Forever Forward were the two words I’d seen on the side of a bus which I referenced at the end of my previous post. Together they sound rather like a call to arms. Full of energy and determination.

And sometimes, as a bereaved parent, we find ourselves pleasantly surprised to feel like this, however fleetingly. Not at the beginning of course…and I’m using the word ‘beginning’ very loosely, because it’s highly likely that, after we’ve lost our child, ‘early grief’ is more accurately measured in years, rather than days or even months. But, as time goes by, there may well be moments when we find ourselves believing we’ve actually got this.

If you haven’t read my earlier repost, Co-Destiny, originally part of my Obstacles to Healing series, it’s worth taking a look. Because in it I describe the phenomena that we become familar with in profound grief, namely our oscillating between two different stages, grieving and restoration. It’s in the latter stage that we may feel more positive, like we’re making progress and have more energy for pushing on.

And yes, these may only be very small moments, and frustratingly brief, but they aren’t nothing. Sometimes they act as powerful reminders that the desolate place we are in right now need not be where we ultimately have to stay. That’s why, when these positive surges first arrive, we may find ourselves feeling renewed optimism about our chances of living a better life, outside of our immediate tragedy, at some point in the future.

Have you ever found yourself wondering what is happening at these times? If you’re anything like me, the suggestion that you’re coming to some kind of acceptance that your child is dead will feel totally unacceptable. And woe betide anyone who might be foolish enough to joyfully observe that, at last, I’ve started to move on.

I will never reference myself as having accepted my son’s death: as far as I’m concerned, it shouldn’t have happened and it will always feel wrong that he’s no longer here. And neither do I ever plan to move on, because that would require me to leave him behind. No, when I’m feeling more positive (and nowadays that’s most of the time) it’s because I’m choosing to spend my energy on personal healing, so I can move with my son into a brighter future, for us both.

But isn’t this all linguistic trickery, my attempts to soften this loss by playing around with how I describe it? Well, I don’t think so. I believe the words we say to ourselves really matter.

And that’s why, in the piece I’m reposting today, I chose to use the words ‘Facing Forwards.’ Less of a battle-cry than ‘Forever Forward’ but just as powerful. Because what I described here is an important decision that we can (eventually) make to STOP spending time torturing ourselves over the past.

How do we do this? By setting an intention. We decide that those moments when we feel our old energy and determination returning aren’t just freak accidents, they’re a sign that there is a future of new possibilities ahead of us and that, by committing to facing forwards, our healing will continue to move in this direction too.

As ever, I am acutely aware that I am writing from a perspective which time has gifted me. My son died in April 2021 and so I have had 64 months (or 1920 days) to process this loss. Where I am now bears no resemblance to the place I was in at the beginning of my journey and for me it’s important to acknowledge this.

Because, whilst I would never want to go back to the agonising start, I haven’t forgotten how it felt, and how hurtful I found any suggestion, however well-meaning, that I would not always feel as bad as I did at present. Instead, what I most needed was for others to create a space where VALUE was placed upon what I was FEELING RIGHT NOW. And perhaps this was because, amongst all the horror and complicated emotions around the loss, something else, in its purest form, was crying out for my attention…something which has only grown stronger in the years which have followed…and that is LOVE FOR MY CHILD.

If right now your grief feels very raw, I hope that, at the very least, these words provide some comfort for you. That, amongst the devastation in which you may currently be sitting, you can still feel the presence of something deeply precious: the enduring love you have for your OWN child. Because nothing can, or will, ever take this away…

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Brixton Road, London, June

Why and how we grieve is a topic which still fascinates me; perhaps the memory of being consumed by the madness of very early grief has given me an appetite for trying to make some sort of sense of it all now. And I think this is partly what Grief Models attempt to do. In today’s first re-post, I talk about a relatively modern one which is still my personal favourite, Co-Destiny.

I find Co-Destiny as a concept very helpful. Because it speaks to the continuation of not just my relationship with Dom, but the opportunities I am finding to keep him present, not just in my world, but, via the things I get to do in his name, in the world at large. This not only keeps him close by, it gives me a strong sense of purpose and has restored meaning to my life, in spite of the tragedy of physically losing him.

But, by way of contrast, some concepts which are commonly referenced within the grief community have the absolute opposite effect on me. In fact I feel passionately that they have no place in my world, after losing my child, and top of my hit list is Acceptance. This is the title of the second re-post today, and the final one I’ll be revisiting from my ‘Obstacles To Healing’ series.

In this post, and attempting to tackle what for me is the thorny idea that ‘Acceptance’ is the pathway to healing, I referenced most of the usual buzz-words associated with surviving difficult times (treating many with what, in the context of losing our child, I’d call a a healthy disdain.) The book they came from was also called Acceptance and was subtitled with the rallying cry to Create Change and Move Forward. Even in the final section ‘Facing a Difficult Loss’ the subheadings had me shaking my head: Rebuilding…Forgiveness of others (hmm)…and Self-Forgiveness (yes, that one again) and, managing, in spite of everything, to find Gifts (oh please do give us all a break.)

Sometimes, by way of self-protection (and especially in the early days) I’d say we have to put up a healthy resistance to exposing our intensely painful loss to the supposed healing that comes with embracing such ‘words of wisdom.’ It’s easier of course when we’re just reading about them from a book, and really very satisfying to just throw the thing to the floor (which I’m sure I did back then) when we’re feeling particularly pissed off about the simplistic advice we’re being handed. But so much harder to know how to react when it’s offered to us in person by a parent whose children are all still alive.

And yet…and yet…I really do NOT want to lose myself to this loss…

Because, I actually did find enough resonance in the latter part of Padraig O Morain’s book to stop feeling so cynical. The truth is that no good comes from endlessly channeling precious energy towards maintaining that other sorts of pain can’t possibly touch that of child loss. It is enough that other parents and I have spaces where we can share how, in losing a child, we have experienced the very worst pain of our lives.

I believe there is a real risk that, in viewing our tragedy as beyond the scope of any kind of healing, we may never be willing to lift up our heads again and see what’s over the parapet. Continuing the battle analogy, making the greatest tragedy of our life the only thing that now energises us can have really negative consequences, resulting in our being forever at war with others, (and even worse, with ourselves.) At some point we have to find some form of personal Acceptance.

My version, as I say in today’s repost, and a big part of my integrating this loss into my life, is being willing to ‘Come To Terms’ with Dom’s death. This is a very different thing from wasting energy engaging in the futile task of trying to accept it, because it can and will never feel right. Instead, for me, these three words acknowledge that remaining in battle-mode is exhaustingly unproductive and, in terms of any kind of healing, gets me nowhere since it fails to give me the one thing which I still really want: to have my son back.

I’d like to end with an explanation for the photo at the top of this post. Last month, as a delayed birthday present, my daughter took me to a Gay Music Festival in London, headlined by the outrageous Scissor Sisters (although in fairness the many exposed male bottoms I saw whilst walking around Brockwell Park rather put the band in the shade.) It was great fun and seeing the drag queens strutting their stuff whist lip-syncing reminded me of watching a similar show on the first night of my visit to see Dom in the Philippines, which made me smile (as well as cry.)

Caitlin and I had traveled separately to the gig, arranging to meet up at Brixton Underground, where, emerging alone onto the street, I had heard the drink seller shouting out ‘Rum Punch’ (words which brought back fond and drunken memories of my son and and I getting through a whole bottle of white rum cocktail on that same Philippine trip.) Since I was uncharacteristically early, I decided to stop at a cafe where I chose a cake, labelled Lemon Drizzle, which turned out to be orange (the fruit I very much associate with Dom now) and rosemary, his favourite herb. Of course, I couldn’t have been more delighted about the confusion as it gifted me with yet another precious touchstone to my beautiful boy.

THIS is how I get you back now, I said to myself. And then, looking up, I saw it. A bright red London bus with a JD Sports advert on the side, with two words written in bold capitals.

FOREVER FORWARD.

Lots to read, thanks if you made it to the end! Next month my posts will be on the subject of moving forward whilst finding the ‘Joy’ which remains in our lives. Because I believe there’s still an abundance of it out there, if we stay open to this possibility…

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Me and Dom at The Wagon (the same holiday I referenced in my last post.) I think he was genuinely happy, I know I was.

Sometimes I feel very conflicted, writing about the grief which follows losing a child: whilst I don’t want to make it all sound impossibly bleak, I worry that, at times, I veer towards making the process sound so much easier to manage than it truly is. I’m sorry if this thought has ever crossed your mind too, but I would understand, because I’m aware that I’ve found my own, very personal, way of framing my son’s death as not just a loss, but an opportunity. And this may not at all be the way you have experienced losing your own child.

Today’s first repost is, I hope, an antidote to any of my recent annoyingly evangelical declarations. Because it digs down into the deep wound that every single parent carries after their child is no longer physically here. And I describe this as a feeling of Yearning.

This yearning though, I don’t know about you but I think there’s only so much of it I can tolerate because it’s SO BLOODY PAINFUL. Sometimes I’ve wondered whether my personal inability to stay WITH this pain has led to my devising a way to avoid it. By ‘pretending’ that, although I can’t physically see him any more, Dom is actually still around.

But maybe that’s what ‘healthily’ grieving our child looks like. I’ve definitely noticed how the faces of other bereaved parents brighten up when they talk about how they continue to feel their child’s presence. I’ll leave you to decide whether the way in which I still communicate with Dom marks me out as more or less sane…here’s Unbreakable Bonds

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve found something in amongst my words which resonates and has brought you comfort. How we grieve our son or daughter is unique to each of us, but I have learnt that I’m far from alone in seeking to maintain an ongoing relationship with my child. And in my next post I’ll be writing about what this looks like, moving forward.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Dom happily relaxing with a beer, at The Wagon. But we can never really know what’s going on in another person’s head…

Okay, having ended my previous post referencing how I now feel I belong to a much BIGGER tribe of ALL bereaved parents, it may seem a little contradictory to be homing-in on the specific experience of losing a child to suicide. But it remains important to me to share my personal insights with any other parents who have recently found themselves on this painful journey. And first and foremost I want to acknowledge that harmful (and untrue) thoughts can so easily derail our quest for personal healing, and to offer more helpful ones.

Here are my hard-earned truths:

I know that contained within these words are many sentiments which pretty much all bereaved parents have, and that losing a child, period, is hard. And yet I still want to spend some time speaking specifically to mums and dads whose child ended up taking their own life. Because I have learned first-hand how terrible pain-points often exist for these parents, and want my story to help those suffering the particular kind of anguish this loss can bring.

I’d like to start by explaining what makes the suicide of our child such a complicated loss. Firstly, it may NOT have come out of the blue, because we actually knew our child was struggling and so could well have been caught up in their unhappiness for years. This is where the expression ‘you’re only as happy as your least happy child’ holds a particularly painful truth for us and why we may already be feeling sad (and potentially bad as parents, too.)

On the other hand, maybe we had no idea they were struggling, and this of course becomes a different kind of agony. So we’re caught either way…if we DID know, why the hell couldn’t we do something to stop them? But if we DIDN’T, we may be equally critical of ourselves, wondering what kind of a parent we were that our child didn’t feel able to reach out to us for support…

The photo of Dom at the top of this post was taken on one of three wonderful ‘Swallows-and-Amazons-style’ family holidays at an off-grid place called The Wagon, and I love that it shows my handsome son relaxing with his beer. And yet in looking for this I came across other photos from the same holiday, ones where I now wonder if he was actually feeling really sad at this time. Thank goodness that today I can more successfully redirect my thoughts before the guilt takes a hold.

One of the things I’ve found most helpful in learning how to better manage the complicated grief which has followed my son’s suicide is the importance of putting a wider context around his death. I believe doing this can really help us view our personal situation differently: put simply, we learn that we’re not the only ones this has happened to. We meet decent people who have also lost their child this way and, in time, our brain stops performing the mental gymnastics of telling ourselves that we are bad, even though they are good, recognising instead that we’re all just caught up in the same tragedy.

We can also start to educate ourselves, and even if we don’t at all like what we discover (for me this is recognising just how worthless my child must have been feeling) we come to realise that they didn’t actually want to die, they just wanted to end their pain. In fact at the beginning of this nightmare it’s surprisingly easy to identify with this state (as it’s exactly what we want, to stop hurting.) And I’ll be brutally honest now; although I ache knowing that, ultimately, my son chose not to ask for my help, and of course I wish with every fibre of my being that he hadn’t taken his life, part of me is relieved that he is no longer suffering.

For me, in the longer term, it’s helpful that I feel able to do something with this tragedy now, speaking up for not just Dom but for all those who have experienced suicidal feelings and suicide loss. And, in doing this, I hope to play a part in creating much greater awareness around this important subject…

I’m aware in my writing today that I’ve narrowed my focus but that’s because I want to acknowledge how brutal losing a child to suicide is and to state my belief that there is no where near the support needed for parents who face this. Whilst this kind of death is no longer a crime, I maintain it’s a crime that the help survivors receive is so pitiful. In fact, my own experience is that there was none offered at all.

I don’t think things will improve unless those who have lost their child (or any of their loved ones) in this devastating way begin to challenge the silence that has traditionally enveloped the complexities of this kind of loss. Because we need, as a society, to pay greater attention. The fall-out on families from this kind of death is too big to be ignored.

In my child’s name I choose to challenge the stigma around mental illness. And for other parents, like myself, I want to see change. I feel passionately that their suffering needs to be recognised, so that specific services become available to support them as they process their trauma.

Having first met up at a SOBS group, three years after losing our sons to suicide my friend and I started a local support group, exclusively for parents. We lived in the same street at that time, and there were a mere three days between our losses. As we had learnt, deaths by suicide can happen in any family…and, although we have a much better understanding of why they might take this irreversible step, it remains the leading cause of death for men under 50.

We called the group Stronger Together. I live in a smallish town, and yet a sizable number of mums and dads attend and this reflects what a big killer of young people suicide still is. Doing my part to create a space where parents who are going through the worst experience of their lives can meet, share and support each other is another one of the things I’m choosing to do to bring suicide loss out from the shadows.

I’d like to end by zooming out a little, talking directly to other parents who have lost their child to any form of mental illness, some of whom had children who died from addiction and whose journey very much mirrors my own. I know that it can feel as if the heaviness which your child felt has become something which you yourself must now carry. I hope that, in time, you find your own way to put this burden down and that, in doing so, you reconnect to your child in a way which, instead of bringing back their pain, brings you much-needed joy.

Esther x

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

I remember taking this photograph a little over a year after my son died. Just as I chose to journal my anguished thoughts in the intensity of early loss, something told me I should record them, just once, in picture-form. I wanted to get everything in the frame, me (still in the early stages of deeply grieving for my child) holding tightly to my puppy, Sonny (who was something of a life-raft to me at this time) and the photo of Dom and his siblings (the family which had so inexplicably blown-up in front of me.)

If you’re a bereaved parent, you most likely recognise the look on my face. Do the words for it actually exist? Hollowed out, heart-broken, utterly despairing…can any of these really describe the depths of sorrow we feel when our child has left us?

I’m in the sixth year of this loss and I want to start by saying that it DOES GET BETTER. I think that it’s particularly important to tell newly bereaved parents this. Because we who are further down the line are really the only ones who can genuinely offer this much-needed hope.

Remembering how alone I’d felt in my grief in the early days inspired me to write this piece, re-posted from my first year on Substack…

It’s fair to say that, at this point in my writing, for much of the time I was focusing on the specifically complicated loss of a child to suicide, but, as I did come to realise, what I was most desperate for was what all bereaved parents need, which is to have our profound grief at losing our child witnessed. Unfortunately the reality can look very different: too often we sense that others find our distress very uncomfortable and so we learn to hide it. But of course this then creates an intensely painful secondary loss: only by pretending to be something we’re really not (‘okay’) do we still get to experience that most basic of human needs, a sense of belonging.

I wrote this piece from the place of wanting to find a solution to this painful dilemma. And a recognition that the ‘gap’ which so often opens between us and others in our lives may well cause its own unhappiness for them, too. As such, it’s about the possibility that those who care about our well-being can learn how to support and respond to our tragedy in ways which actually help us to stay connected.

My second repost today marked a bit of a turning-point. Whilst not invalidating my points in ‘Closing the Gap’ (because I still did and do believe that others can make positive changes in their approach which can make a massive difference to how effectively they support us) in this piece I conceded to the fact that no-one who hasn’t lost a child can really know how it feels. And as such, finding ourselves a Tribe is one of the most helpful things we can do.

But this wasn’t the only turning point, at this stage in my Substack journey. Although in my real life I’d already helped create a local support group specifically for parents who’d lost a child to suicide, responses to my writing from parents who’d lost their child for so many other reasons had made me aware that I was in a MUCH BIGGER group than I’d ever realised. That I’d now found the Tribe where I truly felt I belonged…

So much to read! Whether you’ve read through both of these re-posts or homed-in on the one which most spoke to you, I hope you’ve found something amongst all my words which has been helpful in navigating the loss of your own precious child. And if you’re someone who is reading from the vantage point of wanting to support a bereaved parent I would like to offer these closing words of advice…

Give us space to tell the truth of how we’re feeling, rather than unintentionally placing demands on us to minimise it for your comfort.

Welcome the times when we talk about our child, because we register this as their existence still mattering and it means everything to us now.

Having our profound grief witnessed (instead of feeling you’re trying to ‘fix’ us) is vital to our recovery and, since it is the best gift you can give us, we will never forget that you stepped up for us in this way.

As always, I want to acknowledge how very hard life will be right now for any parents who have only just recently joined this Club. If you haven’t yet discovered my other publication, Tears, Tools and Treasure, perhaps reading accounts from other parents who have lost a child will be helpful. The link is here: Tears, Tools and Treasure.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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We’ve all got our own experiences of feeling at Peace. I’m a Yorkshire girl at heart, and so photos like the one above, taken on a visit to the Dales, transport me to my own version of it. It’s a shot I took in the late afternoon, as the sun was going down, and I swear that, just looking at it, makes my whole nervous system reset.

When tragedy and trauma first hit, (and I’ve come to realise that they are so often inextricably linked) Peace is something we crave. Our lives are upended, leaving us psychologically exhausted, and our disregulated emotions and thoughts compete hopelessly for relief, even though we have zero capacity to attend to either. Please let it all just end is probably the only coherent sentence we have to offer ourselves, and any others who are brave enough to come-up close to this intense pain.

I’m in my sixth year of profound and complicated grief following the loss of my thirty year old son, Dom, to suicide, and I’m not about to tell any parent, however they have lost a child, that Peace will automatically arrive. But what I’ve learned is that, like so much of what’s difficult to achieve in life, the rewards from the hard work we have to put in to find it are SO worthwhile. At the same time, I think it’s important to remember that what this work looks like is individual to each of us, just as our loss can only ever really be ours alone to carry.

I hope this doesn’t sound bleak, and that my message isn’t interpreted as defeatist, because this really isn’t my intention. I just think that saying we can find a way back to Peace (which I very much believe we deserve) doesn’t mean it simply happens. Ultimately, and in our own time (and it’s vital that we honour our grief by taking as much of this as we need) I believe that returning to this place means recognising that we have personal agency, and far more control over our future than we probably realise at the outset.

Like so many bereaved parents, I have had to do a great deal of work to stop feelings of anger and bitterness depriving me of my right to Peace. I’m no Mother Theresa, and in the early years after Dom died I had my own vengeful thoughts as to who I felt had contributed to my son’s suicide. And here I think is the post which most clearly shows this…

But what this post also acknowledges is how, after our child dies, we can so easily (and ultimately unhelpfully) slip into finding ourselves permanently angry at the Universe itself. Obviously I’m NOT saying we’re supposed to be happy at what has happened, or simply smile when others may misguidedly place our son or daughter’s death alongside other far less painful losses in their lives. But I do think, at some point, it is helpful to recognise that, shitty as losing our child is, we have years still to live, so it’s worth remaining open to the possibility that our future may contain good things now too.

The second post I’m revisiting today is the one I wrote at the end of my first Substack two-weekly post challenge, Ending the Song.

I’m not going to lie, I cried re-reading the words of this post. Because they take me back to how desperately sad I still am at losing Dom so tragically. I know that no amount of time, or re-framing of my story, can ever change those feelings.

But I want to end by quoting, from that post, some of the hard-earned realisations that I’ve had since those utterly grief-stricken early days after Dom died. Because they speak to the Kind of Peace I’m continuing to find. To the life that still remains, and my decision to be the author of a new story now.

Before I go, I want to speak to any parents who may still be in the early stages of this terrible loss, because I’m well aware that, for you, being ‘at peace’ probably feels like a pipe-dream. Just reaching the end of each day is likely to be requiring huge effort and may well be all you can manage right now. Please remember that there are no prizes for trying to be other than where you are.

At the same time, try to recognise the immense power you hold in treating yourself with compassion. Small acts of self-kindness can make all the difference to how you get through each day. And these may even buy you a few precious moments of peace.

The subject matter of the next series of my Substack writing, which I will be revisiting in July, is Obstacles to Healing. I look forward to meeting you there.

Sending love, Esther x

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Subscribe now

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Carefree me, smiling for the camera, taken on a trip to the Yorkshire Dales in 2016

Last week I bought myself a dumb-bell (and yes, I really should have taken note because the clue’s in the name.) Encouraged by my daughter’s fiancee, I’d decided it was time to try to get this old body into better shape. You see, I’ve been successfully shedding excess pounds since January but even with the weight off, I recognise there is still room for improvement in the ‘bulge’ areas.

But my first work-out was punishing. Not at the time, in fact after following the ten minute beginners’ session, including three sets of Goblet Squats (why are they given such a revolting name?) I felt so pleased with myself I started to wonder whether I should have followed my future son-in-law’s advice and bought an 8kg bell, instead of the 4kg one I settled on.

No, it was the following day that the pain kicked in. The muscles in my legs ached badly, leaving me hobbling around, even on the flat, and the only way I could tackle the stairs was by pulling myself up on the handrail. This uncharacteristically delicate version of me lasted for the next three days and wasn’t at all the outcome I’d hoped for when I began using weights.

What’s this got to do with complicated grief, you ask? Well, quite a lot really. I think my planned daily exercise regime versus the reality of what it was actually going to take out of me very much replicates how I approached my early Substack writing.

Because I was incredibly optimistic, in the circumstances, when I first started posting on here, setting myself a challenge of writing twice a week, whilst processing (in some cases for the first time) some very psychologically and emotionally challenging memories. Like that dumb-bell regime, I had no idea what it was going to take out of me. And reading again the two pieces I’m reposting this week, I can see how very fragile reliving the past was making me feel, back then.

The first post today I simply titled Forgiveness. But in it I explored the far from simple task of forgiving myself, after my son’s suicide. In the process, I began to acknowledge how much my guilt and regret were complicating this loss and metaphorically throwing down immovable boulders on the road to any true healing.

Here’s the other repost for today, in which I described how, after our child dies, looking at old photos can be incredibly hard…

When I returned to this piece, certain lines stood out, especially the one referencing the mind-set I adopted in forcing myself to look at photos so soon after Dom had died: If this is to be done, I think I was saying to myself, let’s begin now. It was exactly the same attitude I had to writing so many of my difficult early posts. Namely, just get on and do it.

David Kessler talks about this way of approaching hard things, and likens it to how buffalos respond to storms. Apparently, when one is coming and the other animals are trying to run away, the buffalos choose to just head straight towards it, which might feel counter-intuitive but it does mean that they spend the least amount of time inside the storm, by virtue of getting to the other side sooner. That’s me, I thought, when I first heard him describe this phenomena.

Luckily time gives perspective and whilst I’m not knocking the efficacy of this approach, I’ve also learnt the importance of pacing myself, now. Excuse the pun, but just as I can see it was pretty ‘dumb’ of me to not start my exercise routine more gently, the same is true of complex grief: sometimes the wiser choice is to take our time, not rush our process, and definitely let ourselves rest if we’ve (unintentionally) overdone it. Because we can’t actually sprint our way through painful memories; it’s better to work through them with the same kind of steady mindset we’d need if we were running a marathon.

Thankfully, despite continuing to navigate a hugely complicated loss, I neither feel the need to run towards, or away from, the storm nowadays because, as returning to these two posts has helped me to recognise, I’m no longer carrying the additional weight of punishing guilt and regret I did back then. So, although losing my child has irrevocably changed my life, I’m feeling much lighter now, and closer to seeing myself as the upbeat woman I was in the picture at the top of this post. And I know for sure that my son would be happy about this too.

Because the person who took that photo was Dom.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

This photo of my son Dom was taken on a local walk, and is still one of my favourites (the picture and the walk itself.) Being in beautiful surroundings with my dog, and returning to places where Dom walked previously with me, was a go-to form of therapy in the very early days after he died. The photo was taken about 15 years ago in a woodland nature reserve and I love how Dom conveyed the hint of a cheeky smile as he posed on a carved tree stump.

Woods are places I particularly love to walk. Something about the trees brings such a sense of calm; I often wonder how many were there, way before I was born, and imagine that most will still be standing long after I’ve gone. Trees seem to speak of a timelessness, straddling life and death effortlessly and, when you’re struggling to envisage how you can remain in a completely different universe from the one in which your child now exists, this is a philosophically soothing thought.

Trees featured in my first full post on Substack, Biding. As is often the case, the title came to me from nowhere, but seemed so perfectly to describe that difficult period of waiting, in the run-up to a milestone our child is no longer present for, in this case, the official day of my son’s birthday. Not for the first time, trees came to my rescue…and so did the sense of what they were signing.

If you’d like to re/read it, here’s Biding.

After our child dies (and at the risk of saying the same thing twice, which I believe is called tautology) signs assume a massive significance. And that’s because, despite their physical absence, we long to have evidence that our son or daughter is still nearby. Hoping, although they’re now behind ‘the veil,’ that they’re somehow able to communicate with us.

How we long for the moments when it feels as if they just have, especially in our early grief, as these may be the only times we are lifted, however briefly, out of a very heavy place. Now, when other bereaved parents talk about how their son or daughter sends signs, this doesn’t feel weird at all. We recognise that, like us, they’re simply seeking to close the terrible chasm which has opened between them and their child.

I wrote Signs shortly after Dom’s birthday. I know I was hugely relieved to be the other side of this day, so maybe that was why I decided to set myself the challenge of writing two posts a week between this and the day of his anniversary. A sense of optimism is palpable in my words, though as I now know, there were going to be times in the next few weeks when the hopeful bubble I was in was close to bursting…

Finally here’s a favourite early pieces. I packed it with references to precious signs from my son. Because, to quote from the title I gave it, these signs will always be what keep him in my world.

Thanks for reading. To end, here’s a recent picture of the tree sculpture my son was leaning on in the earlier photo. Nowadays, I always leave a little gift there for him from my walk: because signs can work two-ways, can’t they…

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

One of my favourite roads from Swaledale into Wensleydale, Yorkshire

Apologies for the cliche, but isn’t being on Substack like a microcosm of the journey of life? Because we never really know where it’s going to take us. Which means that, in many ways, we just have to buckle up for the ride and hope for the best.

When I started on here I had very little idea of what I was doing. Not just in terms of navigating my way round the site (although that was a challenge all of itself, and over a year later I’ve probably only mastered about 50% of it, at best.) But my grasp on the reason I’d decided to start writing on Substack was a little sketchy too.

I guess I mainly wanted to know that my words could have an impact. That the tragedy of losing my son Dom would be mitigated, in some way, by his and my story making a difference to others in how they were able to carry their own intense losses. What I didn’t reckon on was how much I needed other bereaved parents to witness my own unprocessed trauma and how their doing this would make my writing on here a kind of personal therapy.

In deciding how to name my Substack, I wanted to ensure anyone approaching it was prepared. I was aware I ran the risk of putting people off, but a commitment to speaking to the truth of my loss made the title non-negotiable. That’s why Losing My Son to Suicide was there from the start.

Later I decided to add some extra words, Hope, Healing and Joy. It felt right: these were all things that I desperately wanted and needed to find for myself. They were markers in the (frequently shifting) sand, reminding me that the place I’d landed in after Dom’s death was not where I had to remain.

But it soon became apparent to me that leading with Hope was a bold decision, because wanting to heal and being able to heal are entirely different things. Wanting something may give us motivation, but being drawn back to the pain so often derails our best intentions. I’ve (only semi) jokingly come to the conclusion that, in retrospect, I should have qualified the word HOPE, with an acronym, namely Holding On and Painfully Enduring.

Healing was the second word I came up with. And whilst I’ve subsequently questioned using this (after all, a parent’s perfectly normal reaction to losing their child is not an illness from which they need to be cured) I do still stand by it. I just think that it’s important to stress that Healing is ongoing and never stops, that it is a direction rather than a destination.

Finally, and arguably the most potentially contentious of all, I ended with the word Joy, something which can feel so utterly unattainable when we first lose our child (and we’re probably assailed with a feeling that we’ve permanently lost any desire for joy, anyway.) Maybe that’s why, in a universe which seems to have so casually meted out such pain, discovering that we can still enjoy life becomes a radical act of defiance. It’s definitely why, in my writing back then, it always felt so important to return to a place where I still felt alive to possibilities, beyond my tragedy.

Anyway, as promised, over the next five weeks I’m going to be reposting posts from this first part of my journaling journey, beginning with the introduction to my Substack. At this point in time the year had turned full circle, so we were once again approaching the day of Dom’s birthday. And returning to an incredibly painful place, ‘celebrating’ this milestone when he was no longer there…

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Last week I published the final poem of the Poems of Loss, Love and Light series which I began in February. For me, embarking upon poetry writing was definitely an act of blind faith. But I did want to try something new.

And it’s been really satisfying doing something different and out of my comfort zone. Of course, there are so many very accomplished poets on here and I was never under any illusion that I was about to join their number. But I know I’ve improved, as we always do, when we actually put the time in.

I sense it’s sharpened up my prose too, making me focus on saying more with fewer words, so with luck it will mean I’m a better writer going forward. And forward is most definitely the direction in which I intend to travel. With both a medium and a BIG new challenge in the coming months.

I’ll start with the BIG one, the project which I’ve being putting off since starting Substack. This is the book I began writing two years ago, with the working title ‘Walking With My Son.’ It’s an account of the first three years of life after losing my son, and includes the run-up to his suicide, those difficult months which later formed the basis of my endless re-running of moments I saw as missed opportunities to save him.

I know that returning to this material, as I embark upon a structural edit, will not be plain sailing. Although my relationship with the traumatic circumstances of Dom’s death has changed, as parents who’ve been there will know, this is never easy terrain to travel again. As such I fully intend to pace myself this time round.

But I’m up for this latest project. I feel like the moment has come, that I’m stronger, both as a writer, and as a grieving parent. And I don’t want to put it off any more.

My plan, ultimately, is to publish the book, initially on Substack. I’m hoping that, for a small donation (the equivalent of buying a paperback) there will be enough interest from Subscribers to enable me to start a fund which I can eventually put towards self-publishing it. I want mine and Dom’s story to sit alongside other resources designed to help parents put down the enormous burden of guilt that follows losing a child to suicide, so that they will find a way to nurture, in its place, a newly joyful connection back to them.

In the meantime, my medium term challenge is to continue writing weekly posts in the form of revisiting the ‘best’ of my back-catalogue. These date back to February 2025 and I’d like to introduce a few to newer subscribers who haven’t seen them before. And for those who’ve been with me from the start (as well as to acknowledge important changes to myself) I’ll be adding a reflection before each piece as to how I now feel it sits in my ‘Grief Journey.’

Because my grief has evolved, and I know this will help soften the hard edges in the posts which were difficult to write first time round. Like so many other parents on here who have gone through the devastating loss of a child, I’ve found ways to integrate this tragedy into my life which make carrying it feel less heavy and this will always be my mission, both personally, and in my writing. And, at the same time, I remain fully committed to my own well-being, expressed so beautifully in Mary Anne Radmacher’s poem Strengths Have Shadows, resolving to

Be gentle with the parts of me
that worked so hard to get me here,
and even gentler with the parts
that are learning a new way forward.

Esther x

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Dom stopping to admire the spectacular view on his travels in South East Asia

You did not belong 
in the shadows

Yours was a life
lived fully
and there were 
no half-measures

Maybe you knew
it was now, or never



And this has been
the gift you left

So I don’t want to
just pass through...
These remaining days  
need to count

Because now I understand
how precious they are



Shadows are for ghosts
lying waiting in the wings

But you are still so present,
and encouraging, 
teaching me not just 
to plan things

but to be brave and 
do them now


You do not belong 
in the shadows

And neither do I 

People take their lives for all sorts of reasons, although there are often similarities in their thought processes. In the years since my darling son Dom died I have learned that, in addition to feeling overwhelmed, it’s especially common for a suicidal person to believe that things won’t and can’t ever change. But we never really know what was going through their minds, unless we have been to this extremely dark and desperate place ourselves.

But of course, it is human nature to speculate. I have come to believe my son’s depression had stopped him from being the person he wanted to be, approaching life with enthusiasm, meeting challenges he’d set himself. And that he no longer felt able or willing to live a pale imitation of the life which he’d worked so courageously to create.

As someone who could suddenly (and inexplicably) succumb to social anxiety, one of Dom’s bravest decisions was to go travelling solo in S East Asia. He spent a year getting money together to do this before setting off, aged 25. The photo at the top of this post is of him gazing over the landscape where he’d ridden on the motorbike he bought and used to travel up and down Vietnam, in the process amassing an impressive total of 1715 kilometers.

Suicide leaves an indelible mark on our lives: we are scarred forever. So, inevitably, this painful loss will now be a part of our own life story. But if we can see nothing beyond it, this tragedy will also be the very worst kind of legacy, for our child and for us.

My son was a big character, who lived out so many of his dreams. He made the most of the 30 years he was here. And I want his story and my own to be about so much more than how he died.

So, like Dom (and I feel sure, with his blessing) I’m determined not to let fear get in the way of doing things that really matter to me. There will be more of this to come in my next post. For now, moving forwards, I’m pleased to say I’m about to embrace both a medium and much BIGGER challenge.

After I’d finished writing today’s poem I went to the Facebook page my son had set up (as an ongoing Food Blog to accompany his travels) to find the ‘right’ photo. That’s where I discovered what felt like the perfect one. I still wanted to include one of him on his actual bike and so I opened his usual Facebook page, the one where, after he died, other photos had appeared, many of them posted by the strangers Dom encountered on his travels, alongside their funny and often moving stories of meeting him.

That’s when I stumbled on something new, posted only last month, which brought me to tears. It was from a girl who had met Dom when they worked in a restaurant on a Cambodian island called Koh Rong; she’d never forgotten him and was really sad to have (just) discovered that he’d died. She talked with such fondness of their time together, of their sharing English/Turkish recipes, and his eventually teasing her that he ‘cooked Turkish food better than I did.’

All of this made me smile; although he’d never mentioned her, I remembered Dom calling home back then and his speaking with such enthusiasm about being a chef, because cooking food for (and with) others was something he absolutely adored. But it was her final words which really touched me. Because they reminded me that there are so many memory-keepers out there in the world, keeping my son’s light burning, and that the indelible marks of love he left behind will always be his true legacy.

I know that when we die, we do not truly disappear. When I leave this world I will ask to find Dom. I feel lucky that he touched so many lives, including mine. I’m sure we’ll cook together again.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

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Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

It’s for your birthday, 
but I might still add to it...
I don’t think it’s finished yet

And you handed me
a plastic bag
Inside, a painting
still wet in places

Confused, I asked 
which way it went
so, smiling, you
turned it around

You see in the corner?
Up there
that’s the sun

Now I sometimes trace
those acrylic contours 
imagining that your fingers
did the same

And I ache 
to think of all you’re missing
years you won’t live
things you could have done

It wasn’t just the painting... 
darling, there was a whole life 
still left to be finished

On one of his last trips home my son, Dom, arrived bearing a plastic bag from which he produced a heavy wooden panel. I think he’d found it outside a house in his street. He was a great believer in recycling things which would otherwise end up being thrown away.

As he handed it to me I realised that he’d used the panel as a canvas for a painting. I was still a little confused however, as it was upside down. But once he turned it I could see the swirling mass of colours which represented the sky, mountains and rivers, with a huge sun presiding over them all.

He’d been painting it in time for my birthday; the photo at the top of this post shows it resting on the easel in his room in London. Clearly there’d been a rush to get it finished for this visit, hence the reason why some of the paint hadn’t yet dried. After he left I found traces of it on the coat I’d been wearing.

Memories our child left behind. They can make us happy, or they can make us feel so sad. And sometimes they do both.

I treasure my son’s painting. It now lives on the chest of drawers in my bedroom, and I smile as I look at it every day. Something which he produced, just for me, with his own hands…I don’t imagine I need to explain to any parent (bereaved or otherwise) why it feels so special.

And yet, in darker moments, I’ve ended up holding it, sobbing. Remembering Dom’s cheeky smile as he presented it to me. At other times I’ve closed my eyes, tracing the raised acrylic lines of paint, imagining I can somehow find him there again.

A close-up…layer upon layer of paint

I’m at a stage in my grief of regularly sifting through memories. Metaphorically holding them, touching the pain-points, wondering whether they contain enough happiness to offset the inevitable sadness they can evoke.

And, gradually, I’m getting some agency back. Now, more often than not, I’m finding it easier to filter out the tragic nature of this loss, choosing instead to nurture precious memories and use them to maintain a joyful connection to my son. Because I don’t want that to end. Otherwise I know I’ll lose him all over again.

I’ll never forget Dom pointing to the sun he painted, so boldly, in the corner of his picture and that’s why, whenever it’s sunny, I always wave upwards and say ‘Hi Son’. I love that this feels like a private joke between us. But it’s also a helpful reminder that turning towards the light is how I’m choosing to look for him now.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Share

Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

I look for you
everywhere

It's an
existential ache
this longing to 
see you again

If you returned
I wouldn't be greedy
a few seconds
would do

And if that was 
too much
I'd settle for knowing
you were somewhere

Just send me a sign
help me believe that
wherever it is
you're still here

Because anywhere is 
better than nowhere. 

I’ve never admitted this before, even though I reckon it’s a thought many other bereaved parent have had. What’s my confession? It’s that losing my son would feel so much less painful if I knew he existed still, somewhere.

I wouldn’t have to actually see him. I’d be willing to forfeit all those hugs (which I miss SO much) if I only had the reassurance that he hadn’t completely gone. That he was still a part of this earth, even if our paths never crossed.

I know I’m not alone. I’ve seen this extreme longing from other parents whose child died. And I guess mediums understand this too, as they must regularly witness how desperately parents want to make any kind of living connection with their child again.

Of course I miss my son every day. But coming to terms with his death has involved a much more complicated negotiation with the universe than simply accepting I won’t see him any more. And it’s made me consider this loss in the context of the one experienced by parents in days gone by, when children sometimes emigrated to another country (or continent), effectively separating them from each other long-term.

Nowadays we live in a global world, meaning it’s also quite possible children end up living on the other side of the world. This must be hard for a parent but at least international flights make it possible to occasionally spend time together, and in between the internet means they can keep regularly in touch, seeing each other, if only via screens. Whereas in the ‘old days’ your child going off to live in another country probably meant you’d never actually ever see them again.

Which must have been its own form of heart-break. And yet this absence still contained hope of sorts, that they might, at some point, be re-united. And even if that was a pipe-dream, there was comfort in knowing that their children were alive and getting on with their lives.

The gutting thing for a parent whose child has died is that there is absolutely no chance that their child will ever appear again; we are left instead with a deep longing, an existential ache. And this, I believe, is where signs come in. They provide a bridge back to our child, they soften the ache, telling us that somewhere (and frankly it doesn’t matter where) our child still exists.

To create the photo for this post I used Your Name in Landsat (you can click on the link if you’d like to make one for your own child.) Romey MacDonald, a mother who writes so beautifully on here about losing her daughter Lyra, introduced me to this tool when she sent a photo of the three letters of Dom’s name, for his anniversary last week. She accompanied it with a most gorgeous message and with her permission I’d like to end this post by quoting it.

Her words were: Beautiful Dom, the rivers and mountains and the seas and the earth say your name and so do I. It was the best possible gift. Because it helps me to believe that, although I don’t get to see my darling boy any more, he’s still out there, somewhere, in this world.

And I’m learning to settle for that.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Share

Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Silence…

A peaceful exhale
April has left
I guess she’ll always be 
a difficult visitor

May needed no invite
just strode in
so sure of herself
like she belongs here

Because she does
She's everything that I love
always smiling and positive 
bearing small gifts of hope 

And she must know I’ve been 
aching for her arrival
so I hope she forgives me 
for not being quite ready 

That she understands why
before the celebrations begin  
I just want to 
sit here with her 

in silence...

It’s A LOT isn’t it, getting to the other side of the anniversary of our child’s death. I’m sure every parent has their own way of doing this. And that it probably changes as the years go by.

Because that’s the thing about our grief, it evolves. What might seem to ‘work’ one year, may not the next. That’s why I believe it’s important we give ourselves permission to do whatever feels right for us, at any given time.

Let’s face it, nobody else (other than another bereaved parent) has to manage the incredibly difficult feelings that arise as we approach the day our child left this earth. With luck, from one year to the next, we’re becoming more skillful at this. In fact, given what we’re dealing with, I think we should all take a (collective) bow.

Last year, in the run-up to this day, I was digging around in some particularly painful memories. And coming up against unaddressed trauma in the process. Some might call me a bit of a masochist but it did feel as if the time had come to do this.

My intention this year had been to tread a little more gently and dig a bit less deeply. Continuing the theme of Loss, Love and Light in my poetry, I aspired in the final lines of my pieces to always return to a place of hope. But I think it’s fair to say I was only partially successful.

But that’s the reality of child loss. By nature I’m a positive person and if you met me for the first time you’d probably not have a clue that my thoughts could ever be bleak. And yet, whenever I get up close to actually reckoning with Dom’s death I inevitably recognise it for the profound tragedy it is.

Anyway, this poem is about saying goodbye to my difficult month. And embracing what May has to offer. Which I hope is a lot of really good stuff.

In fact, although I now know life doesn’t necessarily deliver, the optimist in me feels as if I’ve earned some fun. But first I need some time to assimilate it all, to discharge the build-up of sadness and pain that accumulated in my system last month. That’s why some periods of quiet reflection before I throw myself back into life feel in order.

To the readers who were so supportive and kind last month, I’d like to say thank you. I know that many of you have learned how to witness difficult feelings because you still live (or have lived) with them yourself. You are what makes this community on here such a healing place.

Esther x

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Share

Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

 
A longed-for release
the heavy weight dropped
your spirit flew free at last

But down here my world
splintered into a million
sharp shards of glass 

And it felt like 
Death had come for me too

       

It seemed she had other plans 
first crafting an unwanted 
and strange new life
 
Deep sorrow a daily ambush
longed-for rare moments  
of aching-sweet joy

Until hurry surrendered to patience
and hot-anger burnt itself out.



I'm (still) learning life's a curriculum
and Death comes to deliver 
the hardest lessons of all

Even now she won't say 
why she took you, just
that it's the wrong question

That instead I should ask why
on earth she chose to save me

Are you familiar with the poem ‘When Death Comes’ ? It’s one of my favourites and I’ve already lined it up for my funeral. Which probably sounds a bit morbid, but losing my son has given me a very different attitude to dying (and I love how, whilst celebrating life, the poet, Mary Oliver, also embraces a similar nonchalance to her own death.)

I’ve learned that it’s really common for bereaved parents to want to die after they lose a child, as it can seem to offer a solution to their being forever apart from them. And yes, this is extreme thinking, but doubting that we’ll be able to live any kind of joyful life again now our child has gone is a stage most of us go through. Which is a kind of death, really.

Today’s poem is the last one I’ll be writing this month, and comes a few days before my son Dom’s anniversary, on 29th April. So forgive me for the inevitable sense of heaviness it contains. It will be a relief when this lifts, as I know it will, in May.

I’ve felt quite cross that this month has become challenging again. Not least because I know my son is at peace and would definitely wish this for me too. And after all, 5 years down the line, his playful spirit is what I want to remember and engage with now.

But the run-up to the day he died has dragged me back to his pain. This is definitely not a place where I like to spend time. What I really want to do is prove to myself that things feel lighter now, so I don’t need to.

And I’m sure that’s true really, most of the time. It’s just hard to remember this when it all feels so fresh again. I guess the only thing I can do in these last few days is accept and make space for the difficult feelings, whilst remembering the very helpful mantra, ‘This too shall pass.’

Because, whilst sorrow has begun its daily ambush once more, I know now that joy will soon step back in, as it always does. There is so much life still to be lived, and I want to make the most of it. Doing otherwise would feel like a betrayal of my son, who embraced being alive, until depression took him from us.

In truth, the uncompromising heaviness of Death has passed me by and that’s something which I could never have envisaged 5 years ago. Most of the time, nowadays, I’m pretty upbeat. And losing my son so tragically has given me an appetite to nurture my natural curiosity and create more meaning in my life, going forward.

So it feels appropriate to end with another short poem by Mary Oliver, called ‘The Uses of Sorrow.’

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Share

Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

"That's what you do"

And I hope she's right
That this helps others too

It's the reason I write
Why I follow all those strands 
Letting them take me 
Where they will

But thoughts can get tangled 

And we feel so defeated
Because everything is a mess

That's when I remember
I've been here before
Unpicked harder knots
In more stubborn string

One thread at a time...

Gosh, I’m going to have to discipline myself right now. Because last weekend I visited an amazing Art Exhibition ‘Threads of Life’. And I have SO much to write!

But first, today’s poem. It was inspired by a small picture that my friend found on a wall display in the penultimate exhibition. It was just one among tens of others where the artist had used their signature red thread to show connections being made.

That’s what you do, in your writing, she said, you untangle things. And she added that it probably helped other bereaved parents unravel their thoughts too . I really hope that’s the case and that today’s post carries the thread I intend it to, right through till the end.

Anyway, back to the exhibition, which involved returning to London. Anyone who read my post London Calling…again, will know that it’s taken a while for me to want to visit the capital once more. Because it was the place where my son died, in April 2021.

But this year I resolved that my attitude to the city was going to change. That, going forwards, I’d embrace the vibrant place my son had loved, for both of us now. And so, last Saturday that’s exactly what I did.

With two weeks to go before Dom’s Anniversary, visiting London turned out to be one of the best ways of returning to myself. Because the city somehow reminded me that I am just one person amongst so many others for whom life has been challenging. And that my world, despite being a place where I intensely grieve for my son, still co-exists with the everyday one.

Although my friend and I had primarily come to visit Shiota’s Exhibition, the first three floors of the Hayward Gallery were devoted to another artist, Yin Xiuzhen. All the pieces in Heart To Heart, used second-hand clothing (in the early days of communism, the artist’s mother had worked with fabric in a factory) and in the stunning piece above, she deliberately over-heated the porcelain, causing it to fracture, and then filled the jagged edges with everyday pieces of previously worn clothing. For me it was a reminder of how, after my own world shattered, ordinary things have often softened the sharp edges of my grief.

Of course, having contributed our own hand-written pieces for the ‘Letters of Thanks’ installation in Chiharu Shiota’s exhibition, we were keen to see this in the second half of our visit. Walking through the veil of red threads turned out to be an incredibly moving experience, and we kept stopping to read the letters at head height, many of them very long. But the one that touched me the most was addressed to ‘Ben’ and consisted of a single line: ‘Thank you for believing in me more than I do.’

There were hundreds of letters so, unsurprisingly, I wasn’t able to find the one I wrote to my son. But it didn’t actually matter, because, as I looked up at all the pages of writing, I was reminded of doves being released to fly freely now. That’s how I knew my letter to Dom was at the top, fluttering among the others….

Before we headed home, we went to look for somewhere to eat. I wanted to retrace our steps to the Food Market which we’d already walked through on our way to the gallery, knowing how my foodie son Dom had probably enjoyed tasting samples at all these different stalls when he’d been living in London. But we soon realised that we were both quite overwhelmed by the feelings the art displays had provoked in us, and that sitting outside, jostling for position on wooden benches, was not going to provide us with the decompression time we both knew we needed.

So we went off in search of an indoor restaurant, but not before I’d found myself suddenly stopping at one stall in particular. It wasn’t the food (although it smelt delicious) which had caught my attention. It was the music I’d heard as I walked by.

The song being played was Ordinary World, by Duran Duran and as I listened, I remembered my son Marcus sharing a cover of it with me, not long after Dom died. The lyrics, ending with the refrain that ‘Every world is my world’, speak of how positioning our loss among others who suffer can somehow help us better bear our own pain. Just as visiting the art exhibitions today had done, for me.

There have been many covers of Ordinary World. Here’s the one my son and I both love, by Joy Williams. It is a stunning version.

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Share

Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.

Unravelling and redefining Strength: The Messy Truth of Suicide Loss is the first of three 20 minute videos, in which we share how we have learned to carry this devastating loss.

And how the undying love between us and our child ultimately becomes a source both of strength and joy.

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The first blossoms to appear on Dom’s Crabapple tree

The post I’d intended for today, ‘Wish You Were Here’, went out (accidentally) on Wednesday 1st April. I explained the ‘mistake’ at the end of the previous post, ‘Little Worlds’ but, in short, I decided that my son Dom was strongly signaling I should take a week off. So no new poem from me this week.

I thought about re-publishing WYWH, but have decided instead to post a favourite poem of mine, written by my daughter shortly after we lost her big brother. Like him, she gives good advice. I’m posting it for anyone else who feels the need for a break, right now.

Last weekend my son, Marcus, and his wife, Anna, came to stay from Good Friday, through to Easter Sunday. Having them home felt incredibly special and I enjoyed sending photos of our walks to my daughter, who was with her fiance’s family. And best of all, still to come, next weekend I go away with just Marcus and Caitlin to my favourite Shepherd’s hut in Wales.

So yes, as I begin to write this, on Easter Monday, I’m feeling blessed. And full of gratitude for what remains, despite the hole that Dom left when he died. And I wanted to say this, because so many of my recent poems have been about deep loss and sadness.

But that’s the deal, isn’t it. Life hands us both the bad and the good, and the trick is to make sure we don’t let our tragedy contaminate everything. Right now that’s feeling much easier.

The last time we were away, just the three of us, we stayed at another Shepherd’s hut closer to where I live. It was in August 2022, and such a hot weekend that a heatwave was declared, meaning the only way we were able to stay cool was by spending long stretches of time in the paddling pool Caitlin had the foresight to buy. In the evening when it got slightly cooler Marcus took a gorgeous photo of me and his sister, and looking at it again now reminds me that summer is just around the corner.

I hope you had a restful and peaceful Easter. That you were able to be in touch, or better still spend time, with the people who matter to you, including your biological or your chosen family. Basically those you love, and who remind you that you are loved, too.

I look forward to posting a new poem next week.

Esther x

Caitlin and I in the field behind our Shepherd’s hut, summer 2022

P.S. A few weeks ago I asked if any other bereaved parents who write on Substack would be interested in taking part in a shared conversation, and I’m really pleased that Laurel O’ Sullivan came forward. The first of our three-part series, Unravelling and Redefining Strength: The Messy Truth of Suicide Loss, will be posted on Tuesday 14th. Each will be around 20 minutes long and I hope they’ll be a helpful extra resource for other parents navigating any kind of child loss.

P.P.S. If you enjoyed today’s poem, you can find many more on Instagram @ caitlinswrites. She has also recently started on Substack, @ Caitlin Otokiti

My aim in all my writing is to share my journey in ways which help other parents navigating child loss feel less alone. Posts are free…but if you wish to show support, I always appreciate new subscribers and any sharing of my work. The buttons are below, thank you.

Share

Stories from other bereaved parents can be found in Tears, Tools and Treasure. And if you would like to share your own story here, you are warmly welcomed to DM me.