
When Petrea King’s children were aged three and six, she found herself alone. Her husband had gone for ‘a long walk’ and never returned. He’d fled from America, where they were living at the time, back to their native Australia, taking their money with him.
The sudden loss struck them all, and left her youngest confused.
“I could see this little boy looking at me like, ‘What have I been left with? Where’s my daddy?'” she told Mamamia‘s No Filter podcast. “And he started having the most dreadful bloodcurdling, screaming nightmares at night.”
Now one of Australia’s most respected grief counsellors, Petrea shared the beautiful technique she used to help ease her son’s nightmares and connect with the father who wasn’t there. It’s a technique, she said, that works on children from about the age of three to help them through grief, loss and other times when they need connection.
For more of Petrea’s advice about grief, listen to her full chat with Mia Freemdman…
“I took to wrapping him up in a rainbow before he went to sleep. I told him, ‘I’m going to wrap you up in a rainbow, and then we’re going to connect up from heart to heart.’ And you literally run your hand from the top of their head to the tips of their toes, and get them to imagine really strongly that you’re wrapping them up in a cloud of red – the colour of tomatoes and fire engines and letterboxes. Say, ‘And now I’m wrapping you up in a cloud of orange – the colour of nasturtiums and oranges. Yellow – the colour of wattle and sunshine.’