Julie Zarifeh had a wonderful marriage and a fulfilling life with three grown-up children, lived in an excellent community and had many friends.
In 2017, her husband Paul died of pancreatic cancer. Then in a cruel twist of fate, just 16 days later, her eldest son, Sam died whilst on a recreational whitewater rafting trip.
To cope with this loss, Julie drew on both her intuition and her experience as a clinical psychologist and embraced the notion of 'active grieving'.
Julie Zarifeh is a consultant clinical psychologist. Photo: Lottie Hedley LANDSCAPE
Grief on the Run is Zarifeh’s inspirational story of using active grieving to help move on with your life after devastating loss.
She told Jim Mora that, shortly after her son’s death, the media began hounding her for a quote. She told the NZ Herald that she wasn’t sure if she would ever truly be happy again.
“Obviously quite a powerful statement but I’ve gone on since to refute that.”
Zarifeh says that, while she’s found happiness again, the loss stays with you forever.
“A little piece of your heart goes with the loss of that person or pet or whatever it might be, but you learn to accommodate that.”
She begins the book by saying ‘true grief is the price we pay for true love’.
“It is a love story, I was lucky enough to have true love, so the grief was equitable to that. Then, obviously, the double whammy of our eldest son as well.”
Zarifeh says the book isn’t only for people who have suffered a bereavement, but anyone who’s had adversity in their life.
“The methods I talk about in the book are simple strategies that people can adopt on a day-to-day basis to have some control over what’s happening in our lives.”
In 2018, Zarifeh ran the New York Marathon, cycled across Sri Lanka, and walked the Camino de Santiago, all of which to raise money for mental health and other charities.
She says the cycling trip was a way of remembering Paul given they had done a lot of biking together.
“One of his endearing traits when he got sicker and sicker was that he refused to give up [biking]. He went from a standard mountain bike to an e-bike and embraced that with a vengeance.
Photo: Allen and Unwin
“In part, it was a way of remembering him. Cycling along and feeling him on my shoulder and also the drive to do something he’d be proud of, which was the raising money kiwi kids.”
Zarifeh had begun researching walking the Camino de Santiago in the last stages of Paul’s life because she knew she would need structure in her grief.
“It’s quite something, anticipating your spouse of 30 years passing and how you’re going to be as a single person at a relatively young age. I did know already what worked for me in terms of keeping on top of any situation.
“Those ingredients were exercise, summer warm, somewhere I could feel safe with a new group of people. I know, for myself, I get a lot out of meeting new people and the anonymity factor appealed at that time because it was a pretty public death.”
Five ways to wellbeing
At the end of the book, Zarifeh outlines five ways to wellbeing. The first of which is connecting.
“Keeping our old allies close, but there’s also a lot of strength that comes from establishing confidence and self-esteem again through meeting new people and realising what you’ve got to give.”
The second is altruism: “That innate drive to give in some way without any expectation of anything coming back your way.”
The third is mindfulness: “Being very mindful about what you focus on on a daily basis. We can get up in the morning and choose what we focus on that day, and hopefully it be positive.”
The fourth is continued learning: “It doesn’t need to be academic, it can be a language, a sport, music, whatever, but we keep the brain cells going and we get a lot from continued learning.”
The fifth is activity: “It’s in the title of the book. I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but this is a memoir of what got me through quite a significant loss.”
