Living with Loss: Dina Bell-Laroche, athletic grief counsellor

After years of working on communications for high performance sports, Dina Bell-Laroche has witnessed many extremes of emotion. But the moment that altered her career forever was the death of her sister, nearly twenty years ago. The grief and her experience in sport combined for Bell-Laroche and led her to coaching and councelling athletes who are dealing with loss in its many forms. With national athletes enduring the Post Olympic Blues right now, the time is fitting for some clear thinking about how we process setbacks and loss in sports. Part of the goal is to get rid of myths. Grief is not the exclusive privilege of people who have had a death in the family. For athletes, bereavement can flow from a big loss, naturally, but it can also accumulate slowly and creep up on competitors. After a career devoted to sport- retirement can churn up many underexamined disappointments and losses, too. The trouble starts when sports rewards a stoic approach. Shake it off. There’ll be another game. Focus on getting that next win. These attitudes mean well, but they can push athletes into traumatizing silence. Bell -Laroche’s discipline is Thanatology. The study of grief and death. The ancient Greeks, who knew a thing or two about tragedy, said there are only two themes: Eros and Thanatos. Love and Death. Bell- Laroche would argue they are inextricably linked. We only mourn losing what we love. And that can include a dashed dream of Olympic glory.