The Wellington mum-of-three has written a book, The Year After Kahlia, and created a website, This Is Grief, in the hope of helping others process and talk more openly about loss. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor, who works for the Ministry of Justice, drew on her psychology degree and education background to write her book documenting the first year after loss.<\/p>\n
There are \u201cstrange\u201d administrative tasks that come with death, she says – like closing her daughter\u2019s bank account with just $20 in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to produce my ID, I had to go and stand there and say how she had died \u2013 just cruel things that happen when you\u2019re not in the space to deal with it.\u201d <\/p>\n
She remembers standing in the supermarket in disbelief that people around her were having normal conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this complete disconnect from the world around you.\u201d<\/p>\n
To cope, O\u2019Connor wrote herself lists: take a shower, remember to eat, call that person.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lived by the lists and that organisation, because I completely lost control of myself. I lost control of my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
She returned to work two weeks after her daughter\u2019s death, which she now says was \u201ccrazy\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know what to do. I didn\u2019t know whether going back to work was good. I didn\u2019t want to be at home, I didn\u2019t want to be at work, I didn\u2019t really want to be anywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would go to work and I couldn\u2019t understand how I couldn\u2019t read or answer an email, which I\u2019ve done for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirsten O’Connor, 49, with her daughter Kahlia, left, who died at the age of 24 in April 2024. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
We all grieve differently, she says. \u201cThere\u2019s no timeline on it … one is by no means better than another. It\u2019s about acceptance and allowing people to be their own person.\u201d<\/p>\n
The popular \u201cstages of grief\u201d framework isn\u2019t necessarily helpful<\/a>, she says, noting it was created for dying people coming to terms with their own death, not for those mourning others.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve latched onto this, I guess because we like things a bit simpler, nice and easy. We would like a prescription [for coping with grief]. <\/p>\n \u201cI would have loved a stage of grief. I would have loved there to be a tick box.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Connor is also a mum to two sons aged 28 and 17.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that I found in parenting my children after Kahlia\u2019s death was I couldn\u2019t get paranoid and I couldn\u2019t smother them \u2013 that I still needed to parent them the same as I would have prior to Kahlia\u2019s death.”<\/p>\n Milestones like birthdays can be especially difficult after loss. In O\u2019Connor\u2019s family, there is a two-week period that includes her dad\u2019s birthday, Christmas, Kahlia\u2019s birthday, New Year\u2019s, her youngest son\u2019s birthday and her own birthday. <\/p>\n She calls it \u201ca really awful disaster zone\u201d. And for the past two years, they haven\u2019t celebrated those days. <\/p>\n \u201cWe just took the days as they came, and I think that was the best thing we could have done.\u201d<\/p>\n That might change later this year, but for now, O\u2019Connor lights candles to remember her daughter and buys flowers to put next to her urn each week.<\/p>\n There is no end point to grief, she says. <\/p>\n \u201cI will grieve Kahlia for the rest of my life. And I don\u2019t want it to be any different. Some people don\u2019t like that … but I don\u2019t see it as a bad thing. I think I can be happy and grieve my daughter in the same breath.\u201d<\/p>\n There are \u201cunwritten rules\u201d about how to act while grieving, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can cry, but not too much; you can seem like you\u2019re happy, but not too much. I didn\u2019t know how to navigate that.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Connor remembers another situation when she heard someone ask: \u201dHas she not gotten over it yet?\u201c. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not people being horrible, it\u2019s just that we don\u2019t sit in uncomfortable very well. We want people to be happy and we want them to be healthy and real.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are so scared of death and I think losing a child is probably one of our worst fears communally. So that was hard, because people didn\u2019t want to talk about it or they wanted to skirt around it.\u201d <\/p>\n