. When I’m screaming and when there’s all this ruckus and all these, he hears everything, but did he wake up that morning? No, he slept through it all. We have a beautiful neighbor next door, Mrs. Sherry and Mr. Robert, who are retired.
I remember running over there and just screaming at 6:00 AM underneath their window, because we have no family that’s local, screaming under their window and asking for them to come to the window. I didn’t have shoes on. It’s just primal. It’s just reactionary. Those are beautiful neighbors who came over, and Bradley left without seeing anything or knowing anything. At that point, the police had responded. We had called them. They had come to the scene. I remember asking the police officer if he could stand under the stairs because I didn’t want my son’s memory to be of seeing a police officer in the house and having that concern.
That was a tremendous presence for you to think of that.
I guess I think that’s when you mentioned my love for working with kids and my awareness of youth and their needs, I think that’s always something in the back of my head. That’s maybe why I thought of that. I got chills right now. One of the things that makes me a horrible, horrific person, I use the word horror because it felt like a horror movie. In a time that was that horrific, we talk about dualities, and then we’re going to get that.
I’m carrying this horror of what happened, but I also can feel this gratefulness that my living son, for all intents and purposes, was exposed to nothing. Later that day, my family arrived. My parents arrived and were there. They camped out for weeks at our house and were very helpful. I remember sitting there and having to tell Bradley when he came back after we came back from the hospital, after all the things were tended to.
I’m sitting there thinking, “I need to tell him. The longer I wait, the harder it will get.” I sat on the floor in front of him and just used the words I didn’t want to say. It was very direct and very blunt because, being a former school counselor, I know that we don’t play with terms or euphemisms when talking to youth. We are direct, even if it hurts. I told him that his brother had died, and we processed it for a little bit, as much as a four-year-old in the moment is going to. I remember thinking, “We can grieve here with this shell shock, this bomb that has gone off in our house, or we can go to a playground.”
It’s bizarre. I actually have a picture that my mom took of us sitting at the playground, and I look like an absolute zombie. It’s just like the juxtaposition of this playground and these primary colors and this happiness. I’m sitting there not making eye contact, just numb, but reeling at the same time. That’s setting the stage for how it developed. Thank you for asking, because I know that each time we tell our story and each time we share it, it lifts a little bit. It does something. It morphs. It moves.
Each time we tell our story, each time we share it, it lifts a little. It morphs. It moves. Share on X
Unseen Connections: Signs from Beyond
You’re welcome. What is it? I know you’ve gotten some powerful signs. Enduring connections that you’ve experienced with Elliot and has Bradley gotten them also? Did they help him? That comforted him, that is rather still around him?
Thanks for asking that. I’m going to be honest. You probably can see the logical and the rational side of my brain in how I respond, especially in certain situations, which has its pros and cons. I can remember thinking, “I’ll just be honest.” In the first six months or so, I believe that trauma can be so loud and noisy and distracting, panic, anxiety, fear, that I was not necessarily receptive or open or able to see anything.
It blocked everything.
I can remember going to support groups, and I’ll get into this later, but going to support groups and hearing other brave parents talk about seeing signs, and I’m sitting there thinking, “I’m not noticing anything. I’m not feeling anything.” I remember you’re closed down. Slowly, as I think I worked on the trauma, as I told the story, as I processed it. As I sat with things like guilt and regret, it started to lift a little bit.
That’s another lesson that you go through what you went through, and the same with your husband, to be able to get to a point to forgive yourself. Sometimes life hands you terrible things. You don’t have control over everything.
As a parent, when the one job you have is to keep your kid alive, that is a very tough truth to sit with. I also like to delineate a sidebar, but I like to delineate a lot of times between regret and guilt. I know fundamentally, did I do anything wrong? No. Guilt versus regret. Regret is when you know you wish something had gone differently. There’s something that you wish had been slightly different.
“Wish I done that, wish I didn’t do that.” Guilt, however, in my opinion, there’s something fundamentally that maybe was done wrong that needs to be amends need to be taken for it. I think that’s also helpful, not only with myself, but with clients who hear that, because 9 out of 10 times, like you said, it was just the hand we were dealt. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily did anything wrong, even if it feels that way sometimes. Your question was about signs, sorry.
What have you seen? That’s okay. You’re processing and you’re not believing, but now obviously, things started. This was in the first year. Now you’re moving into your second year. I imagine you started opening up a little bit.
It started with the gauze, the haze, the loudness. I call it loud, even though it’s definitely quiet trauma. It’s just so distracting and so confusing. As that started to ebb a bit, yes, I think I became more okay, or receptive to feeling and sensing Elliot and seeing him. I think there’s also a fear, if I’m honest, that I hear sometimes with other bereaved parents and grievers, “What if we’re receptive and then there’s nothing there.”
There’s a fear of putting yourself out there and then being disappointed. Just to be 100% honest, it might’ve been a little bit of my personality as well. I think the thing that has struck me the most is just there’s this thing that happens, and it’s just so interesting and unique that anywhere I go, when I’m receptive and I’m open to it. I will start seeing ease, and it does not make any sense at all. It’s nonsensical.
The time I walked into the grocery store, and it was Christmas time, there were all these stockings, and none of them were monogrammed, but there was one. We’re talking out of a hundred. That’s a monogram with like a cursive E on it. I ended a support group at the job where I currently work for bereaved parents. As I was cleaning up, one of the candles I blew out spilled a perfect E on the table at the end of the bereaved group for parents.
As I’m putting furniture in my new office, this one gives me chills. There is this one little sticker in a corner, and I almost missed it. When you pack furniture and it tells you E goes with D, and put F here? I find a little sticker in the corner of the new office that is inspired. The reason I’m doing this is because of Elliot and because of Bradley. I found it in the very corner, and it was just a confirmation that this is the meaning.
Pathways to Healing: Modalities for Grief
Sarah, I have to say that I enjoy stories like yours, and I was, when they come from those of us who were former skeptics, really relate to all the people who said, “What is this? This is baloney.” Now you’re getting evidence in your logical mind. It’s not in concurrence with this.
It’s beating me over the head with it over and over again.
“I’m here, Mom.”
In my office at my current work, I do crafts with youth who are grieving, and there are all these fun things. I’m putting away these little bubble letters. The one that I find later that falls on the floor is this cute little yellow bubble E. At that point, I just had to giggle or laugh or be like, “Okay,” because it was just like I said, it was almost persistent in, “Mom,” maybe that one was a coincidence, but what about this one?
“We’re going to get your mom.”
“We’re going to get you.”
“I’m here, Mom.” You were in a group, I’m hearing, you were in a grief support group. What other healing modalities helped you with your grief? What else did you do? Did you see a medium or do the spiritual part too? What did you do?
I did the grief support group, and then I’ve also done general grief support groups as well. I’ll be honest, Irene, being there as a griever and attending for myself has been very valuable. In the background of my counseling, leading the groups or facilitating the groups has been healing for me because I get to witness other people’s stories and grief, and learn from them. Each person in front of me, I learned something from. I would argue that being a group member as well as being the facilitator has been just as powerful. I’m going to say some of the things I did on my own. One of my favorite absolute grounding practices is to just go out into the woods and walk. It’s the one time that I think my brain is not in overdrive.
It also brings you into the present moment.
You’d better be in the present moment when you see the copperhead, like I did the other week. You’ve got to be in the present moment. It was it. That’s its world, not mine, to some degree. Just that grounding that I experienced from being in nature and having the sounds, the senses being in the present 100% because our mind can go, “Whoa,” and run with things. What if down the road? To some degree, yeah, that matters, but none of it really.
Navigating Duality: Grief and Joy in Parallel
I’m also thinking you’re doing all these healing modalities. You’re getting a lot of information. When you get into nature, you’re doing that walking and all. In some way, you’re able to process what you’ve been learning and what’s going on. You’re walking and you’re doing that. In my life, I happen to have a view of trees right outside my balcony. I love sitting there. I find them very grounding and very comforting. I really relate to what you’re saying. Please explain also for everyone listening what you call the dualities of briefs and how you’ve personally experienced dualities of briefs since Elliot transitioned, which I also relate to. Would you like to share that?
Siblings are the forgotten mourners. Share on X
I’ll go back to that morning when I’m sitting there in front of Bradley and telling him that his brother died. It hits you. I have this living child. I have this kid who is living. I have this kid who has died. Two very distinct worlds, essentially. With Elliot’s death, I have a myriad of complicated emotions that have to do with that are ever shifting. They’re never stagnant. Especially in the beginning, I had to carry, like I mentioned before, the guilt, the regret, the pain, I used the word horror, all those really heavy.
You’re also involved in a relationship with your husband, who’s grieving.
Grieving differently. We have our own styles. Sitting there, seeing my living son and realizing “I need to do the best I can to be present for him while also honoring my grief and attending to that,” it can pull you in different ways. I have learned with practice and with time that I can carry that pain. I can honor the pain for my son’s death and for Elliot not being here. At the same time, I can also feel that joy and that pride that I have in my living son. Now I have a living daughter as well, Grace. She’s five. That can feel really weird because you can feel guilty that you’re celebrating your living children, but then where’s the one that’s not here?
I would like to say, like with someone like you, what you’ve gone through, if someone says, “How many children do you have?” “I have three. Two are here and one is on the other side,” but he’s still in your life.
It’s weird in the beginning. I would feel guilty if I didn’t say that because I was just having a rough day, and I didn’t have the emotional energy to answer that question. Now I just take it on a case-by-case basis, and I don’t feel guilty about it. In an instant, Irene, I will feel how I feel about the person who’s asking, really quickly, and whether I feel safe going there with them. If I give them this information, will it be honored or will it be awkward or dismissed?” It’s a snap judgment. That’s what I do.
“This Short Thing”: A Sibling’s Journey Through Loss
It’s funny, which brings us to your wonderful debut picture book, which I enjoyed. It’s called This Sure Thing. It’s a heartfelt children’s book that explores love, memory, and healing through the eyes of a grieving sibling. We’re talking Bradley and all the siblings out there who have the unfortunate experience of losing a sibling. What would you like to tell us about your beautiful book that people can purchase to help them talk to this other child who has survived?
This Sure Thing
The first thing, the joke, Irene, is that I hated journaling. I couldn’t write anything, not a damn thing. I didn’t want to. I resented it. I would read C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed and think, “That’s so cool that he did that for his wife in the raw.” Yet I had this block. I just didn’t want to. I think I was just angry and thought, “What the hell would a couple of words on a piece of paper do for me?” Two years roughly later, something just came over me. I’m cursing a lot. Irene, stick with me.
I enjoy it.
Clients and I, we stay real.
I’m a Jersey girl. Come on.
Great. Let’s get the hell in it. It was just weird. It was like January 3rd. I remember thinking I have to write, and I have to write about this specific thing about Bradley’s grief. It was this part of me, obviously, that I talked earlier about my love of watching them be together and how joyful that was for me. I think this was, yes, my grief is really difficult, and I’m always in it and always managing it, but not seeing the pain my son was going through with his brother no longer being there was torture.
This was a way for me to express that, honor it. Siblings are the forgotten mourners. There’s a phrase for it. Just because of the way things are, parents and adults usually get most of the attention. Because kids present maybe as happy and not as outwardly grieving as we would think, like adults do, we assume they’re fine, they’re resilient, they’re going to be okay. They don’t get as much attention. This was something that I feel like children’s grief is often disenfranchised.
It is not socially acknowledged and given the attention it deserves. For me, this just felt on multiple layers like it was something I had to do. Man, it was frenzied, and I wrote it within a day or two, max. It’s metered. I don’t think I’m ever going to write a metered book before again, because every single syllable matters, and that’s like a puzzle. Once it came out of me, I remember standing over there in the kitchen and reading it to my husband, and we just both were bawling while I read it. It just felt like this huge release, this catharsis that happened.
In a way, it feels almost like you channeled it. Like it came right through you.
I know. It was bizarre what came over me for sure.
That’s amazing. It’s a beautiful book. I encourage people to check it out. I will have it in the show notes and all of that for everyone.
Thank you. That’s really sweet.
The Courage of Acceptance: Finding Light After Loss
My pleasure. It’s going to help a lot of people. How would you say the courage and power of acceptance, you’ve learned to do when it comes to loss, that opens us to the possibility of life? Could you explain that to everyone?
Interestingly enough, I was just talking about this concept earlier with a griever, and we were just spitballing a little bit. It’s fun to talk about concepts and themes and grief. We were talking about how you can almost see accepting or coming to terms with a loss on a continuum, with maybe understanding at one end, acceptance somewhere in the middle, and then resignation somewhere on the other end. We were talking about how it’s a fluid process, as much of grief is.
I am a firm believer that I don’t know that I will ever, this side of the veil, have understanding why Elliot died. I think my journey and grieving and what I am doing have a lot to do with, as you said, acceptance. Accepting that he’s no longer here and then letting that inform how I move forward in my life and what I do and how I find meaning and how I have continuing bonds with him. The understanding thing, I don’t know. I cannot wrap my mind around it.
In a way, though, I’m going to contribute something.
You’re going to challenge me, Irene.
A lot of people tuning in know my story. When they pulled me out of the car, I said to myself that I would get through this somehow because I was actually programming myself that I was going to get through this for the sake of my surviving son. One of the messages that I got when my spiritual awakening happened two months before the accident was that Saul had to go. Many lessons will be learned from his death. It doesn’t make sense to us over here, but look at what you’ve done in your life and what you’ve learned at all and how what’s happened to you has probably enriched your compassion and empathy and your offerings to others who are going through different experiences. In some way, it’s informed your soul’s purpose, probably.
A hundred percent. There’s a quote by Kessler in Kubler-Ross that says, essentially, “How could a loss of this magnitude not impact moving forward? You don’t want life to be the same, nor should it be, because that’s how big the person’s life meant to you. It’s how significant they are to you.” Irene, you mentioned that, and hearing. I want to just mention that when I was pregnant with Elliot, talk about weird, I remember having an auditory.
It was mainly an auditory dream, and I was lying there, and it was visual in that all I saw was orange. I remember a voice like you’ve talked about as well, essentially saying, “Remember this is all just a dress rehearsal.” I was getting something. I had some clarity when I woke up, and I just look back and find it interesting that it was when I was pregnant with Elliot and before anything happened.
Debunking Grief Myths: Understanding the Non-Linear Journey
It takes you back when you think about how some things are not an accident, as horrible as they are. How about going to talk about those enduring myths of grief that you have discovered? This really intrigued me also because I found it to be true that grief seems to have a relationship with anxiety. In a way, I was told once that if you’re an anxious person and you lose someone, maybe your anxiety fuels your grief even more. Anxiety is the root. Do you want to explain that to people? What are some of the enduring myths of grief?
Tie in anxiety as well. I think let’s just lay it out there. The number one big grief out there that I still hear even from non-grief professionals, non-grief counselors in the field is about the stages of grief. I swear, all of us just cringe when we look at you and go, “Oh.” If I can debunk anything, it’s just saying, “No, there are no stages of grief.” It is way more complicated and convoluted than that. It is not linear. It is not pretty.
We cannot predict what we will be feeling and how we will be dealing with it in the future. While Kubler-Ross did a lot to put death and loss on the map, it is also important to remember that it was her work on someone who was dying and their own thought process about their own death. While we appreciate everything she did, she did a huge thing to get the ball rolling on everything and was just very powerful. Society has misunderstood it, I think.
That’s the first myth. No stages of grief. It’s more like cooked spaghetti noodles against the wall. It’s just tangled, convoluted, turns, and makes no sense. That’s the biggest one. The second one that impacted me had to do with just how we grieve, how we are expected to look. I know we were chatting a little bit about this before that I would show up to a support group, and I am not highly emotive in a group setting.
At home by myself, all bets are off. In a group setting, I tend to go more into the logical, observing, and listening mode. I am not going to be outwardly crying, or emotive, not always, but for the most part. I was told on many occasions by well-meaning group members to let it go, that it’s not good to hold it back. I remember walking away from groups on multiple occasions, thinking I was doing it wrong. That didn’t feel good to be like, “No, not only do I feel like crap because I’m grieving my son, but I’m doing it wrong on top of that.”
I think just knowing that there is no one right or wrong way to grieve and that there are many different ways to express it and to carry it with you. While men and women are often put into the buckets of women being more emotive and men being more doers and less emotive, I would argue that my husband and I were the opposite. I saw that firsthand. No stages. It looks different for everybody, and having the freedom to express it differently. I think the last one we’re going to get into later is how children look like they aren’t grieving, how youth often look like they are.
Let’s go right there.
That’s another myth. Even though we can see, for instance, that Bradley would cry. Honestly, anger was a lot of the reaction we saw from him, hitting the wall in preschool, that thing. His person was there, and then they’re gone. It makes your head spin. That’s an attachment that’s just being severed. He’s out in the playground playing and having a good time.
If someone’s not familiar with youth and grieving, it looks like, “He’s fine now.” It’s very small snippets here and there, sound bites. What we know, in fact, is that it obviously has a lot to do with attention span and developmental stages, the way that grieving looks. As we get older, it looks different. In general, of course, there are differences as well. That would be another myth that I clapped back on a bit is, “No, just because it doesn’t look the same doesn’t mean it’s not grief.”
Just because it doesn't look the same doesn't mean it's not grief. Share on X
Also, I think I alluded to this in the book that hearing kids are resilient or that they’re too young to remember. Those are all excuses we make to feel less pain, to minimize the pain of a kid who’s grieving. We don’t say that about adults. It really gets me going when those are things we say to make ourselves feel better for what this young kid is going through.
You feel better, but that kid has it all.
That’s exactly right.
They’re storing it and correct me if I’m wrong, but they may not be able to express it right now, but it’s going to pop up when they’re in their 20s or their 30s or whatever, unless they resolve it.
Also, what we’re teaching them is that when we say, “It’s not that bad, you’re not grieving,” we’re modeling that for them and telling them that’s not big grief, that’s not big loss, that’s not a love. That’s the message they’re getting, that’s grief to repress to not show it and be comfortable showing it however it looks.
Everything you’re saying is pointing to the fact that you are an awesome counselor. I don’t know.
Pull my clients, Irene.
I know you’re going to be starting a private practice specializing in grief counseling this January. It’s not far away.
I’m nervous now.
Tell us what you’re going to be doing because a few people here may be very interested in what you’re doing. Are you going to do both in-person appointments and telehealth so that they can contact you via Zoom and all that jazz?
Correct. I will be using a platform that has Hippocampus-compliant telehealth, but I will also be doing in-person. As I talked about before, one of the reasons I’m excited for private practice is to have a little bit more freedom to do outside stuff. The office that I’m currently renting and will be working out of has access to a lake as well as trails. It’s pretty cool to be able to offer clients what I have found, at least, to be so helpful in my grief, as far as grounding. In person, in the office, outside in nature, telehealth, and then also seeing youth and adults who are grieving.
The True Meaning of Healing in Grief
Which is wonderful. It’d be great for an adult, but if someone has a child who is grieving or they don’t know how to handle what’s happening with their child, they’d be the perfect person to get in touch with because they’re all about that, and you can guide them. Now I want to come down to the mission of the show, which is to encourage everyone to heal. Tell me, Sarah, what do you think of the word heal as it relates to grief, and why is it important in your opinion for each of us, no matter how painful, to heal?
You’re going to laugh, Irene. I don’t know if this is going to be sanctioned. I actually wrote a post on LinkedIn.
Definitely sanctioned you.
I wrote a post on LinkedIn, I guess. I try to post weekly. on grief content on LinkedIn for multiple reasons, for myself and catharsis. Also, I’ve heard feedback that it’s helpful to see a griever who’s vulnerable and putting it out there because it is often a stigmatized topic that is not openly talked about. Also, just to normalize the grief experience. You’re going to laugh. I did a post once where the first sentence was, “I’m not sure I like the word heal.”
Mainly because I feel like a lot of grief is tied to, at least in my line of work and counseling, it can be tied to the medical model instead of a wellness, holistic model. I do believe grief is a natural process, that it’s a normal process as opposed to a pathology. For me, when I hear the word heel, I think of something like a wrist or something like that. It’s taken me a while. You’re laughing at me. It’s taken me a while to get okay with the term and see it from, instead of a medical perspective, more of a holistic emotional perspective.
Grief is a natural and normal process, not a pathology. Share on X
You’ve been coming from a very left-brain place. Now that you’ve gone through this, it’s opening a few other doors for you because there’s an energetic component to it, and the healing. That works to release.
I think I talk about learning to carry the loss and learning to carry it forward with you, and how do you do that? How do you carry it in a way that is manageable for you and feels authentic for you? As far as that goes, I think for me, like I said, it was bringing down the trauma because it was so big, I couldn’t see around it, and especially the first year. We talk about it in the grief counseling field. We talk about the goal of bringing down the trauma. We don’t need that up here. We want to work on it and lower it. The goal is to honor the grief, to witness it, to sit with it, to honor it, to companion it. The goal is to trust the client with the grief. It’s their grief. I cannot carry it for you. I don’t want to carry it for you. I’m here to witness it and walk with you while you carry it.
Give you strategies to deal with it.
Anything that works. We’d call it tools in the toolbox. What works for you. Maybe something that doesn’t work for that person over there. That’s how I think I visualize it. How do you carry this big thing, this big loss, and what does it mean to you, and how do you proceed forward with it?
That’s a lot of wisdom there, Sarah. How does the power of acceptance have to do with finding joy in life? We’ve talked about that too.
We call it going through traumatic experiences and significant losses. We talk about post-traumatic growth. Back in the day, we didn’t call it that. It’s a very medical term. Back in the day, we called it enlightenment or just going through a fire and coming out the other side with a different mindset.
While I would like to say that’s never quite the goal, because we want to be careful of saying that’s not the goal in grief. The goal is to get out of bed. The goal is to try to live. It can sometimes be something that happens along the way. Acceptance, to me, is what William Worden talks about. Coming to terms with the loss has to be the fundamental building block for what we do. If it’s a significant death, we have to accept it.
Some people sit in their grief for their whole lives. This is it. I’m not moving forward. This is my pain and all. Other people say that’s like a foundation. I can build upon it. I can let certain things go, and whatever.
The meaning you find with it and what you do with it is, like you said, it can be highly variable. I do think from what I see and who ends up finding that joy that you talked about, even in pain, is someone who creates meaning out of it and finds ways to stay connected to their loved one who’s no longer here.
You’re doing so beautifully in your role as a model for people to do that.
You too, Irene.
Thank you. We’re working on it.
Work in progress.
Sarah, in closing, I want to thank you from my heart for your unwavering advocacy and compassion for both grieving children and adults. In your powerful debut picture book, This Sure Thing, you have gently revealed the sacred thread of love that endures beyond loss and give a voice to the quiet sorrow so many children carry. By affirming a child’s right to grieve with space, acknowledgement, and deep empathy, you offer a radiant light to those navigating the complexities of mourning, and you illuminate a path for others to follow. Thank you once again for this enlightening, insightful, and deeply moving interview, and many blessings to you.
Thank you, Irene. Thank you for having me.
My pleasure.
Guests Links
- Connect with Sarah Mayfield on LinkedIn
- Connect with Sarah Mayfield on Facebook
- Book your appointment at Live That Love
- A Grief Observed
- This Sure Thing
About Sarah Mayfield
Sarah struggled to find informed grief services for her son, Bradley, after the death of his brother, Elliot. Today, Sarah’s passion is supporting bereaved youth and families while promoting grief awareness.
Sarah is a Compassionate Bereavement Care™ Certified Provider, is Certified in Thanatology (Association for Death Education and Counseling), and has been a Nationally Certified Counselor since 2007. She earned both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Counselor Education from the University of Virginia.
In her previous nine years as an elementary school counselor, Sarah loved reading picture books aloud to classes on the carpet. It was through the students’ reactions to these books that she discovered a passion for an earnest message packaged in a confident, rewarding rhythm.
Sarah’s debut book, This Sure Thing, is her family’s passion project aimed at bolstering awareness of childhood grief as well as the importance of continuing bonds after death.
Sarah finds joy in upcycling forsaken furniture, getting lost in the plants (and weeds) of her yard, dancing unapologetically in the kitchen with her husband and kids, and remembering the motto, “Love never fails.”
