#awinewith Amy Larsen
MEET Amy Larsen, Founder of Brisbane Grief Counselling
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:05):
Amazing. Amy, welcome to Spark tv.
Amy Larsen (00:08):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Danielle Lewis (00:10):
I am so excited to have you on the podcast today. Let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Amy Larsen (00:18):
Thank you. Yes. My name is Amy Larson. I am a social worker and a counselor, and I'm a mom and a partner and a sister and a daughter and a friend. But what I do professionally is that I specialize in grief, loss, and bereavement. So I work in the space where people have faced significant loss. Sometimes that's death related losses. Sometimes it's non death related losses, but I found my niche that I sit with people in kind of some of their darkest days.
Danielle Lewis (00:55):
Yeah, wow. That's got to be pretty heavy on a day-to-day basis, I mean, I know I'm just diving straight into this, but do you find that challenging, actually, carrying that or not carrying it? How do you go about being a business owner in this space?
Amy Larsen (01:15):
I is definitely a craft. I think that anyone who works as a therapist who thinks they can do this job and not do their own work is kidding themselves. That's really my learnings over the last 15 years of working as a social worker and a counselor, that it's always an internal job to keep working on my stuff. We all have stuff to work on, keep working on my nervous system, and I guess one of my great teachers said, you can't take people anywhere you haven't been before. And so to expect that someone will go to a level of vulnerability and trust where I haven't also done that, I think is so, yeah, it is a heavy job, and there's been particular jobs I've had before I started my own business that felt too heavy, especially when I became a parent. So I'm kind of crafting this business so that I can do this important work, but also do it in a way that suits me and my family.
Danielle Lewis (02:21):
Wow, that is absolutely incredible. So how did you make the transition from employee to business owner? What was that process like for you?
Amy Larsen (02:31):
Well, it's been a very slow and gradual process. I had been in a job for a long time, was feeling a bit like I came back from my second maternity leave and was feeling a bit like I got to change something up. I went and did a project at the Children's hospital in bereavement, and in that year, secondment was like, let's look outside of the box. So I just started one day a week, and one of my mentors at the time was simplicity. He's like, all you need is a business card. You don't need a fancy website. You don't need a booking system, you just need a phone number and people to contact you. And so I really did, made sure I had my insurance and registration and everything, and I just used his rooms at the time, one day a week, and it TRAs into the city for sometimes one or two appointments where what I made literally just covered the room higher and Oh, that's so good. But it just was sticking at it. I did that. Then went on to have my third baby, and then after my third baby really decided from there, it was time to kind of shift. So it's really only this year that I'm stepping into. This is pretty much my primary source of income. We'll still do a few things on the side with organizations, but it's the year of jumping in, which is exciting.
Danielle Lewis (04:03):
That is so exciting, and I love that story because I think sometimes we read the smart company headlines and you feel like you've got to raise lots of capital, be a tech company, have an office of 20 people to be a legit business, but it's not the case at all. And I think that it's so beautiful that you can dip your toe in and explore and find out what you love doing, find out what's right for you, find the structure that works for you, and gradually increase it until you say, yep, now is the right time. It's so amazing. It really puts you in the driver's seat of creating this business.
Amy Larsen (04:47):
Yeah, and I think that's what I'm really excited about for this year. I've got all these ideas brewing, but to actually leaving my part-time job, which has been that security, the anchor of security, once I'm free of that, I free up all this time in my week and the space to be creative. And last year I added breath work. I did my breath work instructor training. And so adding that modality into this kind of really specialized space of grief and bereavement, it's taking that more, I guess, holistic view rather than pathologizing grief. It's like how can we support people to work through big hard stuff, but in a really powerful way? So yeah, I think I got off track there, but yeah, it's exciting.
Danielle Lewis (05:38):
No, no, I absolutely love it. And I think it's really interesting, even your point about the breath work component of it, I feel like that is something so unique to this process that we have to go through sometimes, or that we're all going through forever. It's just a really interesting holistic way of approaching this topic. And I just think it's incredible. And I think that we wouldn't get that if we were dealing with someone at a hospital or someone in a therapy office or whatever, but because you have created your own business, you've been able to think about things differently and innovate in the space and really, I think support people with what they need to, I dunno the right words, I guess you never move on, that's the wrong way to look at it, but to help them through the grieving process.
Amy Larsen (06:36):
Yes. Yeah. I think the word that I land on that feels the most authentic is integration. It's not moving on or moving forward or getting back to normal. Just when we face significant loss, there is no normal. It's figuring out this big thing has happened, how do I hold it? How do this person or this situation, whatever has happened in my life, and then continue to live in a way that's aligned with my values? And I think people often feel like that it's not possible, but it's like my hope is to create spaces where people can talk openly and tell the truth about their grief so that then they learn to kind of hold it and integrate it and then live lives that are meaningful because it can feel like a death sentence sometimes when we face significant loss or trauma. My hope is that people can kind of hold it and continue to function in the world.
Danielle Lewis (07:36):
Yeah, I love that. Interesting. I think why I was not sure what words to use. I've just started watching this show. It's a series on the A, B, C called You Can't Ask That. And yeah, they talk to different, I guess you could say marginalized groups or out of the ordinary groups. And the questions you ask in your head, they ask these people those questions. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible if everyone should watch it. But the one I watched the other night was around people who had survived disasters, and this one guy who had survived a particular trauma was saying he's like, he hates the word the new normal. And it is interesting. I feel like I would've used words like that. I mean, we all use that after covid, right? But it was interesting hearing him say that. It's like, yeah, I guess that's interesting. You don't want to let your old life go, all that person go. So how do you integrate it and then create a life of meaning that you can still have joy and love and achievement or whatever is important to you.
Amy Larsen (08:56):
And I think, and I often use my hands to people, it's like, you can feel this deeply. You can really be in the space where you honor your grief and the person if it's a death related loss, and continue to use their name and bring that connection into your life. And you can also give yourself permission to live in a wholehearted way that honors that person and the very essence of life. It's like when we face that significant loss, we're faced with fear of our own mortality and how fragile life can be. So yeah, it's I guess a piece of hope, but it's delicately. I don't start with hope. I think there's a lot of my work that is sitting with people in the rebel, in the mess of their lives, but then it is allowing those glimmers of hope to come in when they are ready.
Danielle Lewis (09:54):
Yeah. Wow. That's so interesting. I think about it as well from a business point of view. I love that you just said death related loss because I know that grief and loss can manifest in other ways, and I know there's a lot of people who've lost businesses over the last few years, and I've watched some people really struggle with what is my identity outside of this business? There were people who were in business for years and years and years, and that was how everybody knew them, how they had their friendship circles, and for that to come crashing down. I think there's many times in our lives that we experience loss, that we need a bit of a helping hand to figure out how to move forward.
Amy Larsen (10:44):
Yeah, yeah. It's so true. It's so true. And I think more and more I do see people who are like, oh, they might make an initial inquiry or book a call with me and would it be okay to talk to you about this? And I'm like, yes, of course. That if I had a hope in my career lifetime, it's like I hope that we change the narrative of how we do grief because the world society at large, we don't really do grief any discomfort. We try and make people feel better. We try and treat it like a problem to be solved, and that's really not what people need with a death loss or otherwise. So being able to create that literacy where it's like, yes, if someone's experienced business loss or financial loss or anything in between, it's feeling able to access support and process that and give space for that, and then give space for the healing that comes with that as well.
Danielle Lewis (11:47):
Yeah, I love that so much, and I think it's really interesting that idea that two things can exist at once, that you can be feeling these feelings or experiencing this experience, but also find joy and meaning. Again. I think that there's giving yourself permission to do that. I think that what you do is so powerful because I think it's so hard sometimes for us to rationalize giving ourselves that permission.
Amy Larsen (12:19):
Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (12:22):
Wow. It's just wild and so incredible. Think's been the biggest challenge for you transitioning into the business?
Amy Larsen (12:33):
I think the thing that comes to mind is probably feels like taking a step of faith or a step left of field away from the mainstream to be courageous enough to incorporate my creativity, my spirituality, into this work. So I am not the first person to run a grief circle, but to my knowledge and one of the people in Brisbane to run grief circles and the idea of women sitting in circle, that same beautiful idea of holding space for one another, witnessing each other. It's not therapy. It's sitting and being witnessed in whatever it is that you bring to the circle on any particular day. So I guess having offerings like that, that are very different to what I have offered in my government and kind of more straight laced jobs,
(13:31):
I bring my crystals and bring the incense and candles and create a beautiful atmosphere. Even so many people are like, that's so woo woo. It's so out there. But it's like, well, actually, it's deeply grounded. There's so much research on the efficacy of breath work and anxiety, depression to my knowledge, not much research on grief and breath work, but maybe that's in my future. But I guess to come back to your question, I think the biggest challenge has been to stay true to myself and be authentic. That there are probably business decisions that I could have made to be more mainstream, and maybe I would've been successful or more successful. But I just really have followed my gut and trusted that looking at grief in a different way, in a human centered way, that's why I'm creating this. I'm not just creating a business to do what I've done in other organizations.
Danielle Lewis (14:33):
Yeah. I love that so much. It's really interesting. As you were talking, I was thinking about the woowoo factor and how funny it is because when you talk about women sitting in circles and coming together, I'm like, that's how it was. That is the ancient tribe. It's not a, oh, now I've invented some woowoo thing. It's like, no, this is how we started
Amy Larsen (14:56):
Where we came from. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (14:59):
And even the breathwork, I kind of go, you do realize all humans breathe people that say it's woowoo. And I'm like, you do realize that we need this to live. Yes.
Amy Larsen (15:12):
There's not much escaping it. If you escape it, you're kind of out of the game. But yeah, you're exactly right. And I think that even that, it's probably making peace with the fact that there is significant evidence-based for a lot of what I'm doing, but it's also trusting that spiritual aspect of the magic that can come in a breathwork session, whether it's in a group one-on-one, the magic that comes from community connecting and sitting in circles together. So it really is, it's that coming back to roots and just trusting that.
Danielle Lewis (15:52):
I love it. It's so funny, actually, I heard this great one on a podcast the other day, so talking about breath work, yogi breathing off it in yogi's, there'll be a lot of breath work in the yoga that you do, and Navy seals actually get taught breath work to calm their nervous systems and what have you. But because Navy Seals would never partake in yogi breathing, they call it tactical breathing, and it's literally the same, but they rebrand it for manliness. Just give it a different name.
Amy Larsen (16:31):
Yeah, they'll opt in for that.
Danielle Lewis (16:34):
So funny. Oh my gosh. I love it. So what are you taking into 2025? So this will be, we're recording this first week back, but this will be published in February. So what kind of vibe are you bringing into 2025 for your business?
Amy Larsen (16:50):
My word for this year is expansiveness, that it's just like heart opening, being really open to collaborations, to connections, and to be expansive to what may come, the creativity and yeah, all the goodness.
Danielle Lewis (17:11):
I love that on the years that I have used a word of the year, it's come true, that intention and just having it posted noted to my computer screen, I swear it has come true. So I'm all about the words of the
Amy Larsen (17:31):
Yes. That one came to me in a breathwork session actually, and I was, had this physical feeling of expansion from my heart space, and I was like, oh, yeah, I'm taking that into the next year.
Danielle Lewis (17:44):
Oh my God, that is absolutely incredible. I love it. I think you're going to do incredible things. Now, I always love to wrap up these podcasts on one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Amy Larsen (18:06):
I would say two things to feel okay about dipping your toe in that you can start in a really small and simple way to just dip your toe in. And also just to trust your gut because our gut doesn't lie.
Danielle Lewis (18:21):
Oh my gosh. I could not agree with you anymore. Your gut does not lie. Unfortunately. Sometimes we learn that lesson again and again and again. But yes, you are so amazing. Thank you so much, Amy. I really appreciate your time and sharing your story and journey. I can't wait to have you back in 12 months to hear about how it's all going.
Amy Larsen (18:43):
Yes. Thank you. Thanks so much.
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