I’m a Grief Coach and this is what Practical Magic 2 really teaches us about grief and loss

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.

© Getty Images

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.

© Sara Swallow

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 suffered severe heartbreak, love can start to feel dangerous in the exact way the movie depicts: like something you'd be a fool to fully open yourself up to again.

For a long time, grief felt like an inherited curse to me. There were years when "don't love too hard, don't hope too much" wasn't just movie dialogue - it was how I lived.

© Instagram

There’s no ‘right’ way to grieve

What the film captures so brilliantly is that grief never looks identical in two people. Sally freezes. She withdraws, closes down, and tries to keep everyone safe by keeping them at a distance—including herself. Gillian, on the other hand, runs in the opposite direction. She flees toward distraction and anyone who might fill the void, running from stillness because stillness is where the grief catches up.

Both reactions are completely normal. I've sat with clients who lean into one or the other, and sometimes both on the very same day. I've been both myself across different losses. We don't get to choose how grief shows up for us; all we can do is figure out what we need when it arrives, as messy as that process may be.

© Warner

Grief and children

Sally tries to protect her daughters by keeping the hardest parts of the family story hidden, while Gillian believes the truth should be out in the open.

That’s something I reflect on constantly with my own son. How do you pass down the truth of what happened without passing down the fear that came with it? How do you allow a child to know grief without handing them all the lingering trauma?

I don't know the answer, and there isn’t a neat one. There is only the ongoing, quiet work of figuring it out—slowly, imperfectly, together.

© Warner

Grief and joy can coexist

One truth I hold close in my practice is that grief doesn't get "fixed." By the story's end, nothing about the Owens family's loss disappears. What changes is that they stop carrying it alone - and perhaps that is what truly breaks the curse.

In the iconic "Midnight Margaritas" scene, the women dance around the kitchen, half-laughing, half-crying. It's grief and joy sitting right beside each other without one canceling out the other. It is an extraordinarily honest portrayal of life with loss: laughing doesn't mean you've stopped grieving, and finding happiness doesn't mean you've left someone behind. Sometimes, you can be utterly heartbroken and still have a wonderful night dancing around the kitchen with tears in your eyes.

© Warner

Find your tribe

You don't have to "get over it." You just don't have to do it alone.

That principle is why I built my grief coaching practice, AfterGlow. The people I work with aren't looking for someone to repair their grief or set a deadline for when it should end. They are looking for what grief ultimately demands we find: a tribe. People who can sit in the dark with you without flinching, without rushing you out the other side.

Grief can feel like a curse for a long time. What I've learned—slowly and often the hard way—is that you don’t have to carry it like one. A life with grief doesn't have to mean a life without magic.

Sometimes you just need a little help from your coven to find it again.

Follow Rachel on Instagram @theafterglowspace.