About Me

My name is Tatiana.

I’m originally from Brazil but New Zealand has been my home for since 2003.

I’m the mother of two beautiful, smart and kind young women. 

I’m an actress, writer, dancer, producer.

I am an artist.

I was a wife. 

My husband Jason died, on the 9th of May 2017. From that night on nothing made sense in my life. The outside world became a very scary place, and my inner world was in such turmoil that I literally felt like I was losing my mind.

I felt I was living in a nightmare and all I wanted was to wake up. But there was no waking up from the terrible reality that the man I loved wasn’t coming back, and that my children and I would have to face life without him from then on.

Slipping into a dark and overwhelming depression, I began to struggled with paralysing anxiety, panic attacks and suicide ideation. The intensive emotional pain affected my body so strongly that my autoimmune and my nervous system collapsed and I became debilitating ill.

For several months I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t function. Just to get out of bed everyday was a huge task. I had to be strong for my girls, but I was so broken and distraught that all I wanted was to go to sleep and not wake up. 

Guilt was always present. I felt guilty for falling apart, for being so ‘weak’, for not being able to look after my children while they were also grieving and struggling to adjust to our new normal.

I hate that term “new normal”. Fuck new normal. I just wanted my loving husband and our old imperfect normal back. 

My relationship with God, with my husband and with my girls were my entire world. But when Jason died my faith in God disintegrated under the weight of my grief, and even close friends became estranged. And with no family in New Zealand I felt utterly alone and lost.

So I turned to therapy, to meditation, to yoga and to writing. I saw my counsellor every week for over a year, I went to yoga classes 3 times a week, and I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more.

Therapy and meditation helped me process and stabilise my mind. Yoga helped me breathe and regulate my nervous system. Writing was cathartic at times and painful most of the times, but it also gave me some respite from the constant agony - like when you feel really sick, but after you throw up you get some relief even though the sickness is still there. I guess that is what writing was for me, a ‘throwing up’ on the page that gave me some brief relief from what couldn't ever be fixed or healed. 

All that writing, together with all the hours of yoga, meditation and therapy, has given me a lot of insight into my own inner landscape.

I also discovered that in my loneliness I wasn’t alone. There were people who got it, and who came alongside me from unexpected ways at unexpected times. I also discovered a new way to relate to God. I expanded my spirituality and I began to learn to be kinder and more compassionate with myself.

We are alone in our grief, but when we read about, or listened to the grief story of others we can feel a sense of companionship. However, I’ve learned it’s possible to be alone together. So I hope by reading about my journey you may find that you are not alone in yours.

I am so glad that you found me, but I am also so sorry that our paths have crossed in this way.

My guess is that what you brought you here, to these pages, is the heartbreaking grief of the death of someone you love, and the desire to find some solace, some light, some something, some anything, that may help alleviate the never ending ache you are carrying.

I know because I also carry a never ending ache, and I’m also looking for safe ways to alleviate the suffering that my crazy grief has ushered into my life. Maybe you can relate to my story.

It's my most sincere desire that you may find some solace and some comfort in the knowledge that even though you are alone in your crazy grief, we can be alone together. 

Com amor/ With love/ Aroha Nui

Tatiana xoxo