I often say that in death you learn so much about life. Before being faced with death, you can be so wrapped up with the big things without even knowing it….
For me, grief has highlighted the importance of the little things in life …..when I say the little things, small aspects of life which have a BIG impact. It has highlighted the little things from two perspectives

Looking back, what do I miss the most…the little things. Holding my hand when I don’t expect it, cuddling on the sofa, the smile, their warmth in bed, the laughing at the in joke….
And …read more

Walking in town today, I looked at the wonderful shades of the trees and thought how nature has this fabulous way of defining moods, defining life, defining change….through shades.
Grief should be based on fact in a way. It is based on a factual happening – that person you love has died. Yet, grief is not matter of fact, grief is not an exact science….grief is all the shades of autumn.
Bereavement and that sense of loss stirs emotions which are on a full spectrum of pain, and those leaves I looked at today almost reflected the rainbow of grief.

The vibrant reds …read more

An unusual post today as I was prompted to write about this following an email which I received recently.
I have always said I feel lucky to have loved and talked a lot about the pain of losing that love and the greif that follows….but I was asked
“What do you think is worse…losing the love of your life through death or having the love of your life leave in this world?”
Gosh, that is a difficult one and first of I would say they are both grief….both are situations about loss.
I wonder what you all think ?
For me I actually think the …read more

I came across this poem about love and death by Rodney Belcher which I thought was wonderful
I feel you in the morning
When at first I awake
Your thought is with me
With each decision I make
You’d been around forever
Since the first breath I took
Now I have to go on alone
But for love, I need not look
Cause by what you bestowed
In our short time together
Will last in my heart
Forever and ever
Although you’ve left
And now walk above
I’m never alone
I’m wrapped in your love
Enjoy now your long waited reward
Feel peace that your love continues on
What was taught to me, will be taught to mine
Cause you …read more

On last nights online grief meeting we talked about the difficulty in finding who you are….
It is interesting that I have always seen myself as independent, a romantic yes…but never thought that I had lost that independence. Then death happens and suddenly you don’t know who you are….somehow you realise that you had morphed from a person to a couple and your other half is missing.
I often write about defining yourself, in fact last week I talked about Building A New Life From Grief and said
“To build for the future you need to come to terms with who you are, …read more

If you were building a house you wouldn’t just sit and look at a piece of ground and hope that a house appeared! So if we want to build a new life we need to think like an architect of our own life. Grief means that we need to rebuild our life.
Design – What kind of life do you want? Design the life that you want to build so that you can have a picture which you can build towards.
Foundations – All life’s – and houses – are built on solid foundations. Grief causes your life to be turned upside …read more

Grief manages to sap all the energy, it can change a positive person to a depressive person – I should know! But I always think of a letter sent by a great friend who wrote
“You have two choices. You can give up and let people remember you as someone who gave up, who let life slip through their fingers, someone who didn’t think enough of their friends and family to dig deep and stay around to enjoy life together in the future!
Or you can fight, you can find that inner strength to come through the sense of loss. You can …read more

Forget whether the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq are right – that is not relevant to this blog post – but it seems that each day I watch the news there are more deaths in Afghanistan. More fathers, sons, daughters, wives dying, more coffins returning home to their family.
For someone who knows the devastation of death, I just cannot imagine what these familes go through. What they go through when they are alive fighting on the front line and what they go through when they hear that fateful news…..
I don’t think I could cope with the not knowing, the fear, …read more

Since losing people close to me, I have become desperate to understand more about the brain, about death and about dying. Not in a morbid way at all, just in a curious way. For anyone else who wants to understand more I have come across a site called How Stuff Works and especially their section on Death and Dying.
The reason why I like reading is that the more understand, the more I come to terms with the natural side of death. The more I understand the less I fear, the less I fear the more that I can cope with …read more

Grief changes you, I cannot believe that someone can go through a death close to them and not be affected. Often we can concentrate on the bad aspects of grief – of which there are many – sleepless nights, pain, depression etc However, there are good ways that grief affects us.
I know that I have gone on what I can only call a spiritual journey. I have changed. Grief has removed trivial insecurities and also my desire to see what in reality are small problems as major life issues. So I am now much more patient for instance in traffic …read more