Loss, it’s all around us all the time. There is almost nobody who is unaffected by loss, it’s just the depth and gravity that is different. And when your loss is an “unnatural” one, it’s just that much harder to deal with.   Since my children died, I have witnessed other people go through loss of various kinds, but a loss very recently has rocked me to my core. People I know, not well, lost their little boy last week when he drowned. It’s this kind of unexpected, out of the blue loss, like with our darling Bella, that is…

Another year, and wow, what a year it’s been! Good, great, bad, awful and everything in between.   But before I reflect on the year that has passed and the upcoming one, the last few days I have been privileged enough to read a life changing book called “The Book of Joy”. It is a recount of the week that Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama spent together in India to mark the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday. All their conversations were around joy, and how to recognize and promote joy in your life and in others. I will write…

  You meet so many people in this grief journey, some who really go on to help you in dealing with your grief by sharing their own journey with you. Kate Polley is one of those people. She is quite remarkable and very inspirational, but most importantly, just so real. After experiencing the loss of one of her twin sons, Kate wrote her first book ‘Sam and Finn’ to share Sam’s story with her surviving twin, Finn, as well as her family and friends. Demand for the book spread and it was published and distributed worldwide, providing hope and comfort to many other families who…

After the loss of a child, so many days become so hard. Anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas – they are all fraught with a kaleidoscope of emotions, even more so when you have other children who you want to show the joy and happiness of these events to. You think about all of those things that you would have been doing with your child. All the milestones you are missing, all those shattered dreams and hopes you had for them – and you are once again reminded of some of the consequences of your loss.   We lost our daughter, Bella on…

Being real and authentic. Its something I have been thinking about a lot lately. And its something I have done a lot of work on in the last 8 months.   In our current world, where there is so much pressure on the pursuit of perfection, where everything is often so public, made available on social media forums and to all and sundry, one can often feel pressurised to only show the good things, to show life as near to perfect as it can be. To bury the bad things, the things which make life somewhat less than perfect, the realities…