The history of Hallowe’en connects us to death and dying. The night of all souls is traditionally associated with remembering people who have died and honouring their spirits.
Fear is our natural response to not understanding what will happen next, especially when life is coming to an end. Historically Ireland has a beautiful approach to grief and community support when people pass on.
Taking time with the body and allowing grief to be expressed is extremely valuable as part of the natural healing process. When someone really close passes, it’s good to give a little time every day to grieving, to remembering them and feeling the sadness.
Sadness is a testament to how much you love a person. The more love, the more sadness. Hallowe’en comes with the change of the seasons from Harvest time to Winter, encouraging people to connect with the death or ending of the fruitful seasons and encouraging us to connect with that same experience in our own human relations.
The plants die off and are born again in Spring, similarly people pass on and life starts again with their absence. This is nature mirroring human relationship experience.
For me, death has been my greatest teacher. Having a close death in my teenage years taught me how to live. It taught me that time is short and to appreciate and enjoy what I can while I can. It gave me the courage to do the things that I would otherwise have been scared to do.
It helped me to confront my own inner challenges with learning how to understand my mind, my fears and anxieties. It helped me to learn how to be curious about myself so that I didn’t judge myself and I was able to accept the truth of what I feel and then start to change and grow.
It taught me to be comfortable to love people even if I felt a bit stupid or strange.
I learned to give older family members hugs because I cared about them and wanted to, even though they were not used to this kind of thing because it wasn’t normal when they grew up. I told family members that I loved them, even though they didn’t use these words.
As scary as death seems, it is everywhere and I think we need to learn from it.
I have worked with many dying people. I trained as a death Doula and I have done a lot of research on near death experiences.
Ask yourself, if you had a year to live, how would you like to live it? Who would you like to have in that life and how would you spend your days? Society, marketing and social media says that we should focus on material gains in life and accumulate stuff.
But this stuff doesn’t come with you. From my experience, when people reach the end, all they really care about is who they loved and who loved them. They often want the simple, small comforts and to feel cared for, they worry about the people they are leaving behind and want them to be okay. They will miss them.
The more I have worked and studied in this area, the more I have come across physics, science and near death research that indicates that there is more to come when we pass on.
But no one is clear as to what that is and there are many religions that aspire to know what happens after we die.
One thing that is clear again and again, compassion and love are key to being human, to feeling well and to really getting a deep sense of living well.
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and a survivor of the holocaust.
He wrote a book called “Man’s search for meaning”.
He describes our need to make meaning out of our lives, regardless of what we have been through.
He helps us to understand that although we can’t control how long we live, or what will happen to us in our lives, but we do have the freedom to choose how we respond. We have the freedom to decide how we create meaning from our experiences and how we can use difficult experiences to live well and fully.
Aisling Battersby is a psychotherapist, nutritionist, sports therapist, lecturer and supervisor. She operates her private practice out of Kinvara in south Galway. For more visit optimumhealth.ie.
Aisling Battersby
Aisling Battersby is a psychotherapist, nutritionist, sports therapist, lecturer and supervisor. She operates her private practice out of Kinvara in south Galway. For more visit optimumhealth.ie.