Thank You, Friend
Thank you, friend, who is still addressing Christmas cards by including A’Mya’s name.
You are one of those who get it. Seeing her name makes my heart sing and my face light up with a smile.
grieving parents
Why We Need To Talk About Child Loss
Why do we need to talk about child loss, when it is so hard… When are we met with silence?When people just don’t get it, unless they have experienced it themselves? When all we need is to be understood and taken care of because grieving sucks all our energy? It seems pointless but it’s not,
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Vulnerability Is Bravery
Vulnerability and bravery. Two words that I wouldn’t easily put into one sentence. Grieving the death of my daughter and the subsequent years of healing have taught me both.
I’m practising being vulnerable and brave by sharing some personal insights from behind the scenes of the latest project I’ve been working on the past year.
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Do More Than Survive The First Year After Loss
Having lost our daughter at 3 days old and then my mother through suicide just four and a half month later I often doubted I would survive this emotional intensity called grief. I was tired of living. I was exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster. Yet suicide was totally out of the question for me as I was acutely aware of the emotional turmoil my mother had left behind in the family surviving her self-chosen death and I was absolutely clear of the important role I played as the mother to my other child.
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Don’t Apologize For Your Grief
Grief caused collateral damage in my life, my relationships and myself. Almost six years ago, my younger twin daughter died on the third day after her birth, followed by my mother’s death through suicide four and a half month later. The experience of death changed me so intensely that it took years upon years to
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Why You Will Never Fully Understand My Grief Experience As A Bereaved Mother
The experience of every bereaved mother (or father) is unique and so is their grieving experience. You can never fully understand another bereaved mother’s experience, even if you sit with her through the dark of the night, talk to her for hours, cry endless tears in compassion. I’ve tried. And I might have one advantage: I myself am a bereaved mother.
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The Nicest Thing To Say Or Do After Loss
Nice things are easy to say or do, once we know what they are… Having written a chapter about ‘What to do and say instead’ (of those things not to do or say) in the book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple’ I realised that no amount of words would ever be able to conclusively
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5 Things I Found Out Since Being A Bereaved Mother
Over the past five and a half years since my daughter died in my arms and I became a bereaved mother I have come to terms with my New Normal (= the post loss self). Initially I struggled and fought, argued and – honestly – hated much of the personal changes that came with loss. Now I’m able see both sides of the medal, live with and accept the changes and even see their potential.
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The Complete List Of Do’s And Don’ts When Supporting The Bereaved
On rare occasions, I had ‘friends’ tell me versions of: “Wouldn’t it be time to move on?” or “You’ve got such a beautiful daughter, don’t you think it would be better for her to stop mentioning her twin sister or the topic of grief and loss?” Who hasn’t heard some version of the above? Have you?
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Gusts Of Grief
Even though the sea of my grief is calm, I had to learn to live with the gusts of wind that come from the outside. Through her perspective I learn about a delayed form of grief, a yearning for her sister, a consciousness which only started to dawn around her 4th birthday.