Funeral celebrant Timothy Giles hopes his podcast At A Loss will help people navigate the difficult emotions we all have to face, including those related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Giles, who lives with a brain injury, has an interest in resilience – what holds us together and what causes us to fall apart.
"The thing that I noticed that derailed people again and again from being resilient was grief – death, grief, loss."
Photo: Diego PH / Unsplash
Listen to Timothy Giles on Afternoons
When trying to come to terms with a death, people consistently say to Giles "I just didn't see it coming".
But while job losses, relationship breakdowns and illness are things we often can't see coming, Giles says death and grief shouldn't come as such a shock.
Giles, whose own life has been "massively" changed by brain injury, wanted to do something towards encouraging conversation about these inevitabilities.
When you get thrown into grief and loss yourself, it can help to hear from someone who is further along that journey.
And when someone close to you is bereaved it can feel really awkward trying to support them, Giles says.
It doesn't get less awkward, but we need to be okay with the awkwardness needs to be okay.
Timothy Giles, funeral celebrant and host of the 'At A Loss' podcast Photo: GrownUps New Zealand
Giles feels privileged to be learning from his guests on At A Loss.
The sixth episode features 18-year-old funeral director's assistant Daetona Rawiri who has a special gift for working with the bereaved and is keen to see death education delivered to kids at school, just like sex education.
- Listen to Daetona Rawiri on At A Loss here
The most recent episode features mediator Jill Goldson, who Giles befriended at a mutual friend's funeral earlier this year.
The friends had planned to have a conversation about the loss of loved ones – Goldson's husband died 18 months ago – but in the studio, they got talking about the grief and loss Covid-19 has brought into people's lives.
Grief can come from losing your job, and along with that a sense of identity, and also from losing social contact, Giles says.
"It certainly seems to me, in my social circle, that people are feeling it a little more in Auckland [during this Level-3 lockdown]."
- Listen to Jill Goldson on At A Loss here