How We Honour a Life

The Three Pillars of Hope Through Grief

Over the past few years I’ve often been asked how I found my way through the loss of my husband and what helped me navigate the grief that followed. This audio shares the story behind the book I am currently writing, The Three Pillars of Hope Through Grief, and the three patterns I only recognised years later while reflecting on what helped me move forward. I hope it offers something useful to anyone navigating loss or supporting someone who is.” In March 2022, I heard the words no one ever wants to hear. “I’m so sorry. It’s Dave. There’s been a tragic accident.” I could feel myself falling before the words had fully left their lips. My legs gave way beneath me as a scream emerged from somewhere deep within me — reverberating through every cell in my body. A pain that cannot be described, only felt. Inside I could hear myself say: This cannot be true. This cannot be real. Followed by the realisation: How can I tell our boys? My husband was killed in an air accident in northern Italy. In an instant, the life I knew changed forever. I was grieving the loss of my husband, my best friend, and the person I had shared twenty-two years of life with — while trying to support our two young sons through the loss of their father, navigating a reality that neither my mind nor my body could fully comprehend. Like many grieving people, I was not thinking about healing, growth, or rebuilding. I was simply trying to survive each day. There were practical responsibilities to carry, decisions to make, and two boys who needed their mum more than ever. I had to be brave, strong, and steady while everything around us fell apart. If you have lost someone you love, you may recognise that strange disorientation — the sense that life continues around you while your whole world has been turned inside out. Grief is not only emotional; it affects the entire body. The nervous system moves into survival responses — fight, flight, or freeze — making it hard to think clearly, regulate emotions, or make even the simplest decisions. Brain fog, exhaustion, agitation, forgetfulness and deep numbness are all common experiences. Despite death being one of the few certainties in life, grief remains one of the least openly acknowledged parts of being human. Many people feel uncomfortable and unsure how to speak about it, or how to support those living through it — fearful of causing further hurt, as if they could possibly make the pain any worse. Despite this, it can leave grieving people feeling isolated, overwhelmed, and unsure where to begin. Many compassionate and valuable grief resources already exist. Yet in those earliest days — when shock is still present and the nervous system is overwhelmed — many of those resources can feel difficult to access. Reflection, emotional processing, and therapeutic insight are all important, but first the body needs something simpler: practical ways to move out of the busy mind and reconnect with the body. I leaned into practices that helped: breathwork, cold water, movement, nature, routine, and connection. I followed them instinctively, because they offered moments of relief when everything else felt overwhelming. Not only in those first days of shock and disbelief, but in the months and years that followed as I slowly found my bearings within this new life I never expected to be living. Only later, while writing this book, did I begin to recognise a pattern. The practices that supported me most all shared a common thread: they helped restore moments of steadiness when grief threatened to engulf me. Before anything else could begin to shift, my body needed to feel safe enough to take the next step. From that pattern, three pillars emerged — a simple, practical pathway that forms the heart of this book: * Pillar I: Return to Centre — helping the body, mind, and nervous system find moments of safety and steadiness * Pillar II: Finding Your Bearings — reorienting perspective and identity after loss, and choosing how we carry what has happened as we begin to live around our grief * Pillar III: Live Forward — rediscovering self, meaning, and connection while continuing to honour those we love Each pillar follows the same structure: personal story and lived experience, insights and perspective, an embodied practice with a simple how-to guide, and signposting to further resources — so that wherever a reader is in their grief, there is always an invitation and a clear next step. What I have come to understand is that love and grief are inseparable. The deeper we love, the deeper we grieve. Yet knowing this does not stop us from loving. We embrace love in all its forms — its joy, its depth, its expansiveness, its vulnerability, and ultimately its pain. No loss is the same. Every grief experience is deeply personal, shaped by the relationship we shared and the life we lived together. The Three Pillars of Hope Through Grief is the resource I wish I had been able to reach for in those dark days — and the one I now feel compelled to share. Why now Many of the practices that supported me through grief — breath, movement, time in nature, cold water, moments of conscious pause — are the very practices we are only now beginning to understand more deeply through the lens of nervous system regulation and trauma-informed approaches. At the time, I was not following a framework or applying theory. I was simply doing what helped me steady myself enough to get through each day. Today there is growing awareness that our bodies hold our experiences, and that practices which support the nervous system can profoundly influence how we move through life’s hardest challenges. And yet, when it comes to grief, many people still find themselves navigating loss without practical guidance that speaks to both the body and the heart. This book brings those worlds together. If we live long enough, grief touches us all eventually. And while we cannot prepare for every loss, we can develop the self-awareness, resilience, and courage to meet life’s hardest moments. Close Grief changes us. It reshapes the landscape of our lives in ways we could never have imagined, confronting us with the finiteness of life and the depth of love that continues to expand for those we have lost. And yet, alongside that pain, a truth often emerges. Those we love would not want our lives to stop when theirs has ended. They would want us to live — to continue experiencing the beauty, connection, and possibilities that life still holds. To carry them with us not only through sorrow, but through the way we choose to keep living. The Three Pillars of Hope Through Grief does not promise to remove pain, or provide an answer, sadly there is none. Instead, it offers a compassionate framework for navigating loss while continuing to live — helping readers return to centre, find their bearings, and gradually reconnect with the life that still remains. Because hope rarely returns all at once. It often begins as something much smaller. A conscious breath. A conscious choice. A step. And from those moments, hope begins to return. All my love ♡ Heather Get full access to Finding hope through grief at heatherashley333.substack.com/subscribe [https://heatherashley333.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Letter I Still Haven’t Written

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Finding your bearings when everything changes

If listenng is easier I’ve also shared a recording of this post above Finding hope through grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This morning, after writing my morning pages — I’m 15 days into The Artist’s Way and loving it — I received a message from someone who’s been listening to my podcast. I say “podcast”; it’s the audio I share on Substack for anyone who, like me, prefers to listen rather than read. My intention with writing my book and sharing these reflections is simple — if it helps even one person each day, that’s perfect. Whilst I’m writing about grief, this message stayed with me because, although they’re not navigating the loss of someone through death, they are still facing loss. Their long-term relationship has come to an end. And that is still the loss of a future you had imagined for yourself. Of course loss comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s losing a precious loved one.Sometimes it’s the future you had pictured.A life you thought you were building. And then it’s no longer there and you’re wondering who you are let alone what next? Whether that change came from your own decision or arrived through circumstances outside your control, you’re still left facing an uncertain future. You’re there, meeting a version of yourself that may feel unfamiliar. Finding your bearings in a world that looks different. For me, I keep coming back to perspective. Do you see it as hopeless?Do you see it as potential?Or do you meet it one day at a time? From my experience, it can move between all three. It depends where you are in your acceptance of what’s happened. There is grief here.There is loss.There is pain. And when we allow ourselves to feel, the body expresses what words cannot. Often, it begins with the tears. If you feel them rise, let them come.Rather than bracing or holding them back, allow them to flow. And if those tears could speak… what would they say? I remember being asked that question by my grief counsellor, and it stopped me. And boy, did my tears flow. Now, when those moments come, I find it helpful to ask the same question. What are these tears trying to express?What is asking to be felt, forgiven, or let go of? And alongside that, there can be a next step. For me, in those early months after losing my husband, there was a pull to say yes. I’m not sure where it came from, but I’m glad it did. I think if I hadn’t, I might have withdrawn completely — avoiding the looks, the uncomfortable conversations, even if much of that was in my own mind. So I committed to six months of saying yes. Well… to most things. To small things.Invitations. Moments. Opportunities to be somewhere different. By saying yes, I removed the friction of choice. It was already decided. And something began to open from there. I didn’t have the full picture. Do we ever? But step by step, something new begins to form. And with it, a sense of hope. All my love,Heather ♡ Finding hope through grief is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Finding hope through grief at heatherashley333.substack.com/subscribe [https://heatherashley333.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

I wasn’t finding my bearings

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How We Honour a Life

Reflecting on how we honour the lives of those we love, and what those moments can hold. Get full access to Finding hope through grief at heatherashley333.substack.com/subscribe [https://heatherashley333.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]