The spirit of place

There’s no question that some places make you feel like you’ve come home. Wander through them or sit in them and you’ll soon find that breathing slows, muscles relax and all’s right with the world. It’s the spirit of place or ‘genius loci’, as the Romans termed it at work. For me, a Celt now settled in Wiltshire the Avebury landscape (pictured by my friend Ann Slaymaker) has it in spades, the lanes around the village of Holt, which I walked every day with my infant children, the wildflower meadow near Great Chalfield Manor and any number of old, abandoned churches, woodland glades and walled gardens.

I’ve been harnessing the "spirit of place" in my sessions with bereaved clients, helping them explore the unique, emotional, and sensory resonance of a specific place connected to the person who has died. It seems to help them externalize their grief, process complex emotions and maintain those important continuing bonds with their person.

I’ve found this to be of particular help to me this year in 2026 as I reflect on what would have been my parents golden wedding anniversary and what is the thirtieth anniversary of my father’s death and the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death. We’ve planned a trip to West Wales to mark the occasion. A grief pilgrimage of sorts.

Physical journeys through meaningful landscapes are helpful ways to find peace and help you grow through grief. I’m sure that the fact we spent a couple of weeks every summer in West Wales with our children in my parents’ house after they no longer walked the earth, playing in the garden and picking fruit from the trees, sharing stories, taking them to beaches my parents loved and rekindling memories from my own childhood made a significant positive difference not only to them getting to know their dead grandparents better but also to the way I processed my own grief for them.

·     It helped me to celebrate my relationship with them

·     It validated that subjective feeling of their presence in places that were meaningful to them

·     It helped me move from a physically real relationship with my parents to one that is more internal, nurtured through revisiting memories and places

Do you believe in the spirit of place?