Meet Kirsten

What I Bring to This Work

I hold a degree in Educational Psychology, but it’s grief that taught me the most:
how to sit in discomfort,
how to hold space,
how to honour a person’s whole story - not just their ending.

I didn’t create this space to offer polished wisdom.
I created it because silence is dangerous,
and because love insisted on finding form.

Who I Hold Space For

I created this space for people like me, and people like you.

For the ones who’ve lost someone or nearly have.
For the ones who feel like grief is a language no one else speaks.
For the ones who love someone with a hurting mind or a haunted past.
For the ones trying to make it through the day with a heart that feels too full and too empty at once.

This isn’t a neat offering from someone who’s “healed.”
This is my hand, held out in the dark.
Come as you are.
You don’t have to do this alone.

A woman with long blonde hair, glasses, and a light-colored shirt smiling in front of a plain beige wall.
“Grief taught me the cost of silence.

Love taught me to speak anyway”
— Kirsten O'Connor
A black and white sketch of a woman and a young boy holding hands, looking at a large yellow balloon with a cityscape background and text that reads "THISISGRIEFNZ".

I’m Kirsten; a mother, a writer, and someone learning how to live with a love that didn’t get a lifetime.

I’m not here as an expert.
I’m here as a mother whose life was split into a before and an after.

I know what it’s like to smile through meetings and fall apart in the carpark.
To freeze in the supermarket because you saw her favourite snack.
To replay the last conversation over and over, as if saying it differently might rewrite the ending.
I know what it’s like to hold it together for everyone else, until you simply can’t.

When my 24-year-old daughter Kahlia died by suicide, everything broke; including me.
There was no map, no how-to. Just shattered pieces and a blank page.

So I wrote; to her, about her, for her, and for me - because I didn’t know how else to breathe.