Finding a way to carry grief and keep living

Some mornings, the rain reflects more than just the weather. It holds the weight of something softer but more permanent—a kind of emotional gravity that lingers even when the skies clear. For those navigating grief, the rain isn’t just background. It’s a mirror. One that doesn’t demand answers, but simply exists, steady and wet and wordless.

Grief has long been misunderstood as a linear journey—something you progress through in stages, something you eventually “get over.” But as Lydia Wang, chief operating officer of Star Media Group, said at the opening of the “Understanding and Living With Grief and Loss” workshop held on July 12 in Petaling Jaya, grief doesn’t unfold in tidy sequences. It comes in waves. It reshapes the landscape of your life. It might quiet down, but it never fully leaves. And that’s not failure. It’s truth.

The workshop, co-organised with HELP University and attended by over a hundred participants, wasn’t built around solving grief. Instead, it offered something quieter and more meaningful: space. Structured into three parts—understanding grief, living with it, and rebuilding after loss—it unfolded like a ritual, not a seminar. The rhythm was intentional, and so was the language. The experience wasn’t about finding closure. It was about finding containers.

Dr. Goh Chee Leong, the chief executive officer of HELP Education Group and the workshop’s main facilitator, reminded attendees that grief isn’t limited to death. It surfaces when we lose health, jobs, relationships, pets, or futures we once counted on. The pain of these losses doesn’t require anyone’s permission to exist. Still, so many grieving people feel unsure. Is this normal? Am I weak for feeling this long after it happened? Why am I still here, aching?

To make sense of it, Dr. Goh used the metaphor of mountaineering. He shared how his son had recently taken an interest in climbing peaks—Kinabalu last year, Rinjani next. And what made those climbs bearable, he said, was never the weather or the terrain, but the guide’s briefing. Knowing what to expect, how to breathe, when to rest. Without a map, a climb feels like chaos. But with one, even the hardest ascents become manageable.

Grief needs the same scaffolding. Not to eliminate the pain, but to provide orientation. And within that structure, Dr. Goh introduced the well-known Kübler-Ross model—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—not as a checklist, but as a set of emotional markers that may loop and return. Some people never feel anger. Others may bounce between depression and bargaining. What matters is not where you are in the sequence, but whether you can locate yourself at all. That sense of location is what begins to ease the helplessness.

Co-facilitator Usha Ponnudurai, a senior counsellor at HELP University, built on this by explaining how grief behaves in the mind and body. It cannot be avoided, she said, only delayed. And even then, it returns with interest. Attempting to suppress grief, she explained, is like trying not to think of a pink elephant. The more you push it away, the more insistent it becomes. So instead of resisting, Usha encouraged attendees to invite grief into their lives with boundaries.

She introduced the concept of emotional timetabling—allocating fifteen to thirty minutes each day to consciously feel the weight of your sorrow. That time could be used to cry, write, remember, or simply sit with what hurts. And when the time ends, you gently tell yourself: we’ll meet again tomorrow. This is not denial, nor is it indulgence. It is discipline. Grief doesn’t explode when it has a room of its own. Emotional scheduling becomes a way of building a life that includes grief—rather than one constantly disrupted by it.

One of the most profound parts of the workshop came through the sharing session, where participants were invited to tell their own stories. For many, it was the first time they had spoken openly about their pain. And within that act of speaking, healing quietly began.

Senior manager Ng Dailing, 68, shared how she had been grieving the death of her pet. Initially hesitant to speak, she feared others would not take her grief seriously. But when Dr. Goh explicitly acknowledged that pet loss was valid and meaningful, something softened in her. She felt seen. When she spoke, others came up afterward to thank her. This, she said, was her turning point. The validation gave her permission not to suppress the sadness. It made the pain feel survivable. And more importantly, it made it feel human.

Another participant, Datin Sivaneswari Pillay, 68, reflected on the recent death of her husband’s youngest brother. They had been unusually close. Though her husband was still grieving, she had reached a kind of acceptance—but not the kind that suggests peace. “I’ve accepted it,” she said, “but I’ve lost a part of my happiness. And that’s okay.” What this session did, she added, was help her name what had been taken. When someone younger dies, the loss often feels unnatural. And with unnatural loss comes a different kind of silence—one that workshops like this help to break.

There were also stories of secondhand grief. Darna Aminuddin, a 46-year-old post-audio producer, attended not for herself but for her father, who had become inconsolable after her mother’s passing. He refused therapy. He withdrew. But she managed to convince him to attend this workshop. And it helped. Hearing others speak showed him he was not alone. The model presented during the session gave him something to hold onto. Slides. Words. A frame. And in that structure, he found a little more breath. A little more movement. Darna noticed the difference. He cried less. He spoke more. He began to lighten.

Beyond the group sessions, attendees were also offered the chance to meet one-on-one with intern counsellors from HELP University. These quiet conversations were perhaps the most intimate part of the day. Business owner Onie, 38, was one of many who accepted. She had been struggling with a vague, persistent sense of not feeling like herself. She hadn’t known if it was mental health, burnout, or something unnamed. But her friend encouraged her to show up. After speaking to a counsellor, Onie described a feeling of release. She had said things she had never said aloud. Not even to friends. The session didn’t change her circumstances. But it changed her sense of isolation. It gave her a door. And sometimes, that’s all grief needs—a door to walk through.

Across the room, what became visible was not just sorrow, but architecture. Systems of support. Routines of recognition. The design of the workshop—its framing, its stories, its silences—functioned as emotional infrastructure. None of it forced a transformation. But it made healing possible.

Presence was another major theme. Participants were reminded that when someone is grieving, the right response is not advice. It is company. Phrases like “don’t be sad” or “it’ll be okay” may be well-meaning, but they often erase more than they affirm. The better alternative, Usha said, is simply to show up. Offer no cure. Offer no plan. Just be there. Hold a hand. Listen. And if the person needs something practical, help them name it.

Even the act of requesting help becomes a ritual. Be specific. Ask someone to pick up your child from school. Ask them to send food. Don’t leave the grief unnamed or the needs unspoken. In clarity, there is kindness—for both the one grieving and the one offering care.

The ritual of writing also became a central takeaway. Usha explained how physically writing letters to those we’ve lost—especially when there was no proper goodbye—can provide unexpected comfort. The act of putting emotion into words, with pen and paper, slows the spiral of memory. It doesn't require a reply. It only requires attention. And in that attention, something sacred happens. Loss turns into language. Ache turns into acknowledgment.

This kind of emotional care—grounded, repeatable, gentle—is what turns grief from a storm into weather. Weather we can live with. Weather we can plan around. Weather that becomes, over time, less wild.

What made this workshop work wasn’t any single activity. It was the rhythm. The tone. The way it offered grief not a solution but a container. In a culture that often treats sadness as something to push through or hide away, the StarLive–HELP University workshop offered something profoundly different: a permission slip to feel. A space to reframe grief not as weakness, but as proof of love.

Dr. Goh’s closing words stayed with many participants long after the room emptied. “There is no pill that makes grief disappear,” he said. “Instead, it’s about learning to live with it, so that grief doesn’t prevent us from fully living, loving or appreciating the blessings we still have.”

That kind of clarity doesn’t come from lectures. It comes from witnessing. From participating. From hearing your own heart mirrored in someone else’s voice.

What this workshop ultimately delivered wasn’t a cure, but a series of rituals. Fifteen minutes a day to sit with sorrow. Letters left on nightstands. Silent presence beside a friend. Naming the shape of loss without needing to shrink it. Saying: this hurts—and I’m still here.

Rituals, unlike resolutions, don’t need to fix anything. They just need to repeat.

And maybe, in the long arc of healing, that’s what saves us. Not the erasure of grief. But the quiet, consistent design of a life that makes room for it.

Even when the skies stay gray.

Even when the mountain is steep.

Even when the love remains—and so does the longing.