After I read Wild by Cheryl Strayed a couple of years ago, I was convinced that the only way I would be able to express and process my grief was by walking the Pacific Crest Trail. There is no easy way to access the Pacific West Trail when you live in Manchester, so my next… Read more
Grief can be pretty lonely. You’ve lost a puzzle piece in the map of people you know and interact with, and your life becomes fragmented as a result. After losing my Mum, my understanding of my friends and family changed significantly. She’d been a centrepiece in that arrangement and suddenly she was gone. That experience… Read more
This is definitely one of those weird grief things that people don’t speak about enough. How do you tell a brand new person about your grief? A challenge I’ve started to face over the last few months when meeting lovely new people is feeling like I’m sat with my hand clutched over a closed bag that… Read more
Grief throws you off. The people we have in our lives form a structure around us – we all have that friend we ring on that street on the way home, or the once a month coffee and catch up. Those conversations give us the strength to keep going. The joy of ‘I’ll get this… Read more
My first ever counsellor was big into mindfulness, and on a fateful February day handed me the ripest, juiciest, most beautiful orange you’ve ever seen in your life. I held it in my hands and she told me to think about eating it for ten minutes. That’s a long time to think about an orange.… Read more
Mum’s been living in a garage in the boot of a car, watching chick flicks on DVD for the past two years. I ask her, exasperated, when this is going to end. When she’s going to come back and let people know she’s alive, ‘there are a lot of people who miss you.’ ‘I need… Read more