Standing with Stories of Loss—Why I’m Proud to Sponsor Grieve 2025

Grief is a landscape I am intimately familiar with. It’s shaped me, broken me open, and, over time, shown me how to keep going, even when the path felt impossible. This year, Your Choice Funerals is proud to stand alongside the National Association of Loss and Grief (NALAG) as one of the major sponsors of Grieve 2025, a national initiative by the Hunter Writers Centre that gives space for people to write, speak, draw, and create their way through grief and loss.

Sponsoring this initiative wasn’t a decision, it was a calling.

A Project that Speaks to the Heart of Loss

Grieve began in 2013 during Australia’s Grief Awareness Month and has become a space where everyday Australians express the often unspoken—loss, longing, absence, love. This year’s project culminates in Volume 12 of the Grieve Anthology and a live-streamed storytelling event called Lament in October.

Through prose, poetry, visual storytelling, audio, and film, creators from all walks of life offer raw glimpses into their pain and healing. Contributors are supported by curators and editors, and this year, those selected receive a publishing payment—acknowledging the emotional labour of storytelling.

It’s beautiful. It’s brave. And it’s exactly the kind of space I wish more people had when navigating loss.

Grief is an essential part of my story

I’ve lost many people I love—each in different ways, and each leaving a unique shape of grief behind.

I lost my mother, and with her went a foundational part of my world. I’ve grieved the absence of her wisdom, her comfort, her presence at milestones she never got to witness.

My sister died by suicide, and that grief… it’s complex. It sits with unanswered questions, quiet guilt, and the aching wish that I could have done more. Suicide grief is a silence inside you that doesn’t always know how to speak—but needs to be heard.

Then came my brother Les and my sister-in-law Cindie, both taken by cancer. Watching them fight, decline, and eventually let go changed me. It showed me what anticipatory grief looks like—the slow ache of knowing what’s coming and still never being ready.

And in between these deep personal losses, I’ve walked beside others—friends, family, strangers—who’ve faced their own sorrow. Each grief is different. Each one sacred. And in every case, I’ve seen how much people need space to speak, to be witnessed, and not to be “fixed.”

Why I’m Sponsoring Grieve 2025

Being a major sponsor of Grieve 2025 allows me to help ensure these important stories reach the public—unfiltered, honest, and held with dignity.

This isn’t just sponsorship. It’s legacy. It’s about creating a national space where grief is not silenced or rushed but witnessed and respected.

The Grieve Project does something vital—it normalizes grief. It makes it communal, not just personal. And in a world that often rushes past sorrow or wants it to be “tidy,” this project holds it with tenderness and respect.

Through my support, I hope a voice that might have stayed silent now speaks. I hope someone feeling alone finds a story that resonates. And I hope this work continues to expand—because there are so many stories that still need to be told.

Lament, Legacy, and Looking Ahead

The Lament event on October 29 will be a chance to hear some of these stories shared publicly—raw, honest, and healing. It’s a testament to the courage it takes to turn pain into language, and language into legacy.

If you’ve experienced grief—or walked beside someone who has—I encourage you to explore the project, read the anthology, or simply take a moment to sit with your own memories. Grief changes us. But when we share it, it also connects us.