We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tara Nash a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tara, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
From a young age I was asking the big questions, like what is the point of life? Where do I go when I die? What am I doing here? My father died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 9 years old, which set the seeker inside of me. I grew up in an arm-chair Christian home, went to a christian school, but I was never quite satisfied with this explanation of life. My mother re-married quickly after the death of my father, but it was not a happy marraige and she divorced after 3 years. I watched her use busyness as a distraction from her grief and pain. My mother showed remarkable resilience and strength, we were praised for being strong and brave and not wallowing in sadness. However, what I have come to learn is, pain and sadness live inside of us, and need to be felt and released. In her mid 50’s my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and she died at 57. She had always looked after her body with regular exercise and a healthy diet. I believe stress and unresolved grief have the most toxic impact on our bodies. When she died, I was 21 and I emulated what my mother had shown me, strength, reslience and a determination not to let anything pull me off track from moving forward. This is how our capitalistic and British cultures validates us, ‘keep calm and carry on.’ I graduated from university and unexpectedly found myself working in fashion. I never aspired to work in fashion, but it felt like the perfect escapism from the darkness I felt inside of me. In my late 20’s I finally committed to therapy after another tumultuous relationship drama. This was the start of a long road of healing the trauma of my past. Over the years I started to feel disillusioned with my path in fashion and wanting a more meaningful career. I was always enamoured with the United States. Friends or mine were moving for jobs in New York and I would visit them and think, I would love to live here one day. Then quite surrendipidously I discovered the University of Santa Monica who taught a masters in Spiritual Psychology. I read the website and it felt like it spoke directly too me, asking those big questions that I had been thinking about my whole life. A year later, I moved to sunny Los Angeles, this is now 10 years ago, in 2014. During that 2 years masters degree, I realised I had not consciously grieved the death of my parents. I started to read books and delve deeply into the subject of grief. I had readings with mediums, I did spiritual practices connecting me to my parents. I started to faciliate grief groups with the charity Our House. It sounds very strange, but the subject of grief and death lit me up! I think it was because I had spent so many years repressing my thoughts about this and thinking that people didn’t want to discuss these things, when actually it is so needed and there are alot of people that do! I realised during the second year of studying Spiritual Psychology that I had found my purpose to assist others in their grief journey. I never could have known that when enrolling for the program, it all revealed itself organically. Now looking at my astrological chart, I know that this kind of work fits me very well. I am an Aquarian and my rising sign in Scorpio. If you are struggling to find your purpose, I would strongly encourage a reading with an astrologer to open your mind to what careers might feel aligned for you.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I have just published my first book ‘Coscious Grief – transforming pain into evolution and growth’ I am delighted with the feedback I am receving from readers. It is an easy read and offers many resources for the reader. I work with clients individually and in a group setting. My job is to give people a supportive space to grieve. Clients might be grieving the loss of a person, relationship, pet, job loss or life style change. Grief comes in many forms! I have an 11 week Conscious Grief Program which is a small group, maximum of 5 people and we meet weekly via zoom. I always say to my clients, ‘we are all teachers for one another’ this is why group work is enormously powerful. I teach Kundalini Yoga, Grief Yoga and Breathwork as I am a huge advocate of moving and releasing grief through movement and breath. My next group program will start at the beginning of April this year. Each month I have a free community call ‘Tea with Tara’ we meet every 3 Wednesday of the month. We have a theme of discussing for every meeting. It is friendly, non judgemental and informal conversational call. Most of my offerings are via zoom. To find out more about my offerings please sign up to my newsletter on my website www.tara-nash.com
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I was always a writer, from the age of 8 I started a diary. Writing became my therapy through my childhood and it saved my mental health. Body work, try something like acupuncture or massage or move your body in a yoga class and lastly, talk it out with a professional. Finding a good therapist that I found really ‘got me’ helped me to open up and talk about things I had not articulated before gave me confidence and freedom.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
I used to think I must be a bad person because bad things kept happening in my life. When I learnt about the soul journey, that we have many incarnations here and all the obstacles are actually opportunities for learning and growth, that changed everything. This teaching empowered me. It taught me that my soul chose to be here and asked for all the challenges to evolve. This took me out of being a victim of my circumstances and gave me a sense of empowerment. It shifted the idea that life was against me and actually everything that has happened to me is in service to being more fully who I am. Now I live in gratitude for all the challenges and all the pain. I now have tools about how to look after myself through life’s difficulties and I live a much happier and fulfilled life because of this reframe of how I see my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.consciousgrief.co.uk
- Instagram: tara_nash_seeker
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taranashyoga
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-rebecca-nash-b7199217/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3k2KVuPLNpc-o7U_psQanw
Image Credits
Lisa Bretherick and Tatianna Jory Photography
