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Nathalie and Amanda go beneath the speaker and the frameworks to the private, unscripted territory of grief.

In this episode, we cover

• What it costs to hold it together when falling apart isn't an option
• The parts of the story that resist being turned into a growth tool
• The difference between resilience as armour and resilience as a path back to yourself
• What genuine support actually looks like in the darkest hours
• Where grief still lives in the body today, and how to tend to it

About our guest

Amanda Anderson is a keynote speaker, trauma survivor, and mental health advocate with over 17 years of experience working in NLP, resilience, and real-world mental health. Her credentials are not academic — they are lived. Her brother was murdered. Her sister and father died of terminal illness. She survived a stroke, divorce, and sustained frontline trauma exposure. From that wreckage, she built a body of work that helps high-functioning, resilient people, the ones who have always been "the strong one", stop merely surviving and consciously rebuild something fierce and true.

Her work sits at the intersection of trauma, grief, and identity. Through keynotes and writing, she gives language to the experiences people have been carrying silently for years. She doesn't offer surface-level motivation. She offers permission to stop pretending you were never hurt, and to choose, deliberately, what you build next.

Resources mentioned

• www.amanda-anderson.com.au
• linkedin.com/in/amandakanderson

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💡 If today’s episode touched you, please share it with someone who might need it.

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Stay Connected

• 🌐 Visit nathaliehimmelrich.com
• 💌 Subscribe to the newsletter for resources and updates
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Find Support Resources

• 💜 For Grievers – Resources
  https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/grief-trauma-support/
• 💜 For Supporters – Supporting someone https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/supporters-resources/
• 💜 Books – Explore books on grief and healing https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/books/
• 💜 Support – Offers - free and paid
  https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/free-resources-hub/

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When someone is visibly grieving, the people around them quickly conclude, usually without adequate evidence. She isn't crying, so she must be coping. He went back to work, so he must be over it. They seem angry, not sad — that can't be grief.

These are presumptions. In Part 3 of this three-part series, Nathalie examines how presumptions about grief operate in real time, in specific moments, and why they cause a different kind of harm from grief myths and preconceptions.

What's covered in this episode

• The precise definition of a presumption and how it differs from a myth (cultural) and a preconception (personal, pre-existing)
• Why presumptions feel like observations but function as judgements
• How presumptions cause harm, both to the person being presumed about, and to the person making them
• The most common grief presumptions, examined through: what is being assumed, where it comes from, how it lands, and what a more accurate response looks like
• What supporters can do differently and why the impulse to interpret is so strong

The core distinction across all three episodes

Myths, preconceptions, and presumptions are related, but they operate at different levels and in different moments.

Grief myths exist in the culture: in the language, the rituals, the policies, the media. They are transmitted without any single person deciding to transmit them. Myths are covered in Part 1.

Preconceptions are the individual's internalised version of those myths: what a person has absorbed over a lifetime, and carries into grief before it happens. They shape what someone expects from their own grief. Preconceptions are covered in Part 2.

Presumptions are what happen in a specific moment: a conclusion drawn about someone else's grief, or one's own, without adequate evidence. Unlike myths and preconceptions, presumptions are active and situational. They happen in the room, in the conversation, at the graveside. Presumptions are what this episode covers.

Support the show

💡 If today’s episode touched you, please share it with someone who might need it.

🤝 Become a supporter of the show! Starting at $3/month & leave a review.

Stay Connected

• 🌐 Visit nathaliehimmelrich.com
• 💌 Subscribe to the newsletter for resources and updates
• 🎧 Never miss an episode—follow the podcast!
• 💛 Socials Instagram Facebook

Find Support Resources

• 💜 For Grievers – Resources
  https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/grief-trauma-support/
• 💜 For Supporters – Supporting someone https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/supporters-resources/
• 💜 Books – Explore books on grief and healing https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/books/
• 💜 Support – Offers - free and paid
  https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/free-resources-hub/

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What happens when an entire nation is traumatised? How does collective grief differ from personal loss, and what does healing actually look like at that scale?

In this episode, I speak with Dr Imke Hansen, trauma therapist, scholar of Eastern European History, and Deputy Director of the human rights organisation Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights. Nathalie and Imke first met in Zürich at a conference on collective grief and trauma with Dr Peter Levine and Thomas Hübl, and this conversation picks up where that encounter left off.

Imke has worked with survivors of war and persecution for over two decades. Since 2014, she has led Libereco's psychosocial support work in Ukraine, supporting people living through one of the most devastating conflicts of our time. She is also a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, a body-based approach to trauma healing developed by Dr Peter Levine.

In this episode, we cover

• What collective grief looks like on the ground in Ukraine — and what most people in the West don't see
• The difference between individual grief and collective trauma, and why that distinction matters for healing
• What "resilience" really means — and when the word gets in the way
• What it means to witness collective suffering in a way that helps rather than harms

About today's guest

Dr. Imke Hansen holds a doctorate in Eastern European History and is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner specialising in trauma-informed mental health and psychosocial support for civil society activists and survivors of captivity and torture. She serves as Deputy Director of Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights, an independent German-Swiss NGO working in Belarus and Ukraine since 2009. She is the author of the comic book I CAN, available in English, Ukrainian, and Russian.

Resources mentioned

• Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights: libereco.org
• Comic book I CAN by Dr Imke Hansen — free download in English, Ukrainian, and Russian via Libereco's website
• Somatic Experiencing International: somaticexperiencing.com

Support the show

💡 If today’s episode touched you, please share it with someone who might need it.

🤝 Become a supporter of the show! Starting at $3/month & leave a review.

Stay Connected

• 🌐 Visit nathaliehimmelrich.com
• 💌 Subscribe to the newsletter for resources and updates
• 🎧 Never miss an episode—follow the podcast!
• 💛 Socials Instagram Facebook

Find Support Resources

• 💜 For Grievers – Resources
  https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/grief-trauma-support/
• 💜 For Supporters – Supporting someone https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/supporters-resources/
• 💜 Books – Explore books on grief and healing https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/books/
• 💜 Support – Offers - free and paid
  https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/free-resources-hub/