WHEN ‘Mary’ was a young child her brother died in a car accident.

Her mother immediately cleared out his room, forbid them to say his name and wore black for the rest of her life into her 90s.

As a result, Mary became extremely risk-averse and this fear was passed on to her children, limiting travel and other opportunities. 

It wasn’t until she was in her 60s, working as a professional in a senior role, that Mary reached out to The Grief Centre of WA, who turned her life around.

After support sessions and counselling, Mary was able to look at her fears through a different prism and started travelling and going on cycling trips around the world.

“Thank you…colour has come back into my life,” she told the staff at the Grief Centre of WA.

Mary is just one of the countless people the WA Grief Centre has helped since it was founded by Christine Overstone in 2014.

The registered charity is mostly volunteer-run with all volunteers and staff having experienced bereavement.

Overstone decided to found the the Grief Centre after experiencing a family tragedy and being surprised at the lack of non-clinical support options.

“I couldn’t find a service that had the language that spoke to me as a community person, nor the connections for the kind of support that I found helpful,” Overstone says. “I didn’t relate to the clinical approach to grief work, with models and theories. I wanted to understand it in layman’s terms, but that type of language and service was missing.”

According to research, 60 per cent of the community can manage their own grief without clinical intervention through support from family and friends, 10 per cent will require psychiatric help, and the other 30 per cent could go either way, depending upon the level of support they receive.

“The Grief Centre of WA works hard to meet that 30 per cent to ensure they do not end up as another mental health statistic,” Overstone says.

Over the years the charity has helped countless people in WA including ‘Tony’, whose family was “adrift” after his daughter committed suicide.

“By coming to counselling sessions, participating in groups and creative therapy workshops, it helped Tony to heal and now he is able to give something back to the community through his participation at the Centre,” says Grief Centre business manager Hayley Solich.  

“Tony is now one of our management committee members and passionate about making a difference for other families who have been touched by suicide.”

Solich says grief needs to be processed properly and everyone does that differently.

“Culturally, from a young age, we are trained to dust ourselves off, dry our tears and soldier on,” she says.

“Consequently, our community in general is uncomfortable with emotions. They don’t know how to hold space for someone who is grieving beyond what they think is a ‘normal’ amount of time.

“What they are not respecting is that the person who they had a relationship to may have died but the connection to them hasn’t.

“So when people are telling you to get over it, that is like telling you to break the connection.

“And you really don’t need to do that.

“It is normal to memorialise the person and to maintain the bond beyond the grave.”

The Grief Centre of WA has counselling rooms in Willagee at 88 Bawdan Street. They offer by-donation support groups on Wednesday 9:30am-11:30am (bereavement only) or Thursday 6:30pm-7:30pm (all losses). They also do fee-based counselling with a concession available for financial hardship. 

The Centre is marking its 10-year anniversary with an open day on April 10. For more info see griefcentrewa.org.au.