I remember watching Practical Magic for the first time as a teenager. Like so many of us, I loved it purely for the witchcraft - the magic of the spells, the enduring sisterhood, and those dreamy 90s outfits.
I certainly didn't watch it for the grief. In fact, I don't think I even realised grief was what the film was truly about.
Twenty-eight years later, I sat in the cinema, popcorn in hand, to watch the sequel as a very different person. In the decades between that first viewing and this one, I’d lost my dad. Then my mum. Then my first husband died by suicide when I was pregnant with our son, aged 36.
In the years since, I’ve built a career as a grief coach, spending my days holding space for others finding their own way after loss. Yet nothing quite prepared me for how profoundly a film about witches and curses would affect me once I’d lived through what it was actually describing.
Grief can feel like a curse
What struck me most was that the Owens curse isn't really about magic at all - it's about grief.
In the film, loving someone means you’re bound to lose them. In real life, most of us don't need an ancient curse to believe that, because loss does the job for us. After you've...