Permission to Grieve with Sarai Lewis

Grief and I are not strangers; my first real experience was when I was 12 years old. My older brother, 23 at the time, was murdered on his way home from playing an indoor cricket match one evening. It tore our family apart. Not only did I have the shock of violent death as well as losing my brother, but it was also a death featured in the news and famous nationwide. For years my family name meant that every time I met a new person, the immediate question following an introduction was – “Are you related to…?” 

Between my grief and loss being in the public eye, my brother’s death, my family's disintegration and everything that was once stable in my life gone, I floundered. I had no skills to deal with grief or this new life afterwards. All I could do was survive; consequently, my grief became buried, only to surface a decade later. It was in my early twenties I learnt many of the life skills to aid healing I share within this course. These tools held me in good stead and probably saved my life for the second brutal hit. At the age of 33, my husband was killed on his way home from work by a dangerous driver. I thought my brother’s death was hard, but it was nothing compared to my husband's. He was my now, my future, and the father to our son—the man whom I chose to spend and share my life with. Every aspect and plan of my current and future life disappeared with him. I became not a single parent but an only parent. 

I have never known such paralysing fear. 

The very first thing I did following my husband's death was to give myself permission to grieve. I refused to be sideswiped by it in a decade like what happened with my brother. I would honour myself and my husband and express it all now. I utilised everything I ever learnt each and every day in some way to help me survive. I asked for help and continued to seek even more resources when I could to save myself from drowning. 

I understand first-hand how impossibly hard grief at its height feels.  

How impossibly difficult it is to imagine any future, let alone one that has hope and joy present in it. 

I understand how tiring it all is, and sometimes the most significant accomplishment in a day is the fact you woke up.

Life didn’t finish my conversation with grief there. My sickly mother, who lived with us, had several heart attacks a few months after my husband's death from the stress and shock. After dying twice and being revived, she slowly deteriorated over the following year and was buried also. She took her last breath the same week as the trial for the driver that killed my husband. I attended the court each day, listened to testimony, and nursed my mother on her deathbed each night. In a little over 12 months, I buried half my household and my only family in the country I lived apart from my four-year-old son. Life expected me to recover from losing a family for the second time. 

I could barely breathe, let alone stand. 

I had to be at my strongest when I felt at my weakest. I never once felt strong! Strength is the fact that despite this raw, vulnerable, ridiculously painful, fearful place that is being in grief and mourning, you keep moving forward. It is also the definition of courage. I share this nutshelled version of my story to help you understand this course has manifested from personal experience. Not one of those deaths felt similar to the other; I know first-hand how each experience of grief is different. 

I am here to hold your hand, keep you company, and share tools that will help you survive the tsunami of grief. Provide gentle moments of reprieve, encouragement and my wish, an anchor in hope. Hope that one day, life will not feel like today anymore. 

Permission to Grieve Programmes are designed to give you some life tools that will support your journey as you move forward with grief. To aid the ability to express, nurture and cope with the days, weeks, months and years ahead. To help provide encouragement, community and connection during feelings of isolation and fear. It is crucial to create an atmosphere where one can both mourn and grieve authentically.

Alongside the toolkits I use to this day, I will share with you much more about my journey, and I invite you to share yours.