The full spectrum of wellness
Coaching starts with finding your focus and realising everything is connected. Five pillars, one battery — and three phases the body moves through: steady ground, when grief arrives, and a new kind of steady.
PILLAR 1 · PUTS ENERGY IN
What grief does here
Appetite goes quiet or goes loud. Bereaved adults in one classic study ate roughly a fifth fewer calories, found mealtimes unenjoyable, and named loneliness at the table as the hardest part.
What we work on
Steady fuel on a plate (protein, fibre, fat), the Gentlest Possible List for low days, 'how before what', and the food-and-the-person questions — the recipe box, who you ate with.
Read the chapter in the story →
PILLAR 2 · RECHARGES THE BATTERY
What grief does here
Cortisol rhythm flattens, the 3 a.m. what-ifs arrive, and the seesaw of wired-and-tired tips the whole next day.
What we work on
Rebuilding rest: a steady wake-up time first, then light, then the evening. Rest reframed as 'a medical necessity and a radical act of defiance' (Mary-Frances O'Connor, The Grieving Body).
Read the chapter in the story →
PILLAR 3 · DETERMINES CAPACITY & EFFICIENCY
What grief does here
The stress response keeps firing with nowhere to go; immune, clean-up and repair work get cut first. In the first thirty days after a partner's death, the rate of acute cardiovascular events more than doubles — and returns to baseline by three months.
What we work on
Movement that gives the stress response somewhere to go and strengthens the brake. Pace it, don't push it. Check in with your doctor — especially in that first window.
Read the chapter in the story →
PILLAR 4 · REGULATES ENERGY USE
What grief does here
The window of tolerance narrows. Protest and despair alternate. Survival mode can start to look like personality.
What we work on
Emotional granularity (name it precisely), finding the brake (inhale 3, exhale 7), glimmers, and permission for positive emotion — it makes more room, it doesn't take grief away.
Read the chapter in the story →
PILLAR 5 · DETERMINES WHAT THE BATTERY HAS TO POWER
What grief does here
Loss-oriented and restoration-oriented demands both land at once: paperwork, roles, the empty chair, the dinner party you can't face. Life changes carry a price tag; the death of a spouse is the heaviest on the scale.
What we work on
Lower the demands, add resources, question the shoulds. Plan B, pacing, and people who get it — because our loved ones are part of our nervous system.
Read the chapter in the story →
Three phases — of the body's capacity, never of grief
Nobody "finishes" grieving, and this is not a stage model of grief. It describes what the body can carry: regulated, dysregulated, and re-regulating into a new equilibrium — a life that is sustainable with your grief included, not left behind.
Getting healthier, one step at a time.
