LEARNING THE ART OF LIVING WELL
As an entirely inevitable conversation unfolds about death, loss and grief this week, I wanted to share a children’s story I wrote some years ago. Many adults feel unsure about how to discuss death with children, and as a result the subject can be avoided entirely or made oblique to somehow soften the blow. I […]
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This is a preview of the foreword of Lost for Words, a new book created by the Life Matters task force – a coalition calling for better support for bereaved families – to mark Children’s Grief Awareness Week 2019. The book is made up of advice and insights by children across the UK, bereaved from […]
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‘We can do this can’t we, Jackson?’ ‘Yes, Daddy. We can do this together.’ I asked my son this fairly rhetorical question when he was two and half years old and I was totally lost, trying to hold everything together just five months after his mum’s premature death. His response, I’ve since discovered, was characteristically […]
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A shorter version of this piece about was first published in The Times in July 2018, before the trip detailed below. One of the hardest things about being a sole parent, I keep telling anyone who will listen, is that you have to make all the major life decisions alone. “I can’t imagine how difficult that must […]
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I started writing about grief almost as soon as it came into my life six and a half years ago. My 33-year-old wife was struck and killed by a speeding car; our son had just turned two. The whole incident drew a lot of attention. I suppose through writing about it so openly, I did […]
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I noticed that it was Mental Health Awareness Week while poking around online the other day. It’s been hard not to notice, in fact. That in itself, I believe, is amazing progress. I remember when I was writing my book about grief in 2013, I had a conversation with my editor about whether or not […]
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I once wrote that grief is not a competition, and that if it were, there would be no winners anyway. But there is often an imagined hierarchy of grief. For some of us, it’s somewhat self imposed. For others, it is imposed upon us. When my wife died, I felt a certain sense of guilt […]
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MAN ALIVE 