“I’m so sad. I’m as sad as I’ve ever been in my whole life, and I really don’t want to get up and go tell them that you’re dead because then it will be real and I will never, ever see you again.” I bent over and tried to breathe against the pure, searing pain that washed through me, as violent as a riptide sucking me under. I didn’t know how I could live with a pain like that, which made me think of how many things he’d lived through, and I sat up. Swallowed.

—Barbara O’Neil; When We Believed in Mermaids

Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.