Introducing Josephine Payge – the first G.R.I.E.F. Guide!
I’ve mentioned Josephine a heap of times but this is the first time I’ve properly introduced her. I thought it’d be good to share a bit about her with you. For you to meet her.
Josephine Payge is the very first fully trained and certified G.R.I.E.F. Guide!
I knew I wanted to train others to use the G.R.I.E.F. Process since I started this work. Both so more people could share it AND because when I die who the heck will help the people I love so they can heal?! That has always been a big question for me.
Now I have an answer.
When I first met Josephine she was a totally different woman than she is today. At the time she was absolutely destroyed by her husband’s death. I remember working with her at the start, trying to put some of her pieces back together so we would be able to move forward and do our work. I also remember there were times she looked at me like I was insane and I was just waiting for her to tell me to piss off. But she never did. Instead she worked her ass off, determined to do whatever it took to heal her grief. And heal she did. When we had completed our work she told me she’d like to be able to do what I do. I was really excited as I’d had my beady eye on her for this from early on, thinking that if she wanted to do this work she’d be so great at it.
And here we are a year later.
Training her up, watching her help people heal, has been amazing.
I’ll be sharing a guest post from Josephine every month, but I asked her to start first with an intro about herself.
So, meet Josephine…
In a nutshell the reason I’m introducing myself here is because my hubby Mark died, that was almost three years ago.
Maybe the reason I found my way to this very website in 2013 is because all of my life I’ve looked for alternatives when mainstream solutions haven’t worked for me. I’m also someone who has always tried to create balance in my life. So when it came to death and grief true to form I looked for a solution to the pain that I was feeling. I tried counseling because I was offered it. It is available here in the UK for the bereaved and perhaps it does help some people. But to me it felt wrong. I didn’t like anything about it. I objected to their tone and body language. It did nothing to heal or soothe the pain I was in. In fact it irritated me. So I didn’t continue with it.
About three months after Mark died I started to look for a solution. Something told me that there must be another way with grief, I thought there just had to be. Every part of me knew that this could not possibly be my future. I could not be destined to live in anguish and pain simply because my love had died. After all we are all going to die. Death is part of life and even though the Buddha might have said: “life is suffering” I wasn’t buying it!
I read a lot websites about grief and I joined a couple of groups on Facebook. But nothing helped. People telling the same old story about time being a healer and you get used to the pain but it never goes away and you never get over it type of thing, it was depressing, it felt hopeless. For weeks that was all there was out there, or so I thought. A small quiet voice wanted me to keep searching even though I didn’t really know what I was looking for. All I knew was that I really wanted to be able to live my best life. I didn’t fancy having a secret pain that could not be spoken of in case I broke down in tears, I really didn’t.
Then one day I stumbled across Kristie West’s website. I thought, now here is someone speaking my language, someone who says she has healed completely from grief. It made so much sense. It was totally different from anything else I had come across. I avidly read her information and it resonated with me. She said that healing the pain of grief was absolutely possible. Eventually I hooked up with Kristie and we worked together until I felt better. During the G.R.I.E.F. process I discovered so many things about myself. I began to realise that this was mostly about me and not about Mark. I uncovered deep-seated beliefs about death, where those beliefs had come from I had no clue. But they were there and were preventing me from healing. I discovered that there is another side to death just like there is always another side to everything in life. And what was so refreshing was none of this was based on needing to believe anything or religion or spirituality. This was a logical process of regaining the balance that I so wanted.
Fast forward to today as I sit by my window writing this blog post. I trained with Kristie last year and I’m now qualified to coach people in this unique G.R.I.E.F. system. In the past I had my own health and fitness business teaching the Pilates Method and also the Gyrotonic Expansion System. I give back to my community by volunteering as a healer at the healing sanctuary that helped me so much when Mark was sick. My grand children are my greatest joys these days and I’m still passionate about healthy living and anything that helps me to become a better human.
Recovering from this death in my life wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be. The healing process inevitably took its own twists and turns. Some days were amazing some were not so good but the thing is that I was given the insights and tools I needed to get me through the not-so-good days. Until those days became a distant memory so that I’m now able to once again live my best life!
I look forward to connecting with you in future blog posts on a variety of topics exploring Death, Grief and Life.
With love
Josephine x
If you’d like to get in touch with Josephine or follow her you’ll find her over at www.thegriefguide.com and you can contact her on thegriefguide@gmail.com
I look forward to sharing more of her wisdom, thoughts and inspirational musings with you next month.
Kristie
