14 Years of Loss and Love

There is nothing that compares to the love I feel for my siblings and niece. How beautiful that there are people on this Earth that come from exactly the same bloodline, that have exactly the same ancestral history, that even shared the same womb, yet bring such unique expressions to the world. There is no one I am tied to more (physically, spiritually, karmically) than them. I was lucky enough to come into the world with built-in companions, my identity was built around who I am to them, and who they are to me. 

My older brother was 11 years old when I was born, and although he didn’t live with us for all of my childhood, he was a key part of my welcome into the world. Many of my early memories involve him - playing in the garden, listening to his music (garage and drum and bass), getting in trouble for climbing on the garage roof, admiring his first tattoo, touching his freshly shaved head, going for rides in his first car, bragging to my friends that my “way cooler than yours” older brother was going to pick me up from school that day. My relationship with him played a huge role in the formation of my identity, my likes and dislikes, who I choose as friends, even how I speak and what I enjoy - so much of that is down to him. 

When I was 12 years old, he became a father. I asked him once if he was scared of being a dad, he told me he wasn’t because he had so much practice with me. He was only 23 years old then - but to me he was already a seasoned adult who knew so much about the world. Welcoming my niece into the world was a huge joy, I was ecstatic the first time I was allowed to babysit by myself, or when I got to attend a ford show at the silverstone race track because I could push the buggy around. 

As I became a teenager, I began to talk to my brother about more “grown up” things; he would give me advice on boys, gcses, how to convince mum to let me go to that party, what to do with my life, and everything in-between. I never considered that one day he wouldn’t be there. He was invincible, eternal, full of life. He was part of me. 

On the 2nd of January 2011, when I was 16 years old, my brother crashed his car. After two excruciatingly long days, his life support machine was turned off. 

When an animal is under threat, just before the fight-flight response kicks in, there is a mini-freeze that happens in their system - think of a rabbit that hears a rustle in the leaves, eyes open wide, hair stands straight, and ears twitch - pausing to see if they need to take action. In this state, there is no feeling, no resolution, no processing. Just waiting. 

I can tell you a lot about what it’s like to live in that state; to live inside a body that is bracing for action, but never quite able to take it. A moment frozen in time. A pain never felt but also never leaving. A fragmentation of identity so deep that you and everything around you fades into blackness. Much of my existence has been imprinted with this primal fear. Like the breath was taken from my body but I was somehow still alive. 

The brain of a 16 year old hasn’t yet finished developing. I found myself in a difficult situation - I still had 9 years left before I had a fully functioning frontal cortex, and there was a serious lack of responsible adults to help me navigate my new life without my brother. My mother was grieving, and my father was not yet emotionally free. The only time my teachers at school ever mentioned what had happened was a few months after when they told me they had given me enough “excuses” and it was time for me to get back on track, besides my younger siblings needed me to be strong, didn’t they? 

The messages were received loud and clear: There is nowhere to land and nothing to hold on to. Grief is something you face alone. Everything you love will leave you. Good luck out there.

So what happens to a young brain when there is no emotionally attuned adult resource? We create our own internal resources; coping mechanisms. 

I have had a range of these, some “healthy” and some not so, but all with the same end goal - do not, under any circumstance, face the depth of loss you are carrying. This is exactly why some traumatised people continue on to be addicts, whilst others become CEOs. Avoiding pain is one hell of a driving force.

It took me a few years to figure out my brain wasn’t quite functioning properly. Heightened anxiety, strong emotional reactions, and extreme dissociation were some major clues. So, I began to learn. Over quite a few years, I devoured books, took courses, signed up for every webinar and conference I could, got certified in all the things; yoga, massage, coaching. I moulded my whole career and identity around it. Surely, if I can understand, I can be free, right?

Wrong. 

Turns out, the body really does keep the score.

Let’s go back to the rabbit. When the mini freeze passes, there is an arousal of energy. This prepares the little rabbit to run or fight - whatever their system decides is best in the moment. If the rabbit cannot escape or fight back, their system pushes the emergency brake - play dead. 

The spirit of the animal leaves its body as it prepares for death. If the threat passes and the rabbit finds itself still alive, it will spring back to life, and a discharge of all that built up energy from the fight-flight response will begin. Humans are unique in the sense that we can sometimes get “stuck” in each of these phases. Some of us live chronically in fight-or-flight, some of us live in collapse, and there are others who live between the two - constantly shifting between hyper and hypoarousal. Anxiety and depression. Fight/flight and Freeze. Why? Because for the discharge to happen, we have to face the truth of what we have been through, feel that depth of loss we have been running from, and embrace our blind spots.

My blind spot became clear to me at a 10 day silent meditation retreat in 2023, when after 3 days of paralysing fear, I decided to leave. 

In the silence my deepest fears surfaced. I became convinced that my partner was going to die in a car accident and I would not be there to stop it happening. The fear was so intense that I could not eat or sleep. It was as if the waters in the lake of my being were draining and revealing the ruins of my past underneath. The truth is that I was not afraid of my partner dying, I was afraid of feeling the unfelt pain of losing my brother.

This is how trauma works. The past is projected onto the present over and over again. There is a part of us that is perpetually frozen in that moment - the little rabbit with the eyes wide and ears twitching - unable to face the unknown. 

With the help of some truly expert mentors and guides  I have been consciously releasing the experiences of my past. Now that I have the awareness of what is happening, everytime the thoughts and feelings arise I am able to allow them to move through me. I can remind that 16 year old that I am now an adult that can take care of her, that grief is just love in separation and healing can happen in community, and that yes, sometimes people you love will leave but I will never leave her.

When I talk to my brother I feel his spirit telling me that he wants me to live, that I have spent long enough stuck in the past and it is time for me to evolve. It is a process I am committed to because I do want to live. Perhaps me writing this is a way of announcing it to the world. 

I wish I could tie a pretty bow on this and say I feel healed and whole and fully trusting in life. I’m still working on it. What my family experienced is not a trivial thing. “Moving on” is not a simple box that we tick like a task in a to-do list. Maybe the pain of losing my brother will always be there somehow no matter how much “work” I do; a faint hum in the background of my existence reminding me what it means to be alive.

The truth is I’m not sure we ever get there. Is it possible to be whole? Or is life a training ground for the soul so when the moment of death comes we are able to soften into our wholeness? Maybe we are already "there", and we have just convinced ourselves otherwise?

If there’s any one ‘silver lining’ to this it's that I have been motivated to become an emotionally attuned adult so that I am able to be there for others in their times of need. It has become a mission to understand how trauma works, and what we can do to integrate, heal, and choose Life again even after the depths of hopelessness. I have been using yoga, coaching, and trauma-informed approaches to provide support to others who may also feel fragmented and lost, and my dream is to continue to learn so I may continue to be of service to others, and maybe even to raise a family of my own held by pillars of community, love, and connection. 

I don’t dream of a world where there is no loss and no pain - wild animals often go through scary and intense experiences and leave with no symptoms of trauma. I dream of a world where we are able to meet each other in those losses and reconnect with the instinctual processes that nature gave us to move through challenges without resistance.

Maybe we already know what to do. Maybe we already know how to support each other. What if we just need to remember what its like to feel that old tug of primal wisdom within?