Kathryn Price
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"Smile... It's Not That Bad!"

16/12/2019

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​As a teenager I often (actually very often) used to have people say to me, "Smile, it can't be that bad".

In fact it was that bad. My mother had died when I was 12 and looking back, I was a depressed and grief-striken teenager and young woman.

Unable to enjoy life as others could, I was stuck in my pain; I had been unable to move through or beyond it.


The more I heard this, the more I thought here was something terribly wrong with me.
Little did I know, this was for some people the natural course of events when grief was unresolved. 

As I struggled on through my high school and later teenage years, I couldn't understand why I felt so miserable all the time. And then as a young woman in my early 20s I distinctly remember driving home from work thinking that I was just a miserable person. Every night on my commute I'd stop and buy chocolate and lollies, learning later, that it was all to numb the pain. 

It wasn't until I started work as a Flight Attendant in 1989 that I realised that something needed to change. The events of that day are as clear as if it were yesterday too. 

I'd been away for a week in Singapore I think it was, it was one of my first trips. On our final decent into Auckland I was standing in the back galley chatting with the rest of the crew when it struck me. Everyone was so excited to be coming home, and all I wanted to do was turn around and go back, anywhere. That was my wake up call. I knew I needed to make a change.

Shortly after, I made enquiries with counsellors and therapists and found an amazing woman. At the time she was in her late 40s to early 50s, a Psychotherapist specialising in the Attachment Theory philosophies, which was exactly what I needed and she was wonderful. 

Literally, it took me years to unravel a myriad of thoughts and feelings to discover who I really was. I learned that the stories I'd made up in my head about what had happened to my mother and why, were not in fact true at all; they were merely a young girls unsubstantiated interpretation. I learned how to love myself for who I was.

Over the years at different times the things that helped were Psychotherapy, learning about the grief process through books, videos and studying grief itself during the training I undertook in the 90s to become a Counsellor. Another process I found incredibly helpful was journalling and by the time I'd been through therapy I literally had a suitcase full of diaries I'd written during that time.


Another very vivid memory I have is the day I realised I'd started smiling more. I was walking down the street and I was smiling at nothing in particular at all and I hadn't remembered doing that, for a very long time, if ever. 

So, there's always a story. 

Behind every sad face, behind every anxious or angry person, there's always a story.
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    With my two great loves of writing and expressing my thoughts and feelings, I'm sharing what I've learned, and am still learning, in life and business in the hope that it may help someone. You can read my story here.

    ​With love,

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