Reflections on grief from a social worker at the end of her life
This article was written by Marina Lowrie, an approved mental health professional, in November 2025. After she died in April this year, at the age of 58, it was submitted by her sister Fiona on behalf of Marina who hoped her wisdom and insights would be of use to all social workers in their practice.
On 3 January 2025, I was diagnosed with stage 4b ovarian cancer. This came as a huge shock to me, as prior to this, I was fit and healthy.
I have struggled, and indeed, am still struggling, to come to terms with this and to work through my feelings about having an incurable and terminal illness. Despite chemotherapy, surgery is not viable, and the disease has spread. I am currently waiting to see my consultant to explore next steps.
As social workers, one of the fundamental skills we are trained to develop is our ability to critically reflect upon our practice. It is a purposeful process that can be used to explore a person’s thoughts, actions and behaviours in relation to an event and can be applied to a wide range of situations.
The use of poetry to explore our responses to and feelings about experiences in social work has an established history. One form of poetry is the Haiku, a 17-syllable poem.
Its inherent brevity, imagery and imagination make it a useful part of the process of reflection to explore emotional issues and to articulate feelings in a succinct yet creative manner.
Haiku have been found to be a helpful tool supporting students to process emotional issues related to clinical healthcare practice, to promote resilience with nurses and midwives, and to promote reflective thinking.
I have been writing Haiku as a way of making sense of my feelings and capturing my journey with cancer. I realised that many of my poems were concerned with themes of grief and loss.
For this reflection, I decided to write a Haiku about one of the bereavement models, and then deconstruct my thought processes, explaining how I created the Haiku, how this demonstrates my understanding of the model and implications for my practice.
To prepare for this task, I researched the ‘growing around the grief’ model developed by grief counsellor Lois Tonkin. The model suggests that grief doesn’t necessarily disappear over time, but rather people learn to live with it.
Tonkin challenges the idea that grief is a stage to be passed through (Kubler- Ross proposed five distinct stages). Instead, she suggested it can become integrated into people’s lives as they develop new coping mechanisms, find new joys, and build new relationships around the enduring presence of their loss.
This model immediately resonated with me as it acknowledges grief is an individual and unique experience. In my experience, people navigate their grief differently, finding their own ways to expand their life around their loss.
I feel this personalised perspective honours the diversity of human experience and avoids prescriptive timelines or stages which are not universal.
Tonkin’s model radiates with empathy. It reminded me that grief is not a problem to be solved but part of the human experience which makes up the fabric of our lives. Through this model, we can find new ways to live meaningfully, even in the shadow of profound loss.
Haiku
Black core remains but
Life’s colour weave with
It a tapestry of love.
What I learned
This piece of work was more challenging than I had expected. I had to construct a Haiku based on my understanding and then deconstructed it in order to explain my reasons for representing the model in the way I had.
To do this in 17 syllables meant focusing on the salient features of the model and being precise in my word choice to succinctly distilling the essence of a complex concept.
When I first received my diagnosis, I was consumed by grief – grief for the loss of my future life, for the pain of leaving behind those who I love, and the pain that my death will cause them to experience.
In addition, I was anxious about the mechanics of death itself, and the prospect of being in pain. In my Haiku, I conceptualised these fears as a ‘black core’. As in Tonkin’s model, these feelings were overwhelming and filled my world.
However, as time is going on, I am finding while the core is ever present, the love and support of my family and friends is enabling me to work to accept it and create some space around it which, in turn, is allowing other aspects of my life to flourish.
In Tonkin’s model, life grows around the grief. I wanted to extend this further to show that my grief is integrated into my life and has become an evolving part of the fabric of my life. I envisaged my life as a living tapestry where the positive element, described as colours, are weaving.
The tapestry keeps growing in spite of the core – indeed, the core is incorporated into it. In our culture, black is a poignant reminder of loss, but in my Haiku, it is woven with the other colours to create a living pattern.
I felt that this signifies my resilience and capacity to keep growing, while validating my feelings and the way I see the world.
Implication for practice
Communication
As a social worker, I use models and theories to help me make sense of and explain people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours. To do this, I need to deconstruct these models and then rebuild them into meaningful constructs so that I can convey their meanings to others.
This can take many forms, including reports, reflective work for use in supervision and direct work with my clients. I communicate complex concepts in diverse contexts and to different audiences.
Writing a Haiku was an effective way to practice fluency in communication as it forced to me write with clarity. I also think it helped my communication skills by use of language which is rich in imagery and accessible to the reader.
Resilience
I work with people who are experiencing mental distress. Mental illness can be devastating, both for the person themselves and their families, and can have profound and long-lasting effect upon their lives.
For some people, their life will take a very different path following such experiences, necessitating a re-evaluation of their dreams, hopes and expectations. They may experience very real loss.
Tonkin’s model, with its focus on building resilience and promoting healing, is both empathic and powerful. It shows how we can help people identify opportunity for growth in their lives, thereby building a more enriched existence despite pain and suffering. I will work to incorporate this message into my practice and the people I work with.