Matthew Perry’s sister’s heartbreaking new profession ‘Grief Alchemy’ following star’s death

Netflix are releasing a brand new documentary about Matthew Perry’s life and death, with his sister Mia featuring prominently and speaking out about her brother.

Perry died in 2023 after an addiction relapse which saw him taking large doses of ketamine, with five people charged in connection to his death and one woman sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Mia Perry Bowick speaks very emotionally in the Netflix doc, titled The One About Matthew Perry, and has taken up a new profession inspired by his tragic death.

Mia, the Friends actor’s half sister, has spoken out recently for the first time since his death, talking about the sweet story of how she ended up cracking up laughing at his funeral.

In the documentary she is interviewed by director Mary Robertson, who described how she wrote a letter to Mia asking her to take part in a recent interview with Vulture.

She is a licensed therapist who is ‘well-versed in addiction’, inspired by her brother’s addiction, but his death ultimately led to her taking up a specific role as a grief counsellor, working in a framework she calls ‘Grief Alchemy’.

Speaking on her website, Mia reveals that her brother’s death inspired the move towards specific grief counselling, saying: “After the death of her brother, Matthew Perry, in 2023, loss restructured Mia’s world.

“From inside that experience, and informed by two master’s degrees, years of clinical work, neuroscience, attachment theory, somatic awareness, and ritual, she developed Grief Alchemy, a framework for moving through loss in a way that allows it to transform us.

Mia and Matthew were half-siblings and very close family (Netflix)

“Mia’s work is rooted in the belief that grief does not ask us to return to who we were before. The loss does not disappear; we become large enough to hold it.”

The framework is six phases long and is a grieving process based on the work of Carl Jung.

Speaking in the documentary about her work, she says: “Our job is not to make the feeling go away, but to allow them to sit in the feeling.”

She also admitted in the doc that she had been ‘angry’ at Perry just five years before his death when he almost died of his drug abuse, with the actor being put on life support when his colon ruptured.

Mia developed 'Grief Alchemy' after her brother's death (Netflix)

She said: “I was certainly angry at him. You did this to yourself, man. I just had a baby. You’re supposed to be an uncle.”

Mia revealed that she began thinking of his drug addiction as a ‘terminal disease’ around that time, adding: “All great stories have comedy and tragedy in them, and that certainly was Matthew’s story.

“My brother would talk about that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill.”

She pointed to the fact that Perry spent $7 million trying to get sober before his death.

The One About Matthew Perry releases on Netflix 27 October.