Marianne Trent
Marianne Trent is a clinical psychologist, author, and grief specialist who helps people navigate the complex emotions that come with loss. With deep clinical insight and a compass...
Select an answer to get started
Who are you?
I'm Dr. Marianne Trent, a qualified clinical psychologist specialising in grief and trauma. I'm also a wife, a mommy to two boys, a friend, a sister, and I am a daughter to a daddy who's no longer with us.
What is your background?
So I'm a qualified clinical psychologist, and although I have previously offered people work around grief, it wasn't until I experienced grief myself with the loss of my father in 2017 that I really began to understand how devastating it can be. Ultimately, this has led to me specialising in grief and trauma and also to putting together a book called The Grief Collective Stories of Life Loss and Learning to Heal, and it's a really special collection of real life accounts from 54 people, myself included, about our experience of grieving for a variety of reasons, and it involves the real life solutions and strategies and things that got them through grief. It's a wonderfully nourishing read, actually kind of uplifting and yeah, it's kind of soul food for those who are grieving or those who want to understand more about grief and how to support people who are grieving.
What is grief, and does it only happen after someone dies?
Grief looks different for different people is what I would say. And you don't only have to grieve for someone who's not with us anymore. I think it's a normal human reaction that we go through for anything linked to loss of something or someone that's been important to us. And I think we must be really careful not to invalidate our own experience of grief and especially not invalidate others' experiences of grief, whatever you're feeling. If it feels like it might be grief, I'd say it probably is.