Grief is rarely just about death. In this tender and deeply human conversation, Sarah Jordan-Ross sits down with Carol Pilkington to explore the many forms grief can take, from the loss of loved ones to lost identities, life transitions, unmet expectations, and the quiet sorrow we often don’t know how to name. Together, they unpack what it means to move through grief rather than “get over it,” and how loss can become not just a wound, but a doorway into deeper self-awareness, compassion, and conscious living.
34:13 – Choosing life again and opening to possibility after loss
Sarah Jordan-Ross (00:00) Hey everybody, welcome back to Taboo Talk with Sarah, the podcast that breaks the silence, fosters hope and talks about the tough stuff so you never feel alone. We like having those conversations that we're often told not to, talking about things like death and grief and chronic illness, what it's really like to be a special needs mom, all that kind of stuff. If you're new here, I'm Sarah. I'm a mom of three, a wellness advocate and I care deeply.
about how we navigate those parts of life that shape us, stretch us, and sometimes break us. This season, I'm exploring what happens when we start noticing things we can't unsee and asking what we're meant to do with that awareness. And today's conversation feels like it'll be both tender and timely because we're talking about grief. Not just the grief that comes with death.
but the grief that comes with change, with transition, with the life we thought we were going to have shifting under our feet. And to help us explore that, I'm joined by someone whose work I deeply respect, Carol Pilkington, and I hope I said her name right. I first came along Carol's work through the Be Empowered Women's Network and the Shine Circle that we are both a part of. And what struck me immediately was
the depth and honesty she brings to these conversations about loss, healing and conscious awareness. Carol is the founder of Aware and Conscious and her work gently challenges how we think about grief, not as something to get over and get past, but as something to understand, honor and move through. Carol, welcome. I am so glad you're here.
I can't hear you.
I can't hear you at all.
Carol Pilkington (02:00)
Whoops, sorry. I self muted my mic. I have my external mic and the mute button there. Sorry about that. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (02:01)
There we go.
I'm very glad you're here and I love when tech doesn't do what it's told and that it's not just me. So I'm opening every conversation this season with the same question. What is it that you've noticed around you that now that you notice it, you can't unsee it and what does it make you want to do about it?
Carol Pilkington (02:24)
Goodness.
That's a really interesting question because I know I can't control the outcome of anything. Not in my own life and certainly not out in the world. And there's a lot of anguish and anxiety and despair out there. And all I feel I can do is speak into that and be...
comforting voice and someone that people might feel safe seeking out for guidance and help.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (03:29)
Because having that safe place to go, particularly when you are going through really difficult times, is really, really important. Now, quite often, when people hear the word grief, they usually think death. And while that is part of it, your work suggests that it's bigger than that. So how would you define grief?
Carol Pilkington (03:56)
I would define it as anything that we feel regret about, anything that we feel sadness and sorrow over, that we can't seem to shake. You know, I heard someone say years ago that they had just realized that they had been in grief over
a book or a career path that they hadn't taken.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (04:34)
Mm.
Carol Pilkington (04:35)
and it had just come to them. Those things happen all the time. When we begin to question how we are really feeling about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves in the world, we start to question what is this feeling that's not enabling me to experience joy on a regular basis? And so I would say,
Grief is anything or loss is anything that we have not resolved yet in our lives. Could be a conversation with a person that we cared about that is no longer in our lives. Could be how our career paths turned out. Could be our loss of identity or sense of identity based on career path or.
⁓ relationship choices, any number of things, right? And so it's really important. Exactly. It's really important for us to examine those kinds of things for ourselves. And we sometimes need help in figuring that out.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (05:42)
those big transition moments.
Because sometimes we don't even know what it is we're feeling and until we figure that out, we can't then process it and move forward from that. quite often, yes, we do. But grief, as you said, it comes from any kind of loss. And when we look at the stressful life events scale, and death is at the top of that one.
death of a parent, spouse or child. But divorce, major illness, marriage, job loss, they're all in the top five as well.
Carol Pilkington (06:36)
Yes, expectations not being met.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (06:37)
Yeah.
Yeah. So it's those things when your life maybe doesn't turn out the way that you were thinking it would, or you've had something happen that's shifted your trajectory. Now I know that that triggers off a lot of grief, but do you think sometimes because we don't acknowledge that that's what's going on, it stops us from
actually dealing with it and moving forward.
Carol Pilkington (07:10)
Yeah, absolutely. We tend to often minimize what we're experiencing and deny it and avoid it, avoid looking at it. And when we do that, it just keeps knocking on the door for attention and gets louder and louder and louder and accumulates over time. The more losses that we accumulate, the more dampened our vitality becomes, right?
Sarah Jordan-Ross (07:38)
Yeah, because the more times you get knocked down, the harder it is to get back up. And I think grief would have like a cumulative effect in that respect as well.
So how do you actually help people move through that?
Carol Pilkington (08:01)
Well, first I help them discover what it is that's actually ⁓ taking up the space in their mind. You know, there's that real estate in the mind. There's the real estate in the real world of physicality, but it's the real estate in the mind that we really want to ⁓ penetrate and
become aware of and work through. And so how I do that is by asking questions. I ask people where they are right now. What is coming up for them that they feel is...
hampering them in feeling that vitality, that joy about life, and even just being able to put one foot in front of the other sometimes. And when I begin asking those questions, they might not know the answer right off the bat, but they have to contemplate it and look into that because they have been avoiding it and ignoring it for so long. But over
a period of time, they become clearer and clearer. See, we are not trained to contemplate and ask ourselves these profound questions. And sometimes it does take another to ask those questions in such a way that it helps them and provides them the time to do that. And so as the answers come up, they bubble up organically.
and we're able to go further and deeper into that. And that's how things kind of, ⁓ I would say, mushroom and...
have, they gain light, you know, they come out of the darkness.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (10:06)
because that's the only way to combat darkness is to turn the lights on and to bring your attention to what's going on. Grief can be one of those tricky things, I think. I'll admit I'm no stranger to it in its varied forms. I was a sick kid so the trajectory of my life didn't quite go the way I was planning.
Carol Pilkington (10:11)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (10:35)
And then I lost my mum 13 years ago now and had two small babies. My second son was born just after my mum passed. And I remember reading once that our mums teach us everything except how to live without them. And for me, that was very true, especially in those really
early years where, say, so because I was an older mum, Work Sarah had had her stuff together. I knew how to do that but there was so many things with little babies even though I had some experience with them. I'm the youngest child so I got to do the arnie job which is the most fun because you get to go, you're not fun anymore, go back and annoy your mother. But you can't do that when they're your own and
There was so many times where it would be, I wish I could ask her. Or the boys would do something amazing and it'd be, mom, did you see? ⁓ that's right. And there'd be times when I was fine. And other times that it had hit me like a ton of bricks.
Has that been your experience with lots of people going through grief that we think it's this linear thing and you work through the stages?
Carol Pilkington (12:06)
absolutely.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (12:11)
But that was not my experience, it did not feel very linear at all.
Carol Pilkington (12:17)
It's not, and that's one of the misnomers that is out there with regards to the stages of grief. It's really about the stages of death, not the stages of grief. And if more people understood that, they wouldn't feel so daunted and feel like they're not doing it right, not going through the process right by thinking that they have to go through all these stages.
There are no stages. Everyone's experience of grief and loss is different. And we have to honor our own unique way of experiencing grief. And I can totally relate to what you're talking about with regards to your relationship to your mother. I don't know how old you were, but when I lost my mother, I was around 20. She was
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:13)
a little bit
older than you.
Carol Pilkington (13:14)
She was 50 and I was 20. And it yeah, it was the stage in which I just started to begin to think of her as a human being separate from being just my parent, my mother.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:32)
Shock horror, you just discovered that your mother had a life.
Carol Pilkington (13:35)
Exactly. discovered that she's a human being, that she has her own feelings. And it was the process that she went through as she was dying. She found out that she had bone cancer in February and she was gone by November. It was a really fast, fast process of her dying. And, and I was there through the whole thing.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:57)
That is so quick.
Carol Pilkington (14:06)
And during that time, I realized that I didn't really know her at all. And I was going to miss that opportunity to get to know her ⁓ as a daughter, as a friend, as a, you know, just another human being that I can have a relationship with.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (14:28)
have been so, so hard.
Carol Pilkington (14:30)
It was, it was very difficult for like six years. I actually blamed her for leaving me. When I went through this epiphany one day, I was at a seminar and I realized that she had no control over it. She had no control over her dying. It's not like she did it on purpose. And
Sarah Jordan-Ross (14:56)
Yeah,
I don't think they ask you about it somehow.
Carol Pilkington (14:59)
Right? And I had to really look at my feelings about all of that and accept that this was totally out of either of ours control. And it was at that point that I really began to get to know her after she died. I talked to friends of hers and I talked to
my sister and my father at times. I mean, we weren't an open communicative family per se, but I would pay attention to the things that they would talk about. But mostly I found out from friends of my mother and how she stood up for me and how she was like a lion standing up for her kids. And that was a revelation to me.
I just got to know her and appreciate her for who she was. She was an artist. She was a caricature artist. And I hadn't known that. And she was very good at it. So all these different little nuances about her that I discovered after she passed away, I totally appreciated and loved her more for who she was as a human being. With all her frailties and all her, you know,
the foo-paws of being a parent. You I fully accepted and understood and I wouldn't say forgive because I don't really use that word in my vocabulary very much. I accepted the fact that she was a human being and she did the best that she could.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (16:33)
You
with what she had at the time.
Carol Pilkington (16:51)
Exactly.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (16:54)
I think that experience definitely would have shaped you and what you've gone on to do in your own life. And I think that's another one of those interesting things about grief is that it does shape us, experience of that. ⁓
Carol Pilkington (17:02)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (17:15)
And sometimes it changes how we see the world or how we function in it, depending on what our experiences have been. Do you think it tends to make people more guarded or more tender and open, more awake to what's going on? What have you seen?
Carol Pilkington (17:36)
I think it's both. I mean, it all depends upon the person. ⁓ I think the work that I do with people is to help them become more open, to help them understand what they can learn from the process of grief about themselves. Because every event in our lives brings us an opportunity to learn and grow and evolve and learn about ourselves and who we really are, whether it's our capabilities, whether we...
⁓ how open we are to change, how we respond to change, all of these things. It's really important to be able to look at that.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (18:21)
And change is really the only thing that is a constant.
Carol Pilkington (18:25)
Constantly.
Right?
Sarah Jordan-Ross (18:28)
And yet change and in particular death, it's one of those things that it's going to happen. We know that and yet we're so unprepared for it, which I've been thinking about a bit. had a with a friend, Emma, who's an atropath in a previous episode, and she pointed out that we prepare.
Girls for Menage, we prepare women for pregnancy and childbirth, but we don't prepare them for what comes after that. We don't prepare for perimenopause and menopause or like that whole period of life after you're having babies and then it occurred to me, yeah, we prepare for so many things in life, but we don't prepare for the aftermath of...
of death or it's become one of those things that we just don't talk about and we don't talk about the effects of grief and how it shapes us.
Carol Pilkington (19:40)
That's so true. Because it's a taboo. It's still a taboo. We live in a society and culture where it's all about how do we do better? What do we do, do, do, do, do in life, not acknowledge that death is part of the cycle, no matter where we are. ⁓ And we have this ⁓ idea that
Sarah Jordan-Ross (19:41)
So.
Carol Pilkington (20:09)
someone younger than us shouldn't die before us. And that creates even more despair rather than looking at it as each person's path is different and that we have to live our own path. And we don't know how long each other's path is going to be. But when we can live like death is just on our doorstep, our life can change dramatically.
because we don't take people for granted. We don't assume anything. We would treat people with more kindness and care and love and compassion.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (20:50)
We would see all of those things that connect us and unite us and make us the same rather than all those divisions.
Carol Pilkington (20:58)
Mm.
Exactly.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (21:05)
And that's the... I'm talking a little bit about what I would call collective grief or wonder if you have a similar idea of that because looking around our world and it's several times in history when big things happen they mark us, they leave an impact whether we're actually part of that event or not.
I remember as a child watching the Challenger disaster and then I know exactly where I was when I heard the news about 9-11. I woke up to the sound of the television and it's like, why is my flatmate watching a disaster movie? Because I heard the sound before I then walked into the lounge room and saw on the news the second plane hitting. And it's just like.
Carol Pilkington (21:38)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (22:03)
There was this disbelief, the, no, that can't be real. And then more recently with what happened in Bondi, it's like mass shootings don't happen in Australia. Not, not anymore. We haven't had one for close on 30 years. So, you notice there that at that time,
Carol Pilkington (22:10)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (22:31)
People seem to forget their differences and pull together to get through that. So part of my thinking is how amazing would it be if we could take that and remember that even when there's not this big disaster going on.
Carol Pilkington (22:35)
Well true.
That's right. We truly come together when there's a disaster or some kind of crisis and it reminds us of who we really are and that our differences are so trivialized, they're trivial compared to what's really important.
It would be nice if we could remember that from one day to the next. I happened to be in New York during 9-11. I had just flown in for business the night before and we were, my superior and I, my boss and I were driving out to Long Island to visit.
the office that we were integrating into our company. And we were doing an audit and everybody was running around at the time when we just literally arrived and they were telling us what happened. so obviously the office was closed down and we went back to our hotel and I am from New York. ⁓ And so it was pretty...
pretty surreal. I was sitting there in our hotel rooms and he was needing and feeling that we needed to get on the road and drive back to California like immediately. Well, they weren't letting anybody out of New York. You were stuck. And if you left your hotel and gave up your car, you were, you know, up.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (24:37)
Nope.
Carol Pilkington (24:47)
the creek without a paddle, so to speak. And I said, absolutely not. If you want to go, you go. I'm sitting here. And I even called my cousin who happened to be a New York city police officer at the time to, you know, confirm and affirm for him that no, you're not going anywhere. Sit tight. We weren't able to leave until that, ⁓ see it was a Monday, Tuesday it happened.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (24:47)
Yep.
Carol Pilkington (25:17)
We weren't able to leave until two days later, which was Thursday, and drove across country. And everybody was crisscrossing the country and feeling and going through the same thing and experiencing all of this upheaval. And it was the most surreal thing I'd ever experienced. And when we were leaving the city, looking back where the Twin Towers were supposed to be is this big gap.
It was difficult. It was very difficult.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (25:54)
it's not like it's an experience you could ever forget.
Carol Pilkington (25:59)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (26:03)
And being that you are a New Yorker, would have hit different for you as well because that building, I'm assuming, had always been there.
Carol Pilkington (26:12)
Exactly. Since I was a kid.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (26:14)
It's like,
yeah, so you don't remember it not being there. whereas it's different for me when I go to New York because I'd never been to New York to see the Twin Towers when they were standing. But I've seen it in lots of movies so I can kind of picture where it.
Carol Pilkington (26:20)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (26:39)
where it was and I have been I did go to the memorial I was there in 2008 but it was I think it would sit differently for for somebody because there's that constant reminder of what's not there anymore and that happens with with grief in a lot of cases is it's it's not so much the
Carol Pilkington (26:44)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (27:07)
that's not there, but it's those little things that make you think about it that bring it back to your awareness.
Carol Pilkington (27:10)
Mm-hmm.
But
like you said, it's really ⁓ remembering where I was exactly. ⁓ But on a collective level with so many other things that are happening in the world, people get ⁓ sorrowful and they feel powerless. And I used to have this experience where I carried the responsibility of the...
Sarah Jordan-Ross (27:20)
Mm.
Carol Pilkington (27:41)
Sorrows and woes of the world on my shoulder and it really really weighed me down and I carried this melancholy within me that I didn't even realize and I would get very emotional at so many things that were happening in the world and Someone once said to me very early on in my journey that There was a sweet sadness about me and I didn't know what
Sarah Jordan-Ross (28:07)
Mm.
Carol Pilkington (28:09)
that meant and I was determined to find out. And so over many years, I began to chisel away at that and I had one day a huge, huge outflow of sobbing and emotion and realizing how much, I didn't even realize how much
I was carrying on my shoulders. And it made me realize that I am not responsible to carry so much sorrow within me. I can have compassion. It was that point where I learned to have compassion and separate what was mine and what was not mine. And it was really...
a way for me to understand at a deeper level the true nature of compassion and the true nature of empathy. I didn't have to carry it in me in order to have empathy and compassion for anyone that was going through it, a sad period or a difficult period. And it changed my life.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (29:34)
Yes.
Carol Pilkington (29:36)
Because then I was able to be more present for the people that I needed to be there for and to help without absorbing and taking on, you know, it's like that transference. I didn't have to, I didn't do that anymore. So was able to be there, be the container that they needed me to be without filling it up with them.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (29:51)
Yeah.
Carol Pilkington (30:06)
Ha ha ha.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (30:07)
I it. I was a massage therapist for 25 years and I'm grateful in my early days that I was taught. And it's just popped into my head. Line from a very old, very good movie. This is my dance space, that's yours. I don't go into yours, you don't come into mine. But in terms of the energy exchange, you're somewhere along the line because like you were doing,
Carol Pilkington (30:28)
Right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (30:37)
You are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and that's not not your job. But your job is to come alongside people, help them carry their load. Yes, it's to help them carry their load, not take it for them. And what you were doing before you realized that was you're going, yep, sure, I'll carry that. I'll carry everything else as well. But there comes a point where it's like, no, I carry my stuff.
you carry your stuff occasionally, we can help each other carry stuff. But so once you made that realization, how did it change things for you? You turned your camera off. I think.
Carol Pilkington (31:14)
Exactly.
Whoops, where did that go?
No, I
didn't. I didn't touch anything. I'm here. It's like all of a sudden I'm disappearing. Sorry about that. I don't know what's going on.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (31:27)
Okay, thank you.
It's okay, it's mostly audio anyway.
Carol Pilkington (31:35)
⁓
Sarah Jordan-Ross (31:36)
tech helper fix that up later maybe
Carol Pilkington (31:43)
My goodness.
Okay, well, let's continue. Hopefully, I'll come back.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (31:51)
Yeah! And if nothing else, we can hear your beautiful voice, so we will continue with that. So, you made that connection of not carrying everything. So then how do you move from grief being something that's really heavy and can be isolating to it being something that can soften us, deepen us, maybe even connect us more?
to each other.
Carol Pilkington (32:24)
That's a great question. think it's recognizing for me, it's recognizing that grief is another expression of love.
And when we can get there, it's a process of acceptance, acceptance for what is, and when we can accept the is-ness of any given situation, that's the jump-off point to being able to move beyond and through any grief experience and declaring that we want to live.
It's a declaration that, okay, this is the business of the situation. Now what?
And when we can begin to do that, our whole world can open up because it's a world of possibilities. It's a question mark, but being in a question mark of what next can be a wondrous and magical experience. And when we can look at it from that perspective, anything's possible. We create our own life. We create our own reality.
We are the authorship of our life, right? And so when we can own that, we can go anywhere and do anything.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (33:57)
That is a wonderful realization that when we remember that we get to write the story, we can make it go whichever way we want. There's power and magic in that.
Carol Pilkington (34:12)
That's right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (34:13)
Is there anything else that you would like to share with people listening? if they're going through those transitions, through that space, to help them see how they could make that change to seeing that anything is possible.
Carol Pilkington (34:37)
Yeah, I would say first acknowledge where you are. Be clear about where you are. Then decide what you want to do from there.
And it's not about forgetting if it's a loved one that you've lost. It's not about forgetting them. It's about...
taking hold of your life right here, right now. And like I said, acceptance, accepting and seeing things as they are, and then deciding that you want to be here. People might think that that's a very obvious thing to say, but it's not. When you consciously make a declaration that I want to live,
That's the moment that you begin to start living and to open up the possibilities. And so I would say.
Also to understand that everything that happens in our lives is an opportunity to learn more about who we are and what we're capable of. And to see grief as a learning process, not just as something about what has been lost, but what can we gain from it?
Sarah Jordan-Ross (36:04)
What can you take from that and carry with you? Because for me, legacy isn't just something that we leave behind after we're It's how we live so that when we're gone, we've left something that's going to outlast us. And sometimes that person that you, yeah. And sometimes it's the person that
Carol Pilkington (36:27)
That's right. Legacy is built every day.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (36:33)
you've lost that carrying forward the amazing things that they taught you that can then be part of not just their legacy but yours as well.
Carol Pilkington (36:45)
Absolutely, it's beautiful.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (36:49)
So I could stay here talking all day, but...
Just because I know there's so many rabbit holes we could go down. But for everyone listening, if this conversation has resonated with you, I hope that you take away that grief isn't weakness or failure. It's a learning opportunity and an opportunity for growth. And through it, you can see that all things are possible. And it's not something to
rush past, it's proof that something mattered. And we don't necessarily need to get over it. And we certainly won't forget those people and things that have come before. But we need to learn how to carry it differently so that it's something you carry into the possibilities not
not let it weigh you down.
Carol, thank you so much for bringing your wisdom, your depth and your joy to this space, helping us to see that we can move from carrying way too much sorrow to then sharing joy.
Carol Pilkington (38:15)
Thank you.
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (38:30)
have way too much fun my job.
So to everyone listening, keep having those conversations that might feel uncomfortable. Keep noticing what you can't unsee. Keep choosing life and living it. And choosing humanity over hardness.
Until next time, take care of yourselves, take care of each other. And remember, your story matters, so share it. Because your story might be the one that changes someone else's life. I'm Sarah Jordan Ross and this has been Taboo Talk. We'll see you next time.