I was a huge Princess Diana fan, and I have felt so deeply for her two boys since her death in 1997. As I often remark I cannot imagine going through your grief under the public eye, I cannot imagine doing that as a child.
This week Prince William became the Royal Patron of the Childrens Bereavement Charity and spoke about his grief as a child. I particularly connected to two things that he said.
1) Initially, there is a sense of profound shock and disbelief that this could ever happen to you. Real grief often does not hit home until much …read more

I was a huge admirer of Princess Diana and remember the wave of mourning when we woke up to find that we had lost the “People’s Princess”. I have this hope that one day she can rest in peace and yet like every other person there is that little gnawing thought whether there is more to the story. I just read on the Sydney Morning Herald the following
“A French firefighter who could hold vital clues suggesting Princess Diana’s death was not an accident has come forward to give evidence at an inquest into how she died.
Christophe Pelat claims to …read more

Kami Huyse talks about the 4 emotional stages of crisis management although this is about public relations the discussion about the psychology can help widows.
Psychologists call the emotional stages of survivors the Four Phases of Disaster:
1. Heroic Phase: This phase usually occurs directly after the disaster, when heroic actions are taken to help people recover from and/or survive a disaster. The media may be just arriving on the scene or not yet arrived at this phase. I definitely went through this stage – I appeared fine, dealing with everything and the friends who came around. For some reason I felt …read more

My heart goes out to the wife of Bob Woolmer – the manager of the Pakistan cricket team who died in his bedroom. The loss of your husband is incredibly hard at the best of times, but imagine if the police were treating it as suspicious, you were miles away on South Africa and every sports channel is mentioning suicide, murder etc
I think the press forget that there is a family in mourning, a family that is coming to terms with a sudden death and a family in grief. This kind of bereavement reminds me of how Prince William and …read more