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…

James posted this link about a year ago now, and I came across the article by Tim Lawrence again this morning. In re-reading it I realized once again how powerful it is, and just how very very true! Some of the most powerful words in the article are the following: “The ones who helped—the only ones who helped—were those who were there. And said nothing. In that nothingness, they did everything. I am here—I have lived—because they chose to love me. They loved me in their silence, in their willingness to suffer with me, alongside me, and through me. They…

I have read so much about dealing with grief, what to do, what not to do, tips on what people should remember when somebody they know has experienced grief. In all my reading I have found that while everybody’s journey is unique, there is a huge amount of commonality in what people feel and what they wished others knew about grief. My journey of grief is still relatively new, and I feel like I still have a long way to go, but there certainly are a few things that may help those dealing with grief in some shape or form…

A booklet on Grief

Christmas is normally a joyous occasion, a time of celebration, of gift giving and receiving, of family time. But to be honest neither James nor I feel like being particularly joyous or doing too much celebrating. Fortunately Murray is just young enough that we can get away without having to do too much and letting the day go largely unnoticed.   I was chatting to our grief counsellor, Peter, about how I was really battling to get my head around doing anything to celebrate Christmas (which he said was totally normal as to do anything celebratory while in the midst…