Grief Guide

Grief Guide Grief Guide is a Brisbane/Ipswich-based grief, loss, and bereavement counselling and supervision service run by Ali Mills.

Ali is a Registered Counsellor and Accredited Supervisor with 10+ years experience working with grieving clients.

06/08/2026

Today is Dying to Know Day. (Ok actually it's tomorrow...)

It's a simple idea with a big impact: talk to the people you love about what they want, before it's too late to ask.

🪷 What matters to them at the end of their life?
🪷 Where do they want to be?
🪷 Who do they want around them?

These conversations feel hard, but they're a gift, not a burden.

It's part of why I run Death Cafés, they're one way I help keep these conversations going. My one next week is already full with 30 people coming, which tells you how much people want to talk about this.

Please go gently, today and always 🪷

02/08/2026

The Ladybird Care Foundation - Support for Grieving Parents Gala dinner was last night.

It is such a privilege to work with this organisation, with these people who care so deeply; staff, board, Mentors, Mentees and loved ones. We hold grief, and love hand in hand as we honour children who have died at any age and from any cause.

The Gala is incredible, because of course we raise money, but I think more importantly we raise awareness. We put grief and love front and centre and we allow grieving parents to be. Tears are welcome, dancing is welcome, connection is cherished.

Please reach out if you'd like more information about how to engage with the Program in any way.

🐞🪷





Please skip this post if fertility, puberty and periods aren't the kind of thing you feel like reading about tonight (or...
29/07/2026

Please skip this post if fertility, puberty and periods aren't the kind of thing you feel like reading about tonight (or ever), or from me.

I wrote this letter the night before my hysterectomy, a few years ago now. 

I'm sharing it here because so much of what I do at Grief Guide is help people talk plainly about grief and loss, whether it relates to death or not.

This letter isn't really about the hysterectomy. It's about years with an organ that gave me a hard time and then gave me my children.

🪷 It's written for anyone who's had a complicated relationship with their own body. 🪷

I'm really sharing this because we need to talk about the awkward stuff that's real. When I was going through these years, I yearned to read a letter like this, to know someone else had lived through it too. 

We don't do grief well in our community, and we don't talk about complicated relationships with losses that have nothing to do with death.

Some of you might think it's a bit unusual for a therapist to share something this personal. But I'm a human first, and I believe authenticity is part of the service I offer. 

Grief is universal. Our experiences are our own, but the threads that connect us are real.

🪷 The full letter is in the carousel. If you fancy a read, please swipe through. 🪷 

22/07/2026

🪷 What a special morning 🪷

There's something about returning to a place after years away, and noticing how you've changed, and how the place has too.

holds a special place in my heart, and Hilda's House most of all. This is where my career began, doing my student placement under the guidance of the supremely skilled and beautifully warm Grace Harwood, who I now call a dear friend.

This place is held up by community; funded by community, supported by community, offering some of the most beautiful grief support around, mostly delivered by volunteers.

This morning I sat with their Social Worker, Lauren Spilsbury, to plan our presentation for an upcoming death expo we're presenting at together. But mostly we just talked. 

There's a particular kinship among people who find their way into grief and bereavement work, and it runs deep at Hilda's House.

🪷 What a privilege, to work alongside people who care this much. 🪷

20/07/2026

A peek behind the curtain at Grief Guide...This is what happens before I open the door to you.

🪷Sound on 🪷

🪷 The Death Café is back for 2026. 🪷Truth be told, I've missed these!It's been a while between sessions. Mourning Tea ha...
16/07/2026

🪷 The Death Café is back for 2026. 🪷

Truth be told, I've missed these!

It's been a while between sessions. Mourning Tea has taken up a lot of my capacity this year, but I'm glad to bring the Death Café back for its first outing.

For those who haven't been before: it's an informal gathering where people come together to eat cake, drink tea, and talk openly about death and dying.
There is no agenda, no set direction, and the conversation goes wherever the group needs it to go.

It's not therapy, but people often find it surprisingly comforting.

This session sits within .au national month of action (August), and this is another chance to keep the conversation going.

Whether you're grieving, curious, or just want good company and cake, you're welcome.

🪷 Friday 14 August 2026 at 9 am 🪷

This is a free event, but please visit the link in my bio for full details and to register.

30/06/2026

This is the couch in reception. Before we've even met. Before I take you into the counselling room.

You might wonder why I'm smiling in this photo.
Some days that's what walking through the door looks like too; relief. The hardest part of seeking support already done.

But I don't take lightly what it takes to get here...
🪷 To walk up the stairs.
🪷 To open the door.
🪷 To sit, and wait, not knowing yet who you're about to meet or what this place will ask of you.

To wonder...
🪷 What happens if I can't close the grief box once it's open?
🪷 What happens if I cry?
🪷 If I say things here I can't say anywhere else?
🪷 If my grief overwhelms me?
🪷 If I share the graphic details that only I hold; the guilt, the shame, the anger I didn't expect, the jealousy of people who still have what I've lost.

These are the pointy parts. The parts that don't always fit in a conversation with a friend, or family who are grieving too, or a culture that doesn’t do grief well.

Grief therapy, EMDR therapy, isn't about having the right words, it's about being with the stuck parts, the unfixable parts. It's about attunement, taking your experience seriously, no matter what it looks like.


Sometimes it's about being in the rubble together.

🪷 This is your first landing place, the counselling room comes next. 🪷

24/06/2026

A little about me.

I can't tell you the joy this new mug brings me.

Really, any patterned, brightly coloured, perfectly shaped mug will do it for me.

But this one,

🪷 It's my favourite colour
🪷 It's patterned
🪷 It's holding a warm cuppa
🪷 It was gifted by a loved one for my upcoming birthday

👌👌👌👌

In grief work, we sometimes call these glimmers, the small, ordinary moments that offer a flicker of ease or warmth. They don't erase what's hard. They don't mean you're "over it" or moving on. They just sit alongside the grief, quietly, reminding us that good can still exist in the same world as loss.

Sometimes it's the little things that ground us. That give us a moment to breathe.

I wonder what your version of this mug, your glimmer, might be?

I'd love to hear. 🪷🪷

Address

22 Boron Street
Brisbane, QLD
4074

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