'My dad died when I was 13 - this is how I healed'

FIFTEEN years ago, I was walking home from school one day. I approached my house and saw the door was open. I entered, went into the living room and on the floor I saw my dad. In that moment, | didn’t know it but he had already passed away. I called the ambulance, they came but nothing could be done. He was gone.

- KAMIL RAVIN

I was only 13 years old. This was a completely unexpected shock that no one saw coming. At that age, I had no clue how to deal with this. It took me many, many years to heal and overcome my grief and this is why I am sharing my story. Almost all of us will experience the loss of a loved one during our lifetime, but grief is rarely spoken about and still heavily misunderstood.

Tam sharing my story for those of you who are still suffering, who don’t see a way out of the grief you are experiencing. After my father passed away, I buried and ran from the grief. My world was completely shaken up and processing the pain at that point was too much. Years went by and I didn’t know how to talk about it. I felt shame, hurt, anger at the world and in the rare moments it did come up I struggled to talk about the experience.

It felt like there was a void in me that could never be filled again. It felt like I would carry this pain to my grave. After 1 graduated from university I began soul searching, diving into spirituality and looking for answers. I spoke to someone who helped me open up about what I went through. A flood of emotion came over me and I released a lot of the heaviness I was feeling.

You see, spending years hiding from the pain doesn’t mean it goes away. It's still there festering under the surface. I began allowing myself to feel my feelings, to hold space for them and surrender without judegment. There is a deep healing that happens through feeling. There's a transmutation of energy that occurs when we allow ourselves to feel the pain, feel the grief, feel whatever emotions are there without needing to push them away.