Leanne is the director of the South West Grief and Loss Centre in Bunbury. She has worked in private practice, with the Busselton hospice, the Motor Neurone Association, and in developing a compassionate community program. She talks about the importance of stepping into the discomfort of death and dying, and of allowing grief to be a part of the process of loss. Leanne discusses the need to re-educate our community about how to support someone who is dying, caring or grieving and how to ask for help.
She refers also to the need to develop awareness of anticipatory grief where a loved one has a terminal illness, and the micro losses that help people to understand why each day can carry a different emotion or experience. She discusses voluntary assisted dying in the context of encouraging the conversation about death, and finally of death as something that inspires us to be present and to lead better lives.