Blog
It’s difficult, let’s face it. Someone you know has died. Relatives whom you may or may not know will be grieving. You maybe are grieving, too. How on earth do you acknowledge this? Here’s an excerpt from my book Gifted By Grief: A True Story of Cancer, Loss and Rebirth, where I reflect on the…
Read More
Pushing up the daisies. Kicked the bucket. Passed on. You name it, we have a euphemism for anything to do with someone dying or who has died. Is this us trying to deny it happens? Is it because we feel embarrassed or disconcerted? Is it because we would rather just ignore the whole topic, and…
Read More
Gail Rubin runs a wonderful website and business called A Good Goodbye based in California, the name of which tells you a lot about what she focuses on, which is one of the reasons I wanted to interview her. In our interview we spoke about ‘matchings, hatchings and dispatchings’ – a succinct sentence to describe life,…
Read More
Marie’s son was distraught. He had told his Mother he would have the doctors do everything they could – but now they were saying that they didn’t know how long she would be able to breathe on her own without the tube, nor did they know how long she might last if the machine continued…
Read More
There’s actually not a lot that we can say we know for sure about life, but this is one of them. We get born, and then some time later, we die. Yes, it may be unpalatable news and uncomfortable at that, but it is TRUE! It really is. What’s more, we cannot know how…
Read More
In this moving and poignant talk, Jane relates her experience of helping her husband have a “good death” and what she learnt from the process – and how it can help us all prepare for that 100% chance – the chance that we might die some day.
Read More
I never thought about death much, other than as a concept, until my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Then it made its entrance with a bang. Even though he was 65, it felt far too young to be contemplating death. We learnt a lot about each other, about life, and about death in…
Read More
This month’s interview in the BIG Interview Series is with Patty Burgess, President of Possibility with doingdeathdifferently.com. Patty is a friend and colleague, has participated on my Before I Go Programme, and is one wise, wild woman (so right up my street!) In this short interview she speaks movingly about how death is an…
Read More
Love Know Knows No Boundaries is a recording of a talk I gave to a wonderful audience at St Brides Church, Liverpool. I begin with a reading of the prologue of my book Gifted By Grief, so if you want a taste of this, listen in to the first few minutes. In this talk I…
Read More
What’s grief got to do with love? Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? For instance, there is a very well-known saying from Queen Elizabeth II: “Grief is the price we pay for love.” Because we do grieve much more over those we love, than those we either didn’t know so well, or didn’t know at all.…
Read More