Walking with Jesus through complex grief

Sarah Portal has faced significant losses since an early age, including friends and family members.

My first experiences of grief and loss was when I was eleven years old. A childhood friend was raped and strangled to death in South Africa. Then, sadly, I lost another friend a few years later to the same violent crime. When I was 20 years old I lost my sister in an accident. The following year my grandmother, who had helped my single mum raise me in early childhood, passed away and the year after that my mother died from breast cancer. Five years later a young person whom my husband and I had been living with died in a car accident. His death destroyed me and, in the aftermath of this and all the other losses, I found myself in a very dark and desolate place in my soul.