Does anyone else feel completely out of sync with the seasons? It would be too simple to blame the weather, these volatile skies, switching from downpour to back-blazing sunshine, on repeat, for days. I have a feeling there’s something else going on. Ever since (gulp, I can say it) lockdown time has felt jolted: sometimes as if it is on fast-forward, and others, as if it is not moving at all. Anyway, this is all to say, that I woke up this morning to a photo album of fathers, all across my social media feed, and I realised it was Father’s Day.

I know how hard the day can be for some. Whether it’s because you’ve lost your dad, or are estranged from him, or you really want to be a dad but, for whatever reason, aren’t, this celebration can sting. But, because I’m all-out-of-whack and didn’t recognise that Father’s Day was approaching, I’m afraid I don’t have a new post to share but wanted to re-post last year’s, where two wonderful women I know, who have both lost their dads, told me about them, as well as offering their advice on how they soothe themselves on this day. I loved hearing about these wonderful men, who have raised wonderful daughters so I won’t type too much more and instead hand it over…

Read what they had to say below, and if you’re having a tough time today, I’m sending so much love.

‘My Dad didn’t give a fig about Father’s Day but I still try to use it to remember him’

My dad’s language was music. Years spent collating, curating and coveting music, he spoke to me in the lyrics of Love, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young. We didn’t need car chat when we had Stevie Wonder, Fairport Convention and Frank Zappa on the battered Volvo stereo.

At 6’3, he towered over the tribe of cousins and sister-cousins in our rowdy Irish family, yet the smallest would attach themselves to his legs like one of those little clip-on koalas people would bring home from Australia. He loved cricket and crumpets. He drove trucks (although should have been a world famous music photographer) and he wore green Kickers that he called his ‘Kermit boots’. When I cut an ill-advised fringe into my hair, he said I looked like Nico. He loved Glastonbury and would drop me at the perimeter every year, then watch out for me on the red button. The year after he died, I buried some of his ashes in front of the Glastonbury sign and sealed them with a bottle of Newcastle Brown – a dedicated Toon supporter, I wish he was around to see their success.

A quietly eccentric gentle giant, my father meant the absolute world to me, and I miss him every day.

I don’t find Father’s Day hard until the actual day. It’s not so much the posts from my friends with living fathers, but more the amount of Father’s Day ad content clogging up my feed. My Dad didn’t give a fig about Father’s Day as he hated capitalism (pretty sure he was a secret Marxist), and wouldn’t know the occasion existed if I hadn’t sent cards and other rubbish to him in the post. He cared more about keeping in touch by phone (he didn’t have the internet) and would feel more browned off with my lack of communication rather than a random Father’s Day card.

Still to make the day easier, I will always try and do at least one thing that reminds me of him. Sundays were always our day to catch up, so I make sure I tune into Tom Robinson’s People’s Playlist on 6Music (Dad and I would always listen to it together, and he would make me ‘twit’ requests into the show, lol). Father’s Day always falls in or around Glastonbury too, so if I’m at the festival, I would usually have a cider in his honour. I was bequeathed his expansive record collection too, so will inevitably listen to some of his favourite albums to feel closer to him. 

Grief is weird. Over time, it becomes something familiar – much like the family member you’ve lost. What I have learned about grief though is that you have to treat it like another layer of skin. It becomes part of your fabric and shapes the stitches of what holds life together. For example, through inheritance, I now own my own flat in London – something that would have been a pipe dream before losing Dad. So every day when I wake up in my bed, I like to feel that these walls are like my father’s arms around me. He’s kept me safe, and I feel so grateful. He lives on in the battered records, the black and white photos taken for his first college art project, the weird trophies accumulated over a youth spent making mischief and blagging his way into folk festivals. Also his empathy, his strong belief in inclusivity and standing up for what’s right: all live on within me. And that’s so powerful.

The other day, someone said to me, ‘oh, you’re your father’s daughter,’ and that was the highest compliment anyone could have ever paid me. I just felt so lucky to have known him, and to call him my father. 

Amie-Jo

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“I feel his presence all the time”

To put it simply, my dad, Tom, was a legend (not to be biased or anything!) I was only ten when he passed away but I can still remember his quirks, the things he used to say to my sister and I, and his banterous and loving relationship he had with my mum. He was adventurous and used to take us bike riding and to the park every weekend – which is where I get my ~somewhat~ sporty side from. He loved dancing (and flexing his muscles, lol) in the mirror to Michael Jackson and had so many friends. He was a joker, a loud voice and the funniest person in the room.

He passed away suddenly – he was very healthy and happy but unfortunately had an undetected, unexpected aneurysm in his stomach. I wasn’t at the funeral as I was very young at the time but to this day my family still talks about how there were hundreds and hundreds of people who turned up to show their respects, overflowing out of the church. He was truly loved and respected.

Growing up, he would always tell us how lucky we were to have what we did – he grew up on a council estate in North West London with not much to his family name, which is why he worked so hard to provide us with a better life. Relating to this, he would always boast to his friends and family about mine and my sister’s achievements and how successful we would eventually be. This is why I find it so special now when my mum reminds me how proud he would be of us.

This year will be my 13th Father’s Day without him and in all honestly, it never gets any easier. As a beauty journalist for a magazine, in the run up to Father’s Day, my inbox is inundated with ‘Father's Day gift guides’, which, luckily for me, I don’t have to cover. So, sorry to the PRs who take their time to put these press releases together, but they remain unopened and are immediately sent to the archive.

I’m not sure if this is a good coping mechanism (I’ve never had counselling and find it difficult to talk about my feelings to my family and friends about my dad), but I like to keep myself distracted on these difficult days. A few years ago, while at university and without voicing my sadness for Father’s Day, my best friend and her boyfriend took me out and treated me to dinner (on the evening of the day). I will never forget this kind gesture – small to some but it meant everything to me.

What I find most difficult/awkward is when people ask about my plans for this day/ask about my dad in general – e.g what we’re doing, what he does for a job etc. It’s no one’s fault, just small talk with people who don’t know what’s happened.

‘So what are you doing for Father’s day this weekend?’, to which I respond ‘nothing, my dad is dead’. Or if I’m feeling less savage, I’ll tell them I’m celebrating with my grandad. It can be so awkward!

As well as not looking at the Father’s Day emails, I like to keep off of social media. But another really rogue and random technique, is that I actually love being on dead dad TikTok… bear with me here. I like to find the funny in dark situations. Seeing other people like me make jokes about the awkward parts of loss, it just helps. Particularly if you’re laughing with people who feel your pain and understand your situation.

Over the years I’ve learnt that grief, as much as you may try to avoid it, is a forever thing. Grief never goes away – some days you don’t think about it but other days, randomly, it can creep up on you and that’s OKAY! I am guilty of bottling things up and not being able to speak about it – for one, I physically can’t because I get a lump in my throat every time and two, I don’t want to bore people/make people uncomfortable or awkward. But if you don’t want to speak about it, write your thoughts down. Not to sound like a preachy, cringey writer but journaling your thoughts can really help. 

Grief can also be horrible, tough and tricky. Having been so young at the time of my dad’s passing and ‘not really knowing what was going on, at no one’s fault, I think my feelings were swept away. Later in life (around the time I graduated from uni) these feelings crept up on me, along with other life issues which is when I turned to medication. Sertraline gang, where you at?! Sometimes counselling, writing down feelings or ‘going for a walk’ simply can’t resolve the pain of grief and so seeking medication is NOTHING to be ashamed of. My mum, sister and one friend of mine are the only people who know about this, but if one person reads this and feels it helps them, I’ve done my job and am happy!

Not having my dad around has taught me to really cherish the people I have in my life. I love unconditionally (which, in my love life hasn’t worked out too well lol) but I don’t regret that. As morbid as it may sound, one day someone can be here and the next, they’re not, so live life as you want to, with the people you want to and enjoy it.

My dad may not be with me in person, but I feel his presence all the time. I have my very own guardian angel.

Lia

I found reading those really emotional. Particularly learning about these interesting, caring, wonderful sounding men and the impact they’ve made. I’m so grateful to Lia and Amie-Jo for sharing their stories with me, as I know how hard it can be to confront buried memories and think of the person you’ve lost. But it’s also a bittersweet part of the process that can really help. If you find today hard, or want to remember someone you’re missing, let me know in the comments below.

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Interestingly, when searching for the source of this story, I found it on multiple blogs and Reddit threads, often told from different perspectives – one was a man out playing golf with his buddy, who quietly whispered ‘make the chilli’ while another was the below, from a woman’s perspective.

On first glance, it’s a really nice sentiment. And, in some ways, it’s one I agree with. We should value the people in our lives, and we shouldn’t take them from granted, we should be kind and we should tell people that we love them.

One morning my mum was singing to herself, while doing the ironing, and the next she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. One that ate away at her, until she embodied that tumour… until she was gone. So yes, I know that any moment, unexpectedly, the people we love could be taken away from us.

But should we really be living in such a heightened state? One where, each time, someone we love asks us for something, we just do it? What does loving deeply, and selflessly, really look like?

I loved my mum deeply. But I did not love her selflessly.

I lost her at 19, so many of the previous years I had spent with her, before she died, were ruled by hormones, by boys, by shallow needs. I can remember screaming at her, because she didn’t give me what I deemed to be ‘enough’ money to spend at prom. I am now grimy with memories, of tantrums in Dune because I wanted a bigger block heel; by clothing she bought for me that I sneered at; saying it wasn’t ‘cool’ enough; of the times I told her she embarrassed me, for wearing her moon-and-sun print trousers, with a snow leopard print coat thrown over the top.

She was majestically eccentric, a wonder, the most marvellous woman I’ve ever known, and… I forgot to buy her birthday presents.

There have been many, many times where I’ve flogged myself with my own failings. Where I wished I just MADE THE FUCKING CHILLI. I could continue to list them, but I won’t, as it will be pulling myself back to a state of self-hatred, one I spent years in, and which I’ve worked very hard to escape from.

I didn’t visit her for days. When she was dying.

I was 19-years-old and the person lying in the bed was no longer my mum. I walked away, backed out of that room, because being in that room was like being doused in acid. The pain was unbearable.

And this is what simple throw-away statements like ‘make the chilli’ can’t capture. I understand the heart of its message is good, that it’s not meant to harm. That it’s also something many people feel, particularly, after the death of a loved one. But I think it’s also denying some of life’s realities, and that denial can make people feel a deep, damaging guilt, that is very hard to shake.

I felt that guilt. I still feel that guilt.

It’s denying how complex life is, how we so often have to make mistakes in order to not make them again. How we often have to make the same mistakes over-and-over for the lesson to truly sink in.

I punished myself for years, for my behaviour, both when my mum was ill but also when she was healthy. She was someone I loved deeply, but I didn’t love her how the make-the-chilli story tells me I should have loved her. I often said ‘no’ to the things she wanted to do. Looking back on all those times, I would label myself selfish, spoiled scum. And to be honest, as I type this, I fear you’ll be thinking it too. Thinking I’m just criticising this ‘make the chilli’ statement to make excuses for how rotten I am.

This is where it gets complicated. As I can’t untangle what I should regret, versus what I’m told I should regret. As I do believe we should treasure the people that we love, but we can’t do it to extremes.

My husband asked me to play a boardgame last night. I said no. If he doesn’t make it home tonight, should I regret that for the rest of my life? I’m overdue sending my dad and multiple friends voice notes, what if… what if… what if… I’m going into a spiral about all of this, all from seeking out, and re-reading that ‘make the chilli’ post. I am worried I won’t be able to pull myself out, in time, to finish this newsletter how I want to.

But I have to. I have to tell you. Please don’t feel guilty if you didn’t make the chilli. If you lost someone and are now replaying the moments where you should have loved them harder, better, more ‘selflessly.’ And please don’t live your life in a heightened state, one where danger lurks everywhere, and loss is just a second away.  

I lived this way for so long. I thought, if anything can come from my self-punishment of the moments I didn’t savour with my mum then, at least, I can carry that into my day-to-day life and how I treat people. This idea of ‘someone you love, at any moment, can be taken from you’ haunted me. I could not trust my phone when it rang, I could not trust my own happiness. Any moment that did not feel full of love, or joy, felt a waste and I would chastise myself for that waste. Never mind if I was tired, or ill: if I wasn’t being SMILEY, AND HAPPY, AND POSITIVE to those around me, then I was behaving wrongly.

When it came to conflict, I could not cope. I’d cry, huge, gulping, can’t-breathe, cries at even the smallest of criticisms from my husband. I avoided arguments in most areas of my life, and if I was ever annoyed with someone, particularly my dad, I’d be so cross with myself. You’re wasting precious time, being annoyed, she could be gone, tomorrow…

The facts of this are not wrong. But the way I lived (the way I still live, sometimes) with those facts was unhealthy. Yes – we could lose the people we love but that doesn’t mean we can’t be cross with them, or that they can’t be cross with us. That doesn’t mean we should do absolutely everything that they want, pushing our own needs aside. It also doesn’t mean that, if we do make mistakes, these are all our loved ones will remember of us. We don’t have to be smiley, perfect, positive, make-the-chilli humans in order to be loved.

Living this way left me exhausted. In my darkest, most tired, most ashamed moments it made me really, really hate myself. That plays out in ways I cannot even begin to unravel.

But I’m trying to. I know I am simply human. And a loved one, at that.

Yes, I wish I had bought my mum more bottles of bubble bath for her birthday. I am ashamed of how spoiled I was. But I was also a teenager, I had to be spoiled and stupid in order how to learn not to be.

And yes, I wish I hadn’t walked out of that room. But I was engulfed in my own horror: my self-protection had flipped into denial, and avoidance. It was natural and I have to forgive myself for that.

We cannot love entirely selflessly. It’s impossible. And I don’t think our loved ones would want us to. I also don’t think love is shown by making meals, or playing board games, or going for walks… Sometimes, yes, but not all the time.

My mum saw my whole self. My snappy, silly, selfish side. My warmth and my kindness. We danced together, and we swam together, and we had fun together. I didn’t force myself to do any of those things because I thought I might lose her, but because I loved her. And, because I loved her, and she loved me, I also knew I could say ‘nah, can’t be bothered’ and we could fight, and that she’d love me, and hold me when, eventually – as I always did – I crawled into her arms, muffling ‘sorry’ into her cashmere jumper.

She loved every part of me. I loved every part of her.

That’s what I try to carry into my relationships now. Loving them in their entirety, their wholeness, their selfishness, and their mistakes.

But also loving myself entirely, in my wholeness, in my selfishness and in my mistakes.

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Thank you so much for reading! I’m sorry I’ve been a bit absent, in truth I got a little stressed by the number of new subscribers I’ve had recently, and I wanted my first post back to be really, really good… And, as a result, I got a little writer’s blocky. And now I’ve maybe made my first post quite controversial! I hope it the make-the-chilli story helps you, you don’t take too much from my words… We are all helped in grief by different things! I just wanted to write about it as…. it didn’t help me. Anyway, as always, thanks so much for all your support and please do let me know what you think.

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The snow was so white it offered a blank page. The fire in front of us crackled, the heat of the orange-flames almost inconceivable in -20 air that saw our breath, and words, emerge from our mouths in smoke.

“First,” she said, “we must acknowledge our ancestors.” We had to then go around the circle and first introduce our grandparents, then our parents before introducing ourselves. I didn’t expect to find it so difficult. How saying my grandparents’ names, out loud, to strangers, would pull deep at something in me. Something I didn’t know was there.

I was standing with Meta Williams, a Yukon First Nations member, who – at Long Ago Peoples Place – was teaching me, and four other writers, about the history and culture of the Indigenous people of Canada. Meta herself is a grandmother, mother, auntie and niece. Her family is a large one, of 11 siblings. Her mother is from Southern Tutchone and her father is English/Scottish.

When I said my own family is both English and Scottish, she held my eye.

“Ah,” she said. “My sister.”

A few days later, my hands were slippery with rose-scented soap. I was tugging at strands of felt and wrapping each layer around the bar. The aim was to, eventually, coat it with the felt which, when left to dry, would create a swirling pattern that doubles up as an exfoliating wash cloth. I’d chosen the colours of the Northern Lights: blues, and emerald greens.

I had just cried. I hadn’t expected to cry at a soap-making workshop. But, like earlier in the week, I’d dug into my roots, and thought of the women of my past. Joella, who runs the Yukon Soap Company was, like Meta, educating us on Indigenous culture. Only this time, unlike at the camp where we saw traditional housing structures and learned how food and medicines were harvested, Joella uses her soap-making to spread the messages of her ancestors.

“These soaps were crafted with plants our grandmothers once harvested following cultural teachings,” it reads on the back of one. “We honour the joy, the knowledge and humour brought by our grandmothers. Wherever our grandmothers walk there is brightness.”

I read it aloud. I thought of my grandma Jean’s face. The only grandma I have ever known, smiling in her lilac jumper. A picture I struggle, even now, to look at.

My grandma liked to tell me about my family’s history. I’ve inherited various albums, with pictures in them of great uncles and aunts, grainy faces that I should be able to match up with medals, and pin-badges that belonged to these people: items that sit tangled within my cheap high street jewellery. They gather dust in China tea-cups and saucers, that also once lived with my grandma… but now live within my chaos.

I’ve never been big on the whole ancestry.com thing. My family, I believe, is made up of, yes, my blood-relatives but also those who I have chosen. Those who have seen all of my faces, and, like a crystal, hold me up to the sunshine, recognising the shards of my rainbow that dance on their walls.

We can sometimes be more ourselves with friends than we ever can with family.

It’s Mother’s Day today, or, at least it will be when you read this. And, because I have just returned from the Canadian Wilderness, I have been entirely disconnected from all the marketing surrounding the day.

Marketing that has, in the past, both angered and upset me. (read last year’s post offering advice on coping with the day)

Mother’s Day promotions make assumptions. Assumptions about our family, about our ancestry. They decide that everyone is a mother, or has a mother. They push an ideal vision of what motherhood is, of what family is and it leaves so many people feel lacking, and sad, and wrong.

Even before I lost my mum, I wasn’t particularly keen on either of the ‘Days.’ The cards offered on Mother’s Day were saccharine, often based around cliches that didn’t represent my hard-working, fiery, feminist mother. And, of course, the family’s represented on both didn’t match my own: my dad, now living as a transgender woman, was always feminine, with long hair and dangly earrings.

Perhaps this is why I’ve never bothered to look into my family tree. I’ve always felt that my ancestry began with my parents. My mum rebelled from her strict religious upbringing, pulling herself far away from the traditional wife and mother she was expected to be. My dad can tell you her own story (she writes beautifully about her life here.) They were both rebels, who, when they decided to have my sister and I, also wanted to begin new, parenting in the opposite way to how they were parented.

I see that echoed in how my sister raises her kids. I see that echoed in my decision not to have any.

Like Mother’s Day promotions, both of those Yukon women, you could say, made assumptions. That we knew where we came from, that we were grateful for our grandparents and parents. There are many people who do not know who their families are, many for whom the generations above them were not “bright.”

But, I was not, in any way, angry with either of them. In some ways, despite meeting them just once, and never seeing them again, I loved them. Meta called me her sister. She said, wherever she goes, she feels connected to family, to strangers, those who are connected to First Nations. Joella spoke of drumming with local women, how singing songs together connected her, deeply, to those in her neighbourhood. Women who were not bonded to her by blood, or clan, but by connection, by love.

When we first had to introduce ourselves in that way I felt as if I was flailing in the air. Grasping at my roots and discovering that they, through my total lack of nurture, had rotted. But, now I’m home and thinking of all the people in my life who have built me, I feel more grounded.

I can often, on Mother’s Day, feel lacking, in many ways. The obvious is, of course, I miss my mum, I wish I could take her for lunch. But the other is more complex: I am now happy to be child-free. That’s been an adjustment as, in a world where parenthood is thrust upon you as “a love like no other” I fear that I’m losing family, I’m losing roots. I’m losing unconditional love…

This is why I get angry. It’s not fair that something born out of marketing can make those of us who don’t fit that mould, or who have had it snatched away from us (both in terms of people who have lost their mothers, have difficult relationships with their mothers and those who are child-free by circumstance) feel this way.

There are so many different ways to be part of a family, to be a mother. They’re just as valid as those we see painted on cards.

I want us to redefine family, motherhood, the bonds that tie us.

Many of my best friends are now mothers. Some - those with and without children - I feel, through their guidance and wisdom, mother me. Perhaps, in a wilder, more hectic, less grounded way, I mother them. My sister is a defiant, rebellious, wonderful mother, my own mum’s fire blazes through her. My grandma was so soft, yet bright. She smelled of lilies and roses. My dad fought through her shame to redefine womanhood and live on her terms. My mum, Susie, swims through my blood, and is beside me in everything that I do.

I think, had I added in a few more names, names of my friends, friends who I feel rooted to, during my introduction round that fire, Meta would have smiled and accepted them fully, as part of me.

This Mother’s Day, I acknowledge them. I acknowledge these women.

They made me.

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Thank you for reading! Please do tell me how you’re feeling today, or about the people in your life who you feel make up your family. I also don’t want to exclude the wonderful men in my life (but this was a mother’s day post after all!) who have also played such a huge part in my wholeness, so below is an old poem I wrote encompassing all of the themes of the above post…

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I'm not interested in burying deep 
The soil of the past wrecking 
My current manicure 
I have no desire to find out whose bones
Created the scaffolding for my own 

You won't find me
Smearing their dusty ashes across my computer screen
For a small monthly fee

Am I supposed to believe that characters 
Under crumbling gravestones 
Are part of my creation? And not...

The man whose voice I crave across my skin
The woman who I miss so much 
I want to smash Zoom
Step inside the screen, if only it could bring her closer to me

When he laughs I can feel his stomach stitch
When she dances I see the beat flow through her veins
Build me a tree made of the moments my friends gave me

They're my history 

Hello all,

For some reason, I want to write this week’s newsletter as, well, exactly that: a letter. I’ve attempted a few other fancier, more flourished, beginnings but this is what I’m drawn to do.

First of all, thank you for all the kind comments and messages I received after last week’s letter. If you missed it, it’s here but I was discussing the upcoming 19-year anniversary of my mum’s death, and how I can’t comprehend the length of time, nor how I’m feeling about it. commented and called it ‘Grief Math’ and I thought this was a perfect description for the tangled, impossibility of years passing. Reality is often so difficult to understand. I feel grateful for this space where we can try and understand it together.

Sometimes, when I write about long-term grief (like I did last week) I worry about those in fresh, raw grief reading my words and thinking that, because I still suffer so long after my initial loss, they will feel exactly the way they’re feeling forever. That could feel quite hopeless. I wouldn’t want that message to be extracted from my words. It’s why I wanted to include that while I have had the darkest, and sludgiest of days, and while I have cried so violently, I haven’t felt that way in a long time. My grief wound remains but I have grown, happily, around it. But there will always be days when it still hurts. It has to.

Thinking of this, I was reminded of a post I wrote for the original Crocuses In The Snow, the Tumblr I wrote in 2014. I’ve posted it below, as it’s a snapshot of a precious moment to me. I’ve slightly edited it for clarity in some places but mostly it remains the same.

I’ve also, as I’m sending this letter a day earlier than usual, on my mum’s anniversary, posted a poem I wrote about her, as I want you all to be able to see who she was. (and please do feel free to comment and tell me about your person, whatever you want, even the not-so-wonderful.)

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Anyway, I’ll let the below words do the rest of the talking.

Sending love,

Catriona

PS: There won’t be a newsletter next week, as I’m off to Canada on Sunday! I love pushing myself out of my comfort zone and this trip, consisting of hiking, snowmobiling and chasing down the Northern Lights is just that. But when I return I have a beautiful interview with an amazing author about long-term grief.

To those grieving…

My sister discovered this CD the other day. One I’d made in High School: Katie’s Banging Beats. It was the weirdest mix of everything: it would flip from Aerosmith to Baby, Got Back to Hi Ho Silver Lining and somehow we all got to dancing.

Me, my sister Bex, her son Alex, who turns two next week, and Brendan, her husband. My dad was sitting on the dusty pink chair, the one that used to sit up in mum’s room, looking out over the skies.

And dad was laughing so, so much. 

It was a laugh I hadn’t heard in years.

And we were all laughing so much too.

Alex in the middle, jumping about. Giggling at his feet darting around the carpet.

Bex’s dancing reminding me of when we’d dance around the living room with mum, to the Empire Records soundtrack. 

I knew my glass of wine was over there. Over on the counter. That usually when laughing this hard, I’d be drinking it. But I felt no need to reach over, take a sip.

The music… the laughing… Brendan’s feet stomping on the floor… 

I thought to myself: “there was a time I thought I’d never feel this way again.”

I’d never hear Dad’s laugh.

Never see Bex dance so freely.

Couldn’t even picture the future family that was before me.

But suddenly I was that happy. We all were.

And you will too. I promise, with time, it will come. 

Sue Innes

She taught me how to eat with chopsticks, there was a clatter of them, causing chaos in the cutlery drawer. She wore a snow leopard print faux fur coats that dragged to the ground as she walked, star and moon print trousers and basket sandals. She rarely wore make-up, spent big on her hair. She said: you wear it every day. She painted flowers, plotting out her garden on paper before the soil. She wore a wide brimmed straw hat, in summer, the freckles on her arms joined up. She had so many friends her hospice sink stored wine and there were queues of people at visiting time. She was always late and quite unapologetic about it. She made us take our own sun umbrella on holiday. She pushed me to be brave. She sang Janis Joplin in the kitchen. She bathed in honey. She collected stones and shells, combing the shore for hours. She printed out the words to Auld Lang Syne and handed them out before midnight. She raised a glass and made a toast to life, even on her death bed. She put the breath in me. She's here.

Somehow, she's here. 

(a picture of crocuses I took one anniversary)

I don’t know how I’m going to feel next week. I don’t know how I feel now. Yet here I am, typing, trying to extract the words circulating my brain and place them down here, on this blank sheet of paper.

Why? Because it’s what I always do. What I’ve always done. When I need to untangle something complicated, something niggling, I write. And now, it seems, I write to you.

This coming Saturday, the 24^th February, it will be nineteen years since we lost mum. 19 years. I’ve had to figure out the maths on that one, multiple times, to make sure I’m correct. It’s a simple equation. She died in 2005, it’s now 2024. 19 years. But it feels impossible to me, is it that I can’t figure it out? Or is that I don’t believe it?

Is it that I really don’t want the day to come?

The icons on my desk top are distracting me. The PDFs, the word documents, perhaps I should open them, do some work. Do some safer work. I could go dye my hair. I need to dye my hair.

You might be wondering why I’m finding this number of years so hard to comprehend. After all, it’s an odd number. It’s not ten, it’s not twenty, it’s not fifty. See how hard I am trying to not write this next part? I don’t even know how to phrase it, in a way that expresses it correctly. Accurately.

Maybe because I don’t know how I feel about it.

I was 19-years-old when my mum died. Which means, perhaps not exactly on this upcoming anniversary of her death, as I don’t know the months, the days, the hours, the seconds, but… soon.

Soon, I’ll have not known her for as long as I knew her. I’ll have lived without her for longer than I lived with her.

I find myself crying as I type those words. So, I do know how I feel about it. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

But what can I do about that? About this feeling of unease, about this approaching day? I don’t want to cry. I really am very tired of that.

I want to dye my hair. I want to get in the bath. I want to stream the Eras tour, and thread colourful beads onto friendship bracelets.

What I don’t want to do is sit here, writing this and confronting this feeling that I so, so desperately want to ignore.

I want to type something about the crocuses I saw yesterday, their purple heads gathered, in lilac gangs, across the church grass. This time of year, it always begins with the crocuses. They’re what I saw, the day before she died, out her hospice window, the only colour in a sheet of white.

I can remember everything about that day. I can remember nothing about that day.

But they were there, surviving brightly under a thick blanket of snow. That’s what I’ve written here, you see? Why I named this newsletter, Crocuses In The Snow.

I want us all, to survive brightly, together.

I don’t feel very bright.

And I’m sorry for that.

It’s not that I feel miserable, actually. Despite, the very obvious displays of it, what with me, crying in the window seat, hoping that the people on the street below can’t see my puffy face. (Isn’t it funny, how we often we hide our grief?)

I had a nice day yesterday, I hadn’t actually noticed the crocuses at first. Then, one of our guests pointed them out, and I thought, ‘that’s nice, that they’re here, that she’s here, seeing this project.’

I don’t know when the crocuses began to represent her. What she sees, what she feels. But I know I felt warmth that the crocuses were there - amidst the discarded whisky bottles and the paper cups – and that she was a part of my volunteering, watching this project that makes me so happy, that means so much to me.

Maybe I do feel bright.

I told you, at the beginning, I don’t know I feel.

I guess it’s because, when I write, I want there to be an ending. Not just for you, but for me. Something to tie everything up, some wisdom I’ve gifted myself. Everyone loves a little positive spin, don’t they?

I’m scared I won’t be able to give you that this week. That I won’t be able to give you that next week.

As, all I want, is to be able to pause time, stop that day from arriving.

There were days I couldn’t get out of bed. When the crying felt as if it would destroy me. I’d be gasping for air, my body suddenly spasming, a feeling completely and utterly out of my control.

I haven’t felt that way in so long.

I’m terrified of feeling that way again.

19 years. 19 years. 19 years.

I’m building who I am without her. To carry that work on, longer than what she’s ever known of me… It feels like a betrayal. Isn’t that silly? I didn’t choose for her to die. For her to not be my side. I want her here. I’ve wanted her here.

Yet… I have carried on. And this life, it’s good.

This week, alone, I’ve danced in neon lights, my body flailing, best friend by my side. I went back to my old university, spoke to students there about my career, students who, just like I did, wanted to work in magazines. I told them how I did it. I’ve had feather-duvet lie-ins with my husband and I’ve drank pink champagne. I’ve had pasta, I’ve listened to voicenotes, I’ve fed my cat.

Now? I’m going to dye my hair, take a bath, weave beads onto elastic cords…

I’m going to keep going. I always keep going. In this time. 19 years…

The brightness it has come with the darkness.

Underneath the snow, below the yellow and lilac petals, was dirt.

I’m so lucky to miss her. I’m so lucky to have known her.

I don’t want this Saturday to come. But it’s going to. It has to.

And…

There will be crocuses.

However I feel, there will be crocuses.

The brightness will come.

The brightness is already here.

Yesterday on my volunteering shift (we provide showers for those experiencing homelessness, as well as other hygiene essentials)

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How are you?

I was going to say… I’m flat. That, my days, since December began, have felt numb around the edges. I wanted to share that in case anyone else is feeling the same. As, to look at me, you wouldn’t guess. I’m a grey husk, all wrapped up in glitter. I’ve been wearing a parade of different second-hand sequinned skirts, eyes washed in gold, lips cherry red. I’d have to tell you, for you to know.

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I often feel this way, at this time of year. Like a festive façade. There were a few years in a row that I even did my overblown Instagram FESTIVE CHALLENGE, where, each day of December I’d do something, anything festive, and post a picture of it. The attempts became more and more frenzied as the month went on. It was a fool’s game, as the whipped cream lattes and slapped on glitter did little for my mood.

I’m known in my family for insisting on, in a BOOMING voice, TRADITION. We have to have this, we have to have that. It felt important, particularly in the years following mum’s death, to keep some sort of a semblance of a family intact.

This year, I don’t even have a Christmas tree. The corner of the room is empty and, on Monday, I vaguely attempted to get one but reasoned there would be little point, as we won’t be spending the actual day here. So far, I’ve been to parties, I’ve sung carols and I’ve cracked a cracker. On all occasions I didn’t feel particularly festive, but I didn’t feel false either. And that’s the key.

As, although December has brought with it the same out-of-body floaty feeling I think most grievers will be able to recognise, I haven’t felt ashamed of that. I haven’t tried to chase it away, with a ton of tinsel and mulled wine. I’ve just let myself be. I haven’t pushed myself into an image of who I should be at this time of year, and then felt like a failure for not achieving it.

I was going to write: I think this is something we all need more of: the ability to just ‘be.’ But that’s a simple, blanket statement that’s of no use to anyone. Particularly as I think we all – no matter what our current circumstances – may be feeling a little flat. I’d always attributed this seasonal malaise with mum, and then grandma, but I also think it could be that, and something else.

There’s all the usual things that could contribute: overworking ahead of time off, the overwhelming pressure placed (usually on mothers*) to make the time perfect (and tantrum free, an impossibility) and also, the fact that viruses can really impact your mood (I feel we focus so much on the physical impact of flu etc, but rarely speak of the emotional) so, yes, it’s probably all of that. Plus! If you subscribe to the stars, we are, apparently in Mercury.

But, I also think a new year, vastly approaching, as if we’re rocks tumbling down a hill, has something to do with it. I’ve spoken before about how, as we get older, we are collecting hard-worn experiences, and the impact that has on our outlook. What will next year hold? What have we had to face this past year? That’s a lot to carry.

Then there’s the news, this ever-rolling feed of tragedy, viewed from a device that’s been designed for our addiction. We can’t look away. Sometimes, we shouldn’t look away. Also, with each headline, often (if you’re perpetually online like me) comes with someone’s opinion, anger, or emotion. This month alone, on multiple different occasions, I’ve been told that “we” don’t have humanity any more, that it’s completely and utterly lost. So yes, feeling flat, on flat, on flat, is probably expected, for everyone.

It’s hard to feel hopeful.

I can’t fix that with a silly little statement that tells you, just to “be.” But (god how many buts in this newsletter) at the same time, when I set down to write this newsletter it was all to do with my flatness. And I realised something: I didn’t, in that moment, or this one, feel flat. There’s the sting of Co-Op salt and vinegar crisps on my tongue, and I’ve lit cheap cinnamon tealights across the house. I had a hot Ribena, and it reminded me both of my childhood and a dear friend of mine. Each morning I wake up under feathers, I feel the weight of them, and my husband’s arm holding me in place. It’s these little things, and my concerted effort to notice them, that has me feeling (whisper it) 3D… but only in passing moments.

I’m not allowing myself to look too far into the future. There’s too much to fret about. But I am also not forcing conceited moments of joy, in an attempt to pull the happiness of the past into my present. Instead, I’m taking each moment I’m served, and trying, to find something nice within it. That includes the crisps, and candles, but also tiny exchanges with strangers I meet: joking in Pret about my Diet Coke addiction, complimenting the woman in WH Smith on her eye make-up. Even, completely fooling myself into thinking an ex-Eastender was checking me out at a party. Going home and telling people that he did. Whatever works! I’m just collecting the joy found in slivers, adding them all up, and finding at the end of the day, they’ve become something whole.

What do you think? How are you finding this time of year? What’s brought you joy, what’s made you feel sad? Have you developed any coping mechanisms? Let me know, and, as always, I’m sending love.

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*By the way, this by on how Elf on the Shelf has become another pressure for mothers to face made me smile so, so much.

It’s Christmas and LOOK Substack has a gift subscription button, I don’t really know what this means, but why don’t you click on it and see!

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I sat down to type, this title in mind, and found just one word came to mind. Nothing. I was going to write “nothing.” I know nothing about grief.

That can’t be true. I’ve spent the last 18 months writing about it almost every week in this newsletter. I’ve tried to create a safe haven where, following my own lead, we can all untangle the complicated mess of feelings that surround grief. I’ve done this by inviting others to use their pens as a form of therapy, to write their most secret thoughts about grief with me, and you. I’ve sat down, in coffee shops, over Zoom, and heard whole life stories, learning so much that afterwards I have to nap for hours, images and words circling a mind that’s almost stoned with sorrow.

Yet, “nothing” is what appears, when I read this newsletter’s title.

Why?

I don’t think this is imposter syndrome sneaking in and hissing at me to be quiet. Instead, I think it’s down to how we frame knowledge, and what’s worthy of our time. If I had spent the last year and a bit studying, say, flower arranging, I’d be able to present a bouquet of all of my learnings, demonstrate clearly “look what I can do, look at this tangible demonstration of all of my time spent.” With grief, that’s impossible. It is not a skill I am learning, or an exam I am revising for.

I know, at some point, grief is going to knock me over again. I know that it’s going to push me over, trample its grey footsteps across my skin, leaving me bruised, black and blue. I will beg grief to leave me alone, and it won’t care how much I know, who I’ve spoken to, how many words I’ve written… It will batter me all the same.

But… I guess that’s the first thing I know about grief. There’s very little point in searching for solutions for it. It is not a puzzle to be solved. I could spend my lifetime studying it, reading all the literature, deciphering all the studies and still, still not be able to escape it. We can’t mend ourselves from something so seismic. We must surrender.

Grief is a crashing wave, and we have to let it pull us under.

Eventually… the tug and the pull of it won’t be so violent. It will no longer flood us.

So, if that’s the first thing (quite a big thing) then what else do I know?

We all grieve differently

I wanted to write that how we grieve is as unique to us as our fingerprints. But that just wouldn’t be true. That implies that we each have a grieving pattern that we will follow each, and every time. One we can begin to recognise and therefore recognise the path out of. It is, as I’ve said, not a puzzle to be solved - and this newsletter is not a guidebook.

But, this is something that I have learned. Something I wish I’d known, that perhaps I can hand over to you, in the hope that you can gain comfort from it. I’m not here to tell you how you’ll think, feel or act. I can’t even do that for myself. My next “era” of intense grief will look very different from my last. To apply a formula to such a universal, yet unique, process, is impossible.

Yet, we try…

We try so hard to grieve in a way that’s “right” that it exhausts us. We try to parrot the depictions of grief that we see all around us, and feel “wrong” when we don’t manage. This includes grief on television, in films but also in our lives… we could see someone sobbing at the funeral, our own faces dry and think “why can’t I do that?” We could find our own grief won’t hit for months, for years… There are so many different ways to grieve, as there are so many different people, circumstances and relationships to grieve.

I can’t speak for every experience. There’s so much more to explore. But, pulling at the strands of my own life, I can now recognise that grief, and how it will display within one lifetime will differ each time, and it won’t arrive how you expect it to. Even if you’ve had practice.

When I lost mum, at 19, I didn’t just lose the person, I lost a future with that person. I will grieve her in differing waves of intensity throughout my life, as she should have been here. I will watch my friends have what I want to have, what I thought I would have, and grieve not just who she was, but who she could have been in those moments. Who we could have been in those moments.

There’s a lot said in grief discussions about missing out on the big days: the mum not there for her daughter’s wedding day, her graduation… but a lot of the time I mourn the small things. I will want to know, and never know, what she might think about my life. What would she think of my husband, of my house, of my career? Would she like the friends that I have made? Who would we gossip about? Would she give me advice on my relationships, would I agree with her? What would I find frustrating about her? What would she find frustrating about me? What would we bicker about? We change who we are throughout our lifetimes and our relationships change with us. I lost not just my mum, but a version of myself, a part of my future, that will haunt me, questioning, for the rest of my life.

When I lost my grandma, a few years later, it was still a loss, it’s still a wound but it’s a different wound. A future wasn’t torn from us, as she died naturally, of old age. I grieve simply: her. But, at the same time, that grief isn’t simple (it never is). I felt like I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to grieve her, that everyone loses a grandparent so I should just suck it up and get on with my life. I didn’t give myself any space to acknowledge that loss, and its impact on me. Equally, on both occasions, I was trying to parrot what I expected grief to look like, and punishing myself for falling short on that.

I can’t type a picture here, one in which you, accurately, will see your own grief staring back at you. But, what I can do is share my story, my feelings, and see if there are strands of similarity. I can then use those strands of similarity to look back and be softer to my old self. I used to carry, and still do carry (on some days) guilt surrounding my behaviour and whether I grieved in the ‘right’ way. So much of our lives, not just within grief, is trying to match an idealised version of some behaviour, or person, that doesn’t exist. The more we open up about the individual ways in which we experience grief, even the parts we’re most ashamed of, the more we can recognise that no one is doing this perfectly. And within that we can actually begin to take on the very sensible, but very hard, advice to “be kind to ourselves.”

Learned from… Well, everyone. LIVING. But specifically, this conversation and this one with Rachel Wilson, who set up The Grief Network, for young grievers.

Accept the things you can’t change

What a simple, little annoying sentence, right? Accept the things you can’t change, I type, like it’s fucking easy. It’s not easy. At times, it’s not even possible. What? So we just accept that life flings hideous things at us, for no decipherable or controllable reason, and we just take that? We exist knowing that, just around the corner, something painful lurks, hissing and waiting to pounce? That this will happen, again and again, throughout our lifetimes? We will deal with one pain, then another, then another? Sometimes all at once. How? How do we do that?

The thing is… we just… do. We really don’t have any choice in the matter. And, as I’ve gotten older, I think (Ithink) I’m getting more comfortable with this knowledge. I learned, during my formative, learning years, that nothing is guaranteed. Our health, the health of those we loved… that can all be snatched away in a moment, with very little warning.

In many (very natural) ways that deeply messed me up. But it also made my life what it is today. I seek out joy, and fun, whenever I can. I try to be kind to people, both strangers and friends. I know, not only that we don’t know what people are going through, but also that, when we are going through something we may be behaving in a way that’s unrecognisable even to ourselves. We need to allow both ourselves, and others, space and grace to do so.

My next step, however, is to learn how to live in a way that allows me to seek out moments of pure hedonism, while also finding out where my values are. After all, it’s all very well living life like each day is going to be your last but, more often than not, it isn’t. We wake up, pull the curtains open, and the day is – miraculously – here again. I don’t want to consume pleasure in spikes and troughs, I want to pursue the things that make me feel good, for longer.

Part of that, I’m finding, is going back to accepting that there’s so much I don’t have control over. Letting my life be, just for a bit, rather than chasing it. I chased for so long, thinking I was going after what I wanted, what I needed. I was going so fast I couldn’t recognise that I wasn’t chasing happiness, I was running away. The two were so similar I don’t blame myself for not recognising this sooner. The two are so similar I’ll probably do the exact same thing, all over again. But I flailed about for years searching for a level of control that doesn’t exist. I’m slowly being able to recognise where I can make a difference and where I can’t. And, within that, I’m finding (some) peace but also something bigger: a long-lasting appreciation for who I have been, and who I am yet to become.

Learned from: Again, TIME but also this conversation with Rev Marion Chatterley who, through her outreach work, has spent time with people during their lowest moments, managing to save some, but not others and whose own grief helped her accept this.

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Your memory is not a library

A stand-out happy memory from my childhood was rollerblading, with my dad (her Substack can be found here) to the French patisserie. We’d skate along, together, on weekend mornings and collect flan tarts to take back home again. I recounted this memory recently, to a journalist, who was asking me about the joys of having a trans parent. She wanted some happy moments from my childhood and this was one that came to mind. It was so vivid to me. I can remember dad’s rollerblades, hers were black and chunky, and my rollerblades were white and lilac.

It was after publication that my dad said to me, “I don’t remember this.” At first, I must admit, I was a bit cross. I thought “why are you trying to take away a happy memory from me? If it made me happy, why are you telling me you can’t remember it?” But, after chatting, I realised what had happened. Dad did get her own pair of blades, but she couldn’t skate on them. I can’t remember this, as when we’re that young, we don’t like to think of our parents being fallible. So, what will have happened is I will have skated alongside dad, on foot, to the patisserie. My point? We are not reliable narrators of our own lives. We also can’t treat our memories like libraries, where we can go in and place ourselves, right back where we want to be. Our memories also won’t match, like snap cards, with other people’s.

I struggled with remembering my mum for a really long time. I still do. I wanted to use the memory of her as a comfort blanket, but all I found were the scratchy, uncomfortable moments. I felt guilty about this. Like I wasn’t remembering her how she should be remembered. But it’s OK if I remember her gnarly parts, as they were a part of her. I have also struggled with the different recollections of both my mum, and my grandma, from others who knew them. How, sometimes, they didn’t match mine. Again, I’ve come to realise that’s also OK: when you have two unreliable narrators, you’ll never find the truth. So, instead of trying to create a picture perfect lifetime movie of your time together, I think it’s more important to focus on how a person made you feel, the majority of the time. The details don’t matter, but how you felt does.

Learned from… Both this piece, where I interviewed neuroscientist Mary-Frances O Connor about what happens in the brain when we grieve, but also this one, where I spoke to Sarah Tarlow, an archeologist, who wrote a memoir about losing her husband very slowly and wanting to capture him as he was, rather than an untrue, fake version of himself.

Wow. So, as I began typing, I realised that I do know quite a bit about this chosen topic of mine. 2013 words to be precise. And there’s more I could have said, but this is getting long and I want to cook a bowl of pasta. So, a more accurate title for this newsletter would have been: here are some things I’ve learned about grief this year. Now I’m going to throw it over to you, what do you think you’ve learned about grief? What would you like to know, but perhaps, realise is impossible to know? Let me know in the comments and thank you, as always, for reading my work and helping me to untangle all these difficult knots. Lots of love.

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It can feel like anxiety has transfused into my bones. Like my blood has been replaced by something fizzy, and chaotic, that runs through me, causing havoc wherever it goes. I’ve found myself, at times, standing, feet firm on the ground when a whoosh of imagined stress has whizzed through me, and it’s as if I’ve been knocked away, and I’m now floating within the air.

I’ve looked out into the inky night, fear gripping my throat, knowing, for sure, my husband’s legs are crushed under a bus. I’ve typed ‘stabbings Soho’ into the search bar of Twitter, frantically scanning the results, oh-so-afraid I’ll see a loved one, laying in a pile of blood. I’ve had to dart into shop doors, to swallow down tears, interrupting my journey to work, as my brain took me, so vividly I could feel the pew beneath me, into my dad’s funeral.

I had begun to accept this ‘something bad is going to happen’ precipice that I exist on. Hovering, always, just above the abyss. Darting my eyes around the corners of my life, in the hope of scaring away whatever lays in that dark. I knew where it came from, it was simple. My mum was fine. Then she wasn’t. Then she died. Of course, that’s going to flip my once-bright thinking. In the years that followed I struggled to trust the ground beneath my feet, to trust my phone when it rang.

But now I’m approaching 40, and my life, and the life of those around me, is developing more cracks. Our health, or the health of our parents, is faltering. Relationships have begun to splinter. We wait within the flames, wondering if we’ll be forged from them. Or… will they turn us to ash?

I’ve learned that my precipice is common, it’s something we all teeter on. Over these recent years, I’ve begun to hear a common refrain: ‘why can’t I stop thinking the worst?’ We all, it seems, create a catastrophe out of the unknown. But, the thing is, as life comes pelting at us at full speed, this isn’t just pessimism, there’s a grounding in reality that (for the lucky) wasn’t there before. With each year collected, we’ve watched the worst actually happen. Our imaginations can create a reality painted from our histories. So, what can be done? Can anything be done? Or should I just carry on accepting my precipice? Particularly when, at this age, it can feel like just the beginning… there’s a whole host of experiences, and tragedies, to be collected.

In my journalism work I’ve been known to seek out solutions. To interview psychologists, medical professionals, all manners of ‘experts’ for actionable advice to a problem. I’d write in briefs, when commissioning writers, “the reader should be able to go away and do three things, straight away, in their life after finishing the article.” Or, if that wasn’t possible, I’d seek out the why. Looking for a reason behind our feelings, a pattern within human life that showed we weren’t abnormal. That this was a reaction.

I don’t like to do that with this newsletter. I prefer to say: ‘this is how I’m feeling, do you feel it too?’ But the catastrophising has become such a theme of late, and, admittedly, at times too much to bear, I went looking for a solution. About two pages into Google I remembered why I don’t like to do this, why I choose, on my own time and in my own newsletter, to not try to find the ‘why’ or what can fix us.

Firstly, I’m not very good at it. I glaze over when reading through scientific, psychological papers. I skim read and get lost in the language. There will be people, trained people, who can break down all of that research and present it to you in a concise way. I’m not that person. So, before I get to the next part, the part where I (slightly) slag off what I’ve found, please note I didn’t look very hard. I’m sure there’s practical advice out there, just what I did see I found (for these circumstances) pretty useless.

‘Catastrophising’ is actually the official term for this way of thinking. But so much of the advice around catastrophising involved students freaking out about failing exams, or going into job interviews and not getting the jobs. The articles beginning this way made me want to scream GET SOME REAL PROBLEMS and slam my laptop shut. ‘Catastrophising’ is damaging as it stops people from seeking out new experiences, from properly living etc etc etc, blah blah blah…

I’m being unfair here. Really unfair. Particularly as catastrophising is linked to anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions. I’ve no doubt that constantly picturing the worst case in all scenarios is draining and limiting. But catastrophising is also linked to trauma, those of us who have good reason to imagine the worst, because we’ve seen it. Those of us who know that, as we get older, there’s a lot more to worry about than job interviews or exams. That often, the things that wait around the corner, are not just one-day and done, phew that’s over, type deals but instead long, drawn out circumstances that cause anxiety to bury itself under our skins. Things with unpredictable, unknown outcomes that we wake up to, some days feeling stronger than others to face.

The problem is, so much advice, is blanket. Some works, some doesn’t. For example, I can confirmation bias my way into thinking I am someone who ‘bad things happen to’ but… my husband has never been found under a lorry. So many of my imagined scenarios did not happen. In those cases, I can remind myself that my thoughts aren’t reality, and flip my brain onto another, more positive scenario. This works for the more outlandish catastrophising, that’s rooted in general panic, rather than any fact.

But then there are the times when fears are justified. What then? A few years ago, I visited multiple doctors for a variety of symptoms. I knew something wasn’t right inside, but, at the same time, I also knew there was a possibility that my ‘something bad is going to happen’ attitude could have led to not being able to properly inhabit and assess my own body. I was, eventually, booked in for a scan and I decided if they didn’t find anything, I’d seek out therapy for this worst-case-scenario anxiety.

They found something. There was a really, really big cyst growing on my ovary! It needed operating on. We were in the middle of a pandemic, it couldn’t be, for months. They’d mentioned that the cyst could be cancerous, that it was so big that, by removing it, I could also lose my ovary. Waiting for that operation, my mind went dark. Statistically, I had good odds. But, realistically, from what I’d seen happen in the past, when alien objects are found lurking within the body, they kill. I could not think positively. I drank so much I fell out of taxis, and woke up bruised. There were other factors at play (including lockdown) but my past loved to tap me on the shoulder, and hiss in my ear, “there’s only one way this goes.”

The view from my hospital bed, after my cyst twisted (and they STILL didn’t operate on it)

My nervous system, I’ve now read, will have been in a constant state of fight-or-flight. Perhaps I should have sought out more calming techniques, like more yoga, meditation, chamomile tea (caffeine apparently spikes our nerves even more.) Instead I sought out: white wine and poor decisions (so I could worry about them, rather than what was really going on.) This did not help. (Did I really need to tell you that?!) It did not make the time passing easier, and… it turns out… I really was catastrophising. I was fine. It was not cancer. I still have both ovaries.

If you’re reading this and you’re thinking, well GOOD FOR YOU but MY THING IS DEFINITELY THE REALLY BAD THING, WHY THE FUCK HAVE YOU TOLD ME THIS, ULTIMATELY HAPPY ENDING STORY GO AWAAAAAYYYY. I get it, at times when typing it I’ve thought ‘why am I telling this story, is it even helpful?’ But I’m telling it as I, looking back, learned from that period of ultimate extreme catastrophising. I learned that a) my behaviour was natural but b) it wasn’t the smartest of behaviours.

I read (in this article) that our brains are like smoke detectors. Imagine you hear your fire alarm go off, do you think – oh, I’ve left the toaster on, or do you think, god damn the house is on fire? (um.. the latter). Either way, you go and find out. In day-to-day life uncertainties are like smoke. Your job is to figure out what’s causing the smoke, and respond accordingly.

The reality is we don’t know what the smoke is, until we know what the smoke is. And life isn’t as simple as seeing burnt crumbs in a toaster and feeling relieved. So much of our lives are spent waiting, and having absolutely no idea what’s going to arrive. We try to protect ourselves by imagining what could happen, but this only really works if you can accurately predict what awaits. I wish I could have recognised that, back then. I’d find myself endlessly Googling stories of people like me who did lose their ovary, who did have cancer. I thought ‘fuck it’ what’s the point in even trying to calm myself down, I chose to live in the panic. I don’t blame myself for being this way but if I could time-hop back I’d remember the following…

(mostly writing this all down as I will need it in the future.)

• Pouring white wine on anxiety is like pouring oil onto flames. You’re seeking release, a numbness, I get it, but it can be found elsewhere – weight lifting, spinning to Taylor Swift, inside a really engrossing thriller…

• Go help others. After this period of madness, I sought out volunteering. It’s too hard to explain how it has helped me, without worrying I sound like a dick head, but it really does help me, in a myriad of ways, every shift that I do.

• Try healthy denial. My wise friend Amy Grier (who recently wrote this piece) reminded me that denial is only unhealthy if you know the outcome and are pretending that you don’t (and even then, sometimes, you just have to embrace it for a while.) When you don’t know, and you’re just guessing what the smoke is, tell yourself it’s just the toaster, flip your brain to the most positive scenario. This isn’t me trying to toxic positivity your very real, very natural fears, it’s OK to be afraid, to think the worst, as despite what multiple manifestation TikTokers will have you believe, your thoughts are just thoughts. But the thing is, bad news will always be bad news, whether you were prepared for it or not. Your thoughts can’t change the future. What they can do is change your present moment, making it much worse. So whenever your brain goes there, think of the best possible outcome. IT’S JUST TOAST CRUMBS.

• Plan worry time. This is something I used to do, and I got out of the habit of it as I found it felt a little self-indulgent and woe-is-me. But WOE-IS-YOU, if you’re going through something shit it’s OK to feel shit. Allow yourself it. Let your mind go to those horrendous places, just not all the time. I like to cry in the bath. You need to release how you’re feeling, I’ve pushed it all down too many times to know it does come out in other ways. It’s totally fine if it does, if you do behave unhealthily, but – if and when you can – let it all out, in a controlled way (btw… a friend of mine told me her therapist even advised this, so it’s legit advice too.)

• Watch Friends/Gilmore Girls/whatever your watch-a-million-times show is. I can’t remember the study, but essentially it can provide the same brain-switching-off rest that meditation does, but it’s (especially for meditation novices) much easier. Also, as we’ve watched it so many times before, we know exactly what’s going to happen. It helps to have one area of life, even if that area is just our TV screen, where there isn’t uncertainty.

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Anyway, I really hope my lived it advice helps, and didn’t make you cross. Ultimately, and grooooooan, this is a red pen cliché, you have to find out what works for you. I only really learned the above by doing the exact opposite. And hey, I’ll probably do the exact opposite again… probably some time soon. Life’s really hard. But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that – even in the roughest of times, even when we don’t think we’re holding anything together – we are.

Do you have any advice? Or things that help when you’re catastrophising? Or things that really don’t help? Please let me know by sharing below!

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I have a tension headache, living deep within my jaw. It lingers, following me, as I try – in vain – to outrun it. Distract it. Keep moving forwards as it dissolves away. So far, it’s ignoring all of my attempts. It’s a stubborn bugger.

Whenever I need to switch off my life, the emotions calcifying in my bones, I turn on Comedy Central. Watch FRIENDS until I fall asleep. I can laugh at that show, even when I’m crying. I can summon scenes from it, play them out within my head, and break out into a smile. It’s what I did yesterday, pulled my hot-rocked raspberry pink blanket around my head and watched the gang. Ross was still seeing his childhood doctor, Phoebe met Mike and Chandler was leaving for Tulsa. And… bam. The headache relinquished, for a while. I was asleep.

This morning, around 7am, I woke to the news that Matthew Perry has died. I’m numb, often, to celebrity deaths, I don’t think I’ve ever cried at one. But just because I’m not crying, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel sad at this news, that I’m not thinking about him and those who loved him. That I don’t feel grief.

We can feel a little silly, feeling sad when a celebrity dies. Maybe that “we” wasn’t right, I can’t presume how you’re feeling. I do, I feel a little silly. I didn’t know this man, with a marshmallow soft smile, and floppy brown hair.  Yet, in a way, I did. His sarcastic tone has been part of the soundtrack to my life.

When I examined the grief that followed the Queen’s death, I turned to Mary-Frances O Connor’s book, The Grieving Brain, where she has a whole chapter on what is known as parasocial grief.

A parasocial relationship is a one-sided one, think kissing the poster of your favourite pop star before going to sleep, or being heavily invested in a celebrity or influencers life. It’s feeling like you know someone, even though you only ever see them in 2D. When we love someone, our brain forms an attachment bond with them, “invisible tethers that motivate us to seek out our loved ones, to derive comfort from their presence.” Grief comes about when that bond is severed. When we can no longer connect to the person we’ve bonded to. Of course, the grief is greater when we have bonded, physically, to a person and they’re no longer in our lives but we may, in some cases, still form a bond to a person we have only ever viewed through a screen.

“We have a surprising amount of access to what famous personalities portray as their lifestyles and beliefs, their likes and dislikes,” O Connor writes. “This kind of information is not necessarily sufficient for forming an attachment bond however, if we think about what the prerequisites for attachment are, our relationships with [famous people] may still meet the criteria to some degree. First, the person must meet our attachment needs. This means that the person is available when we need someone to turn to in our darkest hour.”

For so many years, I have found a soft, mind numbing comfort in Friends re-runs. I’m not alone in this, during lockdown, streams of the show shot up as we sought out its familiarity, the frozen snapshot into a life we almost felt a part of. I remember going to a FRIENDS experience once, and stepping onto the set, within the purple walls and feeling as if I’d visited one of my old house shares. Feeling as if, somehow, I was home.

When the reunion was aired, and they showed interviews with fans across the world, some recounted times when they were flailing, lost in the deep dark depths of depression and the show soothed them. The gang became their company, they were in the company of their friends. So, we will have turned to Matthew Perry, to Chandler, in our darkest of hours. The comfort needed for that attachment bond, for many, exists.

From this, I want to say, I’m not being silly and you’re not being silly if you feel sad at this news. He meant something to us, he was there when we needed him. We wish this man who made so many people happy could have done the same for himself.

But then I also want to add, I worry we try to find labels and reasoning for why we feel things so often these days. We plot out the planets, try and place ourselves in whatever mercury is in retrograde, or we (if this applies) look to our period-tracking apps and pinpoint our mood on our cycle. There are so many different labels, for different sorts of grief, and we search for ourselves within them. If this helps you, then that’s fine. But I’m beginning to recognise that I don’t need to search for a reason behind a feeling. I don’t need to Google various studies or interview experts in order for how I feel to be valid, and real.

So, today, I feel like I lost a friend. It’s OK if you feel that way too.

Thanks for reading. I’m sorry I missed last week’s newsletter. I was in Tokyo! I’m also quite overwhelmed at the moment, with various personal and work things going on, but I appreciate you all so much for reading and I hope everyone is doing OK? The world feels very harsh at the moment, it’s important we try and treat ourselves softly. Sending love and please do comment and let me know how you are. I love reading all your comments.

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I don’t know where to begin. And when I don’t know where to begin I just… begin. Truthfully, I had apologised for this newsletter before I had even begun to write it, before I had even decided what I was going to say.

Why? Primarily, as you’ll already know, I write about grief, tearing my own past open to expose and examine the hidden, inner layers. It’s often from a distance, I rarely have the answers but the time, the years, I’ve spent twisting these thoughts over and over in my head, on the page, tends to bring me some form of clarity.

This week, I feel wiped clean. Actually, no, that’s the wrong analogy I feel like a white board with ineligible scribbles all over it, words all jumbled together, the curl of an S, all tangled up with the loop of a Y. That’s what I want to apologise for, for not being able to pull something out of that mess, iron it out and present it back to you. A dose of… something… in your inbox this week.

The internet, I believe, brings so much good in the world. It’s connected me, to you. But it also (and this is getting more frequent these days) terrifies me. I just worry that this constant churn, this constant pressure to say something, at all times, without giving time to process, to look back is leading to damage. Often unintentional damage, but damage all the same. When we rush to say, or comment, we can hurt people. We can get things wrong (although, saying that, I do think it’s OK to get things wrong… and we must forgive for that.) But, at the same time, I am also aware that silence, for some, can seem like ignorance. Like the quiet person doesn’t care.

I write about grief. And the world is grieving. We’re watching a war play out, from the ground, from our phone screens. I know that so many people are in a deep, dark pain. If you’re one of those people, please don’t read this short newsletter as uncaring. I just know how, when everything feels raw, and intense, and the suffering is suffocating you, words can be a balm. They can offer hope. But they can also sting.

I don’t want my words ever to sting.

The one thing I try to do, whenever I feel hopeless, is try to find something, out of the internet, out of the screen, out of all the noise, to help. Whether that’s volunteering my time, donating money or just reading and listening to the people directly impacted. Please know I’m doing that.

 I’m also sending so much love to everyone.

I’m so grateful for the small group of you that read what I have to say each week.

Lots of love.

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• Courgettes (as many as you can be bothered to grate)

• Carrots (as many as you can be bothered to grate but only really necessary so as to make you feel  as if this is actually a proper dish and not just a cobbled together memory of a dish)

• Pasta (ideally shell-shaped, unless it gives you the ick) (plenty of it, much more than the amount Weight Watchers tricked you into thinking was a portion)

• Butter (couple of tablespoons)

• Garlic (enough so it slightly burns)

• Basil (if you’re feeling fancy)

• Onion (nice but not necessary) 

Put the pasta onto bowl. Plenty of salt in that water, mind. Fry up the grated courgette/carrots and garlic and basic, until warm and wilted. Mix all together with a shit ton of butter. If you want pop some parmesan on top. Serve. Eat. Keep some leftover so that you can stand by the pan at midnight, dropping cold buttery pasta into your mouth. Please resist the urge to feel slightly ashamed at this. You’re fine. You’re doing OK. This is pleasure. Enjoy it.

I first ate a variation of this pasta dish in Puglia. I saw fireflies on that trip, flickering in the dark night of the mountains. It had been my birthday; my mum had sent me out some presents to unwrap, including a silk bag with a wooden handle, a pelican embroidered on the front. That’s all I really remember from the week we spent there, but this recipe - cooked that first time by my friend’s dad - I’ve carried with me. 

It’s what I make when I’m too wired to sleep, too tired to think. When I have to “bring a dish.” My sister requests it when I go home. It’s ‘auntie Katie’s courgetty pasta.’

It’s nice but it isn’t spectacular. It is, somehow, a part of who I am.

If I die, is it how people will remember me? 

I ask, because recently I’ve been researching legacy. How technology/AI/robots can help us create the image of ourselves that we leave behind. They package it up and present ‘you’ to your grieving loved ones, so that they can pore over you, listen to your life’s stories, your life’s lessons… even all the recipes you’re known for… 

all for a small fee a month. 

That addition makes me sound cynical. Like I think these new apps (some of which go so far as to create an AI version of yourself, a ‘living’ hologram that can be visited and spoken to) are simply a way to make profit, leeching off the vulnerabilities of the grieving. People who would spend anything to see that person again. I do think that, it’s true. But I also think they can help, that they open up conversations and encourage us all to think about our life, our death and what - if anything - we want to leave behind. 

The apps, at their most basic level, serve prompts. The person who has decided to download their life, for whatever reason, answers them, like they’re recording a voice memo. 

• When life is overwhelming, I find it’s important to remember that… 

• A secret about my family that I’d like to share… 

• Here’s what I know about my ancestors… 

• The best party I ever went to was…

• When I was growing up, I wanted to be… 

• A way that being a parent changed me is… 

• My attitude about death is… 

• Here’s one of my favourite jokes… 

• A trait that has held me back in life is… 

Are these things that I’d want to leave behind? Are these things I’d like to know? 

As part of my research, I interviewed an end-of-life nurse who told me that she sits with her patients, and helps them capture themselves. Whether it’s letters for their children to open up on their birthdays or writing down the recipes they’d like to hand on, people are already doing what this technology provides. 

We all want to leave behind something, of ourselves, on this earth. Something solid. 

I think I’d like to sit and answer all of these questions. Ponder my life and distill it into something palatable. Craft a version of myself that allows me to tuck myself into my grave, pull the dirt all around me and think smugly ‘there, people will remember me right.’ 

This technology doesn’t just capitalise on grief, it capitalises on our egos.

But, that’s me being cynical again as… 

I think it could bring some peace. 

When someone is sick, dying, everything is so uncontrollable. Answering prompts, thinking about your legacy, it gives some control. It also provides some hope, some might say a false hope, that you’re making grief easier for the people you are leaving behind. You’re leaving a part of yourself that they can visit again and again. Whether it’s in a letter or an app it must be comforting to think ‘if my daughter faces heartbreak in the future she can turn to me, hear my advice’ or ‘on my son’s wedding day he can feel my presence.’ 

But it’s also taking a gamble on how other people’s lives might turn out. One of the prompts is: what parenting advice would you give? I like to think my mum wouldn’t answer that one, she wasn’t someone who put people in boxes. But my grandma would have. From always saying ‘grace’ to avoiding blue or green nail varnish I worked hard to keep her proud of me. I’d hate to hear her impart wisdom that, as a childfree person, I’d probably never use. I’d feel I’d let her down somehow, even if that was never her intention. There’s also the risk that you’re creating a persona of yourself that they could get stuck beside, never trying or feeling the need to keep going with their life. Just living with a robotic relative, playing them on loop. 

Because, the truth is, we can’t control grief. We can’t manipulate it, or soften it, or make it easier. We don’t get to decide how other people remember us. Sometimes even they don’t have that control. I couldn’t remember happy memories of my mum for years, no matter how hard I tried to twist and mould my brain matter. I don’t think, even if she had transferred herself into coding, I would have been able to use a tool to bring her happy, humming self back to me. I had to protect myself. 

What we can control - and God I hate it when I veer into cliche - is how we exist now. (hey, cliches are often there because they’re so true.) The nurse I spoke to told me that the dying almost always have the same regrets: they wish they’d imparted these lessons earlier. I think it would be too simplistic to say “so go off, have those hard chats now before it’s too late.” It’s a bit blah, it doesn’t take in the realities of why we so often don’t have these conversations. It’s a lot easier to hand over a recipe than, say, your “biggest family secret.” 

But it is worth bearing in mind, thinking about the things you don’t know but would like to, and asking. I recently asked my dad about the Persian rugs that line her living room, we’ve had them in every house and I wondered what they meant to her.

It turns out, the rugs have a story, one to do with my ancestors… or is it a trip my dad and mum took? The symbols on them spell something out, something vital about my history. Something I cannot remember.

But I’m not going to ask her to record that story. As, what I can remember, is her stepping onto the rug, almost as if she was stepping into the patterns of it, as she hopped about, her face animated and telling the story. Because often it’s not the question or the prompt or the recipe that’s cemented within: it’s the moments that follow, how you felt in that second, in their company, that creates the true legacy. 

What do you think? Is there anything you wished you knew about the people you have lost? Questions you wish you’d asked them? Or, what wisdom do you want to pass on? Let me know in the comments!

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PS: all this research was done for this piece in Women’s Health, which is also available to read in the current issue, with Gaby Roslin on the front. I interviewed experts and truly dig into whether this tech could help or hinder grief, it was so interesting and (I think) worth a read.

PPS: couldn’t resist answering the prompts…

When life is overwhelming, I find it’s important to remember that… 

I look back at a time when life was overwhelming before, struggling often to remember the details. Or, if I can remember the details, I then focus on what happened next, how it passed. ‘This too shall pass’ is both true, and irritating, so reminding myself of times it has passed can help. Either that or I put on Friends repeats until I can sleep. 

A secret about my family that I’d like to share… 

All I want now is to become a hacker so I can hack into the technology and listen to how other people answered this one! I can’t think of any family secrets (maybe I’ve not been told them!) 

Here’s what I know about my ancestors… 

I’ve never had much desire to create a family tree, so I know very little (saying that I went to an event with ancestry.com recently and was tempted) and I know whatever I type here and can remember my dad will read and say “you remembered that wrong” but… here goes… I know that my dad’s family were in the pottery business, and, oh god, maybe I should join ancestry.com… 

The best party I ever went to was…

In my final year of university I won a competition to go to the How To Lose Friends and Alienate People premiere, and part of that was going to the after party at Shoreditch House. They filled the swimming pool with flowers, just like in the movie. There was a floor with table piled high with food. We sat by the pool, under shimmering light, and spoke to an actual movie star (Chris O Dowd) for ages. He seemed to like talking to us! Before we left we jumped into the pool, and waded through the flowers, just like Megan Fox in the movie! We lived within the delusion that, in that moment, we looked just like her. We felt we’d had a taste of what our life would look like, from then on, as we would move to London and work as journalists… We did do that. But I’ve never been invited to an after party like that since. I think the money dried up (or I’m just not considered cool enough.) 

When I was growing up, I wanted to be… 

A ballet dancer. Eventually I was told I wasn’t ‘built’ for it (which resulted in a good life lesson, by the way) 

A way that being a parent changed me is… 

Umm, see above. 

My attitude about death is… 

There’s very likely going to be an adventure after it. That helps me both feel at peace with it, but also I love to think of people I have lost on said adventure.

I also try to use it to check in with myself, I knew I would be disappointed if I died before seeing New York, as it had always been my dream since I was little, so - as soon as I could afford it - I booked flights there. I try to do that every now and then, it’s too hard to actually ‘live each day as if it’s your last’ but I’ve found having a slightly fatalistic attitude to life and being witness to how easily it can all end has helped me achieve the things I want to achieve. 

Here’s one of my favourite jokes… 

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Doctor.

Doctor Who.

You just said it! 

I remember making this joke up when I was little (but I also thought I made up the song ‘Hit the Road Jack’ so who knows) and my humour has not progressed since. 

A trait that has held me back in life is…

I thought I was ugly and unattractive for a long time and it’s warped my perception, even know, of not only how I’m perceived but also who deserves my attention, presence and time. There’s a part of me that will always want to impress bullies… and that has caused me to pour energy into people and ambitions that don’t matter. 

Little strands of ideas often pop into my head and I think “I’m going to write a newsletter on this” but then I can’t quite grasp my thoughts enough to create something solid out of them. But I don’t want them to get lost. So, as I sit in my window seat, watching the last of July’s rain, I’m going to pop them down, run away with them a bit, and see what happens…

I’ve been reading…

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin  

People say it’s a book about gaming. But it’s not. Not really. It’s a book about grief. The grief of losing mothers, of losing friends, of losing grandparents… but also the grief of friendships changing and warping with time. How hard it can be to love someone for a lifetime, when they’re no longer the person you once knew, when you’re no longer the person you once knew. It’s one of these books that has lingered, that’s hard to move on from. It consumed me, for a while. 

Here’s some lines from it (I don’t think they count as spoilers) that I could see my own grief in:

‘“There are no ghosts, but up here” - she gestured to her head - “it’s a haunted house.”’ 

This is how one of the characters says she coped, following loss. By having conversations with her loved ones, in her head, remembering how they spoke, thinking of what advice they might give or say. I don’t have conversations, as such, with my mum and grandma but - every now and then - I get this feeling, deep in my heart, that the words within my brain, at that moment, are not my own, but theirs. It’s a special, other worldly feeling, knowing I’ll never truly be alone. 

(I wrote more about how we can create our own ghosts, for healthy grieving here)

‘What Sam wanted to do was get stupendously high - find a great drug that turned off his brain for a year but stopped short of killing him.’

I’ve written before about my complicated relationship with alcohol, following my mum’s death. How easy it was to turn to oblivion. How distraction from pain can take on many forms, and how I’m not even sure how in control we are of our survival techniques.

For my dissertation, examining heroin addiction, I caught the train to Brighton and sat in a sunny beer garden with a heroin addict. He was 21, strikingly good looking, and would inject heroin secretly in his halls bedroom, the other students around him completely unaware of his self destruction. He’d been a casual user for years but then, he lost someone he loved. “Katie,” he said to me. “I had something, in that moment, in my possession that could turn the pain off. That wrapped me up in a cloud, pulled me away from my blistering reality. Why wouldn’t I turn to it? Why wouldn’t I use it?” Of course, eventually, all his pain caught up with him. He now had to face it all, and worse, do so navigating an all consuming addiction. The drug Sam (in Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow) wants doesn’t exist - we have to feel our grief, our pain, to survive it. It will tornado its way to us eventually.

‘She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones. The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person. Upon the person’s death, your brain still believes the virtual person exists because, in a sense, the person still does. After a while though, the memory fades and, each year, you are left with an increasingly diminished version of the AI you had made when the person was alive.’ 

When I interviewed a neuroscientist about grief, and the brain, she confirmed that this is true. We’re not well wired for loss, our brains struggle to function. This, I think, is comforting, in grief it can be easy to chastise ourselves for not ‘moving on’ or for spotting someone in the crowd, and thinking it’s them, or still expecting to hear their key in the door. But this is natural. Our brains, our beings, need time to rewire and adjust. (Also, on the topic of AI, I dug into the new technology that allows us to create AI avatars of ourselves and ponder does it help or hinder the grieving process, for this piece in Women’s Health, which will also be in the next on-sale issue.) 

‘For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say I love you. It was superior, he believed to show love to those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you god damn did.’

When we first began dating my (now) husband found it overwhelming just how often I told him I loved him. He said I said it so much it lost all meaning. I didn’t care. I didn’t change. I’m someone who tells people I love them constantly: my husband, my family, my friends. Life changes at a terrifying speed, one day people are here, the next they’re gone. I need them to know, at any given moment, just how much they mean to me. 

Have you read it? Or read any good books that encapsulate grief recently? Let me know in the comments…

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I’ve been remembering… Impulse o2 

I know, if I could just smell it, I’d be able to go back. Back to my primary school self, holding red gobstoppers in a brown paper towel, licking the fiery flavour, overwhelmed by its intensity. I’d feel small and scared and unsure and unsteady, but I’d also feel giddy, ridiculous and be able to honk laugh at the smallest of things. For many, it’s the scent of childhood, of being on the cusp of being a teenager, where summers stretched endlessly, lengthened by all the newness. I can’t even describe what the notes were: it was zesty and fresh and it made me feel alive. I’m convinced that Impulse must have lost the recipe for it, as why wouldn’t they bring it back? There’s such high demand for it that every time the 90s Museum post about it on their Instagram they’re flooded with comments. And… OH MY GOD… I was just Googling to show you how much cans go for on eBay and discovered that Impulse HAVE BROUGHT IT BACK. It’s only £1 in Savers! I’ve ordered a bottle and now I’m slightly afraid… what if it isn’t how I remember? Should some things remain only in our memories? Not everything can last forever and isn’t that the joy of living? 

This was inspired by this article in the Guardian where writes mourn their favourite discontinued products. If you could bring back any discontinued product, what would it be?

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I’ve been watching… Nothing Compares, the Sinead O Connor documentary 

I didn’t know very much about Sinead O Connor, I must confess. Sometimes I feel ashamed admitting how little I know about huge musical figures. Like some man from my past is going to pop up behind me and sneer at how uncool and uncultured and idiotic I am. But, as I get older, I’ve come to realise it’s never stupid to not know about something or someone, it’s only stupid to choose not to learn. So, on Saturday night, I settled down to learn about this magnificent woman. 

I, of course, knew pieces of her. I had an outline of who she was, placed in my brain by all that has been written about her. I knew she was outspoken, that she was a rebel… but I didn’t realise how softly spoken she was with it. The documentary shows old interviews with her and I was struck by how childlike she appears, how she had such strong convictions that she delivered both incredibly loudly and incredibly quietly all at once. How she remained steadfast in her beliefs, while also being aware of the nuances of life and how she could deliver withering put downs politely and with a smile on her face. She talked a lot about the “contract” she made with herself, what she entered the industry for and why she wrote, and was so vulnerable, for the world to see. She was using her art as a form of healing and while it’s horrendous to think of how she was treated, how she was torn apart by cruel, side line strangers, there are moments watching her on stage, dancing and mucking around and smiling, and - in a world where women’s pain is so often used as a commodity - I wanted to pause and soak in those snatches of her joy. 

I’ve been thinking about… what’s been sewn under my skin

For the early part of this year, I was working on a ghost writing project which involved me interviewing a huge number of people about neurodiversity. I knew writing the book would be important professionally, but I didn’t anticipate just how impactful it would be personally.

It’s taught me to examine what has been placed deep within me, where my thoughts of right and wrong come from, why I enjoy the things I enjoy, why I am upset by the things I’m upset by. There’s an undercurrent passing through all of us that tells us what happiness is, what a ‘good’ life looks like - it’s the 2.4 family unit, the ticking things off an invisible list of ‘achievements’ that we have been given, but never once asked if we want to possess. Often, I’ve been learning, when we feel sad, or let down, or ashamed of ourselves, it’s not necessarily because we’re actually sad, or let down, or have a reason to feel ashamed, instead we’re unconsciously feeling the weight of false expectation. Life cannot be one-size-fits-all yet we’re so often told it should be.

Making the decision to be child-free has also played its part in this awakening, as I thought I wanted children for so long simply because it was what I was told I should want. Now, I’m trying to figure out what my life will look like, from here, unpicking deep rooted expectations, and plot out a new beginning for myself. Writing the book, and interviewing a huge number of people who have figured out their brains, and what they need from this world, has been so enlightening. I’m excited to be able to share more, once I can. 

I’ve been… promoting

I spent a lot of last month interviewing doctors, marketing and advertising executives, government officials, teachers and shop keepers to uncover why we’re all so hooked on vaping… and how illegal, dangerous vapes have infiltrated the market. I even spent the morning with Trading Standards Officers trying to catch illegal vape sellers in the act. The aim of the feature was to highlight the dangers of vaping without it reading too finger-wagging as, we all know, the more we’re told not to do something, the more we tend to want to do it. It’s in this month’s issue of Cosmopolitan, with the Heartstopper cast on the cover. 

I also went on Sharon Gaffka’s podcast, to talk about my career. Sharon is an ex Love Islander using her platform for good: she’s been campaigning and working with the police to highlight just how insidious spiking is across the country, and how little is done to prevent it. Her podcast interviews various different women about their careers, and it was a lot of fun to reflect on my own career journey (plus I was delighted to be able to promote my book at the end, as I’m still so proud of it, but without it being a new release sales have - of course - dwindled.) 

And that’s it for the week! Let me know of any thoughts/recommendations below. I might try and do a round-up every month or so, what do you think?

Hello! Sorry for the delay, but hopefully this piece, which I’m really proud of, will make up for it! It’s a long, well-researched feature that looks at the issues from both sides and allows you to make up your own mind (something I think is vital and often missing from journalism today, with opinion pieces reigning supreme.) I considered splitting in two but I wanted you to read all sides of the argument, so it has to be in one!

I’d love to do more of this, so if you’d like to support me please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Or if you can’t afford that, another FREE way to support my work is to share it with a friend, either below, or on your social media pages. You can find me here on IG by the way!

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“I’m Taylor Swift and if you are hearing this message, you will get Eras tour tickets. You will get those tickets.” I’ve heard this recording, on average, ten to fifteen times per day for the past two weeks. I, like millions across the globe, have to get tickets. I have to be one of the lucky ones.

So, I’m deep in swifttok, which means my algorithm is all friendship bracelets, Speak Now ballgowns and extensive analysis on who certain lyrics are about. A blonde, blue-eyed 23-year-old called Rachel is my new parasocial best friend as she records numerous incredibly helpful videos on how to secure tickets, which I watch and then dutifully forward on to the WhatsApp group I’m in dedicated to our mission. Amongst all of that, I am also receiving videos on how fans ‘manifested’ their tickets and how I should too. The aforementioned sound is played on top of videos that beg me not to scroll past, as if I do I’ll be sending a message to the universe that I don’t want tickets. I don’t want to risk it, so I don’t, hence Taylor’s voice playing on loop in my brain most hours of the day.

As well as NOT SCROLL PAST I am also to write, almost like lines in school, I WILL GET ERAS TOUR TICKETS over and over again until my hand goes sore. I’m to sit with my eyes shut and picture the Ticketmaster page saying ‘congratulations, you’re going to Taylor Swift.’ I should probably just start gluing rhinestones onto a corset top now, pink and purple for Lover, as if I don’t then I definitely won’t get the damn tickets. These are all old manifestation techniques repackaged and Swiftified, and hey, it’s worth a go right?

Manifestation (also known as the law of attraction) has been around since the 19th century, but I guess you could say it truly hit modern consciousness in 2006 with the release of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, the self-help manual by Rhonda Byrne that has sold 35 million copies worldwide. Since then it’s been adopted by TikTok and morphed into ‘lucky girl syndrome’ (amongst other iterations) and has been broken down into bitesize videos of women (usually white, blonde, able-bodied and young) enthusing how they manifested their dream life/man/job/career and… yes… Taylor Swift Eras tour tickets.

Now, I don’t have too big a problem with manifestation or the ‘girlies’ that spout it on TikTok. They’re having a nice time and if it makes them feel good about themselves, then, of course, crack on. There are also parts of manifestation theory that I follow myself. I do believe that ‘what’s meant for you won’t pass you by’ and I also write a gratitude journal where my final bullet point each and every time is: I am living a life beyond my wildest dreams. Because I am.

I can look at that list and see everything from a can of Diet Coke, to a roof over my head on there, and see how lucky I am. That, in turn, makes me feel good about myself and feeling good about yourself, and your chances means that you’re more likely to put yourself out there – whether it’s applying for a job, or going on dating apps, or whatever it is you’re looking to manifest.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, with emphasis on the self, as so much of the good things that happen materialise because we work hard and take action. Also, just to add, while some of its practices (mindfulness and gratitude) do have positive scientific backing, the law of attraction (and its various rebrandings) have no scientific proof behind them. Much of its success stories could be, some say, attributed to confirmation bias.

But what about the bad things? As if I don’t get Taylor Swift tickets it won’t be the absolute worst thing to ever happen to me (god, I’ve cursed myself with that, haven’t I?!) but, what if manifestation was around when my mum was dying? Because manifestation tries to tell us that we have a lot more control than we actually do. Bad things happen every single day. If you’re facing illness or infertility could manifestation trick you into believing that you can put a halt to it? Or, that it’s your fault?

I knew that manifesting gurus pay very little to zero attention to social and racial inequality, and the very real barriers that affirmations and visualisations can’t really break down. But, I always thought that their failure to mention these things was born out of naivety. But I was wrong. As, it turns out, particularly in ‘The Secret’ Byrne makes some incredulous victim-blaming statements such as “if people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Cancer victims, sexual-assault victims, holocaust victims – they’re responsible?” says John Norcross, a psychologist and professor, in a LA Times article around the time of release. “The book is riddled with these destructive falsehoods.” It’s also ridiculous considering that inequality is often born into. Are foetuses negatively thinking their way into poverty?!

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But none of these concerns slowed down sales. Or stopped the Netflix release of The Secret: Dare To Dream, the book’s film adaptation starring Katie Holmes. It hit our screens in 2020, just as the pandemic took its hold, with COVID eventually killing 7.3 million people worldwide.

The law of attraction seems to really take hold of public consciousness during periods of history where everything is uncontrollable. Another popular title spouting similar theories was Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, released in 1936, just after The Great Depression. The law of attraction is, in many ways, spiritual snake oil. Today, the very nature of the ‘don’t scroll past or something bad will happen to you’ TikToks offer that much coveted currency in social media: guaranteed views and engagement.

It's around here that my whole ‘ach, who are these TikTokers harming’ laid-back attitude begins to slip. As the more the watered-down versions of law-of-attraction permeate our culture, so too does the idea that all of society’s ills are (as Rebecca Jennings writes in this brilliant Vox article) “the responsibility of individual people, whose suffering and misfortune is the responsibility of their own failure to think positively enough.”

Thinking of who I was at 19, when my mum was diagnosed, I can see myself tumbling deeper and deeper into the law-of-attraction mindset, until I twisted all of its positives into something darker: that it was my fault her tumour killed her. Not the fact it had attached itself to an inoperable part of her brain. Not the fact that radiotherapy could only slow down its growth, not erase it altogether.

To test this, I Google ‘can I manifest my mum better’ and the second result that comes up is from the popular Reddit forum r/lawofattraction where 260k “believers in The Law of Attraction can get together and discuss their hopes, beliefs, fears, triumphs, and anything in between.”

“I’ve read about LOA (law of attraction) for years, one person writes. “But, I don’t have much success with it. I feel inspired and happy when I read success stories, but… when I visualise I didn’t have much success… Now I really want to make LOA work. I want my mom to get better. I want her to be healthy, to not be in pain and to not be hospitalised. I only have her. I would do anything for her.”

The advice this poster is given is predictable. They’re told that by saying ‘it doesn’t work for me’ they’re already setting themselves up to fail. That they have to go to sleep at night and imagine their mum being better ‘over and over again a thousand times’ until they fall asleep. Another says “miracles happen everyday for many people, why not you?! It’s in YOU!”

As I began to read the advice given, a sense of unease fluttered through my stomach. This niggling, uncomfortable feeling that arose took on a stabbing form of self-blame. What if I’d done these things? Filled my brain up as much as possible with thoughts of healing? Would she be here today? I thought that you could cherry-pick what you believed the law of attraction could magic into your life, stick to the light stuff, the Taylor Swift tickets and be realistic about the dark. But, I don’t think that’s possible. As these thoughts plagued me today, as a rational 38-year-old journalist who fact-checks thoughts and theories with science-backed studies and comments from experts, and I’m still struggling to shake them.

(me at 19, just before my mum’s diagnosis)

I clicked through to the profile of the poster, hoping for some sort of update. There was none. They had only replied to one comment saying “I try really hard to get rid of negative thoughts, but I have anxiety and [these] thoughts keep coming.”

Because the other thing the law-of-attraction glosses over is how hard it is to “just think positively” Particularly when facing something really, really rough or you have a mental health condition that makes “thinking shiny, happy thoughts” near impossible.

As, it’s been found that, while the majority of people have what’s called an optimism bias (with studies finding that people with it expect to live longer, and be healthier than average amongst other things) it’s not present in everyone. Some people have a pessimism bias, and this bias is associated with depression symptoms. Depressed people also show differences in certain brain regions when imagining (or ‘visualising’) future events.

What’s more, the law of attraction could actually be tied to OCD, depression, eating disorders, psychotic disorders and generalised anxiety. It’s all down to something known as thought action fusion, a psychological term for the belief that thoughts and actions are somehow linked together’ and that thinking something is the same as doing it, or that thoughts alone can cause things to happen (sound familiar?!)

As Javier Pardina writes in this Vice article exploring the link between mental health “a person with social anxiety might believe that because they think others are judging them, that makes it true. A person with depression might believe that because they think life isn’t worth living, that extends to reality,” they write. “In the therapy sessions that I attend each week for anxiety and OCD I spend a lot of time learning the opposite lesson, that thoughts do not equal reality. Just because I think that a surface is covered in germs… or think something bad will happen – those thoughts do not translate to real life.” Something that the law of attraction directly contradicts.

An extract from my diary when mum was ill

It's all so easy to get trapped in: this idea that our negative thoughts are influencing our reality. That it’s all our fault. I was a big believer in optimism when my mum was ill – I still am – but, of course, I had negative thoughts. I even, at times, wished that she would die: the suffering of watching her deteriorate became too much to bear. So, did my very natural thoughts lead her to die?

The answer is no. Rationally, I know this, but it doesn’t stop me from searching for the ‘miracle’ I could have missed out on. From reading (and feeling that niggling self-blame with) each and every success story on The Secret website of people who used the method to ‘cure’ cancer. (most of which also come with stories of people also seeking out new doctors and new medicines… but it’s no surprise that another criticism of the book is that it could lead to people to stop taking the drugs they need replacing them with visualisations of a miracle.)

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I also continue to put myself back in my 19-year-old brain and Google ‘can I manifest cancer away.’ The top two results are that Reddit forum again (proclaiming ‘yes you can manifest cancer but you can also manifest the cure for it’ – A CLAIM WHICH THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENCE OR MEDICAL PROOF BEHIND) and an article from a writer in early 2016, on how much The Secret has been helping her since her cancer diagnosis. It’s a nice read, she’s so positive and takes Tipp-Ex to travel documents changing “due to chemotherapy it is not advisable for her to travel” to “due to her perfect health, it is recommended that she travels.” She surrounds herself with ‘Tiggers’ saying that ‘we all have Eeyores in our life and I’ve stopped spending time with them.’ She sounds – despite everything – happy.

After reading, I then search her name.* She died in 2020, six-years after her diagnoses. The piece honouring her mentions all of the incredible things she did with her life, things I am sure her optimism and law of attraction will have led her to.

At the end of the piece about her cancer she had written, “ultimately I may not have control over the final outcome of my physical body, however doing these activities gives me control over disease mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And, most importantly, I’d prefer to leave this Earth knowing I exuded love, positivity and possibility – all of which are things needed in today’s world more than ever.”

It left me in tears. I sat at my window seat, computer on my lap, and thought of how she had managed that. How wonderful she sounded, when her family wrote tributes to her.

How unfair it all was, is, that the brutality of cancer will extinguish whole lives no matter what we do. How, at times when everything is uncontrollable, the idea of rewriting your story, is deeply appealing. How it could have made life that little bit easier, had I gone to sleep imagining mum back at her healthiest, singing to me in the kitchen. But it also could have lured me into thinking, with every hospital admission, with each coma she slipped into, that I had somehow caused it, by the angry and terrified writings in my diary.

Ultimately, the question is - even knowing all of that and seeing how both harmful and helpful law of attraction thinking can be - how much should we believe? And how possible even is it to still trust in a happy ending?

Thank you so much for reading. Please let me know what you think in the comments below. And just a note* on the writer, I deliberated including her name in the piece but as the piece begins with some (fair) criticism on the law of attraction I hated the idea of her family coming across this, reading and thinking it was directed at her. It’s not. She sounded incredible, and if you do want to read more about her life you can do so here.

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I’m a messy person. In all senses of the word. I rarely wear white, as I know I’ll stain it. My tights are almost always ripped. I wear heels that my ankles can’t handle so I fall over often. I get white wine drunk and flop over stranger’s laps. I spill. People who can wear white should avoid me. I also seem to accumulate stuff. Stuff that I have no control over, that litters its way throughout my house. I’m a charming person to live with, I suppose, but hygiene wise, less so…

I’ve been thinking about all of my things, lately. What each object might tell someone about my life, were I to no longer be here to tell them. Do others know that each bracelet stacked on my wrist represents a friendship, or moment I want to treasure? That I have multiple copies of Death Of A Salesman as I have a compulsion to buy one in each second-hand bookshop I visit? It would be so easy to look at the pile of crystals gathering dust on my bedside table and presume that I believed in their supposed power… when, actually, they remind me of writing my first book and the crystal healer influencer character I created.

The things we surround ourselves with tell our story. When my grandma died I inherited the contents of her china cabinet - porcelain birds, dogs and cats line my bookshelves. As does the figurine of a little girl, sitting with a book resting on her legs: an ornament that reminded her of my mum as a child, as she was always reading.

I used to wear my mum’s sunglasses and when, on a canal boat holiday, they flew off my head as I was jumping to land, I mourned them as if I was mourning her. We even, in an almost dark sitcom worthy moment, threw in some of her ashes after them while passers by tried not to look in our direction.

I cling to the possessions of those who I have lost, as if their presence means, somehow, the particles of that person remain with me. Each object also has an unseen, layer of value to it that I’ll never know. I know why we have the ‘Susie’ book girl ornament… but not why or where my grandma got the tiny birds, or the vole eating the apple. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if he even is a vole. The mystery of how and why we accumulate things, what they tell us about our lives, I find both romantic and intriguing.

Others aren’t like this. They don’t see the grand clearing out of the house after someone has died as particularly noteworthy. They remember people in a different way. They see stuff in a more binary way: useful or clutter. However we choose to remember people, and keep them close, is meaningful.

This was something I spoke about with Sarah Tarlow, the author of The Archaeology of Loss, and my interview with her is what you’re supposed to be reading this week. But, messy old me, realised last minute that I had told her I’d run her answers by her before publishing. And I forgot! So I’ll do that and publish the interview next week. 

But, all this talk of stuff, of mess, reminded me of an old Tumblr post I wrote. I used to write a blog, over a decade ago, about all sorts - body image, grief, confidence, trying to make it in journalism etc. This Substack is its namesake: Crocuses In The Snow. It’s cute looking back on it, so as it’s a Bank Holiday and as I messed up the planned post this week, I thought I’d republish it below. But, before I do, I’d love to know - do you have an object that belongs to someone you’ve loved and lost? If so, can you please get in touch? I have an idea for commemorating all of these trinkets somewhere. Thank you! 

Treasured Trinkets

Having just moved in with my boyfriend, I love to take pleasure in the little objects he has brought with him. Not the huge pile of books (now nicely adjoined with my collection making it look a little more intelligent) nor the tool set sprawled across the spare bedroom. But the insignificant things:

The egg-shaped pillow on our bed, the little orange ashtray, the Yorkshire tea bags and the HP brown sauce: I smile every time I see them. You may wonder why, when really, in the scheme of things, they make no difference at all.

But I know that if he weren’t here, they wouldn’t be either. 

When you think about losing someone close to you, you think of their personal traits: their laugh, how a hug from them can make you feel like everything is going to be OK or the fact that you know they will always be there if you need to speak to them.

When I discovered my Mum was going to die these are the things I thought I wouldn’t be able to live without. But now she’s gone, although I do miss all those things, it’s the tiny things that choke me, the missing items that mean she isn’t still here.

When she had a bath she’d liberally sprinkle talcum powder all over herself, leaving a Mum-shaped shadow on the bathroom floor. And chopsticks! We had so many chopsticks in the kitchen drawer, collected from Chinese restaurants all around the world. There was also her orange and black writing pens, a selection of herbal remedies (which were forced down our throats as children) and a grey fur coat hanging on the hook when you entered the house.

Slowly these things have disappeared. The coat’s stored away, the pens thrown out, the talcum powder is sitting unused on our bathroom shelf and no one seems to know where all the chopsticks have gone. 

And if you ever stumble across, say a stray pen or a pot of arnica, they look sad somehow. Dead. As they have no one to love them.

I know I could take the coat out of storage, wear it, love it and hang it on a hook. Or take a bath and dust myself with the talc. And then the items would be loved. But it wouldn’t be the same.

For the coat on the hook meant that shortly I’d be hearing a call of: “cooeee! Welcome home!” and the talc shadow meant she was in bed, reading and I could slip in beside her for a goodnight cuddle, inhaling that special Johnson’s Baby Powder scent. 

So now, in this new house, far away from the empty coat hook and lost chopsticks, I appreciate everything belonging to the one I love. 

The little orange ashtray means soon he will be home, smoking a cigarette with his arms loosely draped around me and at bedtime the egg-shaped pillow will come to life, propped behind his bed whilst he reads his latest sci-fi novel. 

So next time you’re cleaning the house and scowling about clutter, remember exactly what that mess means: that someone will be returning home soon, for you to wrap your arms round.

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It started in the supermarket. And, God! What is it with me and feeling intense emotions on standard shopping trips? (it’s happened before.) But I was suddenly very, very angry at Morrisons’ suggestion that I buy some fish to “celebrate mum.”

“Don’t forget!” the sign urged me in cursive pink font. I told the sign to fuck itself and… I must admit this could be my hatred of fish coming through. But, of course, there is another (probably more valid) reason…

It’s the thing I joke about, making strangers feel awkward at pub garden tables. It’s the thing I’ve written about so many times I’ve bored myself. It’s the thing that made me launch this newsletter.

There have been eighteen Mother’s Days since I lost her. Including the one that happened two weeks after I stood in an empty room, and touched her bloated, cold, unrecognisable and unbreathing cheek. It’s not always a miserable day. I’ve felt different emotions throughout the years – usually sad, sometimes can’t-get-out-of-bed-so but often tinted with an excessively positive and loving (in a macabre way) outlook that urges others, please, celebrate her before it’s too late. I’m glass half full! I like traditions! I love love!

This anger is new. Even the tone of this letter feels unlike others before it. But I also found myself rallying against the host of totally well-meaning emails asking me to “opt out of Mother’s Day promotional emails.” “It’s FORCING ME TO TICK A BOX SAYING ‘NO SORRY DEAD MUM’ IT ONLY FUCKING REMINDS ME” I ranted, over voicenote, to a friend. As for the promotions that have made it to my inbox? They’ve received my wrath too. Particularly the waxing salon offering me a discount if I went for a Brazilian with mum. (WHO DOES THAT?)

What’s changed? I think, as I write and consider grief weekly, I am just more aware of the impact of celebration days. As, of course, it’s not just today. Valentine’s Day can be deeply upsetting for many. As can Father’s Day. And I know that Mother’s Day doesn’t just upset those who have lost their mums. It also impacts those who have estranged or difficult relationships with them. And those who want children and can’t; those who have experienced multiple miscarriages; those who have lost their children.

It's not that I want these days to stop. I was once asked to speak on the radio (about this piece for Cosmo) and the host asked me whether I thought they should be banned. In today’s age of outrage I suspect they were rather disappointed when I shrugged and was like “nah of course not.” Not only would it be pointless, it would also be robbing people of the chance to celebrate their loved ones.

As that rush of love pushes through the anger. I stand by that it’s important to take time to celebrate the incredible people in our lives.

I just want to acknowledge that these days are hard. For one email to arrives in your inbox that says “hey, I see you.” To do that I needed the help of others, to try and capture (as much as I can) the different emotions experienced when you, for whatever reason, find the day hard.

The wonderful women below have either a difficult or estranged relationship with their mums or, like me, have lost them. Hearing their stories helped lift my anger. I also felt deeply connected to them, and their words. (if you struggle with mother’s day due to fertility issues then I have a separate letter coming up for you. I see you and I am sending love.)

Here’s what they had to say…

“I try to remember how lucky I was to have my mum” 

My mum and I were so similar. We both loved watching Gilmore Girls together, shopping and getting a new book to sit and read. She was what can only be described as a sparkly person and just had this wonderful generous, creative, kind energy. I lost her to cancer in 2013. She was ill for a couple of years and died two weeks after my 21^st birthday. 

I was in my last year of uni and just about to go into real adult life. It was so scary. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed and thinking “oh god I’m going to have to cancel all my magazine subscriptions” which is a totally ridiculous thing to think but  I thought, I’m an adult I have to figure out all of this on my own now.

She was my number one cheerleader. She supported me and my sister so much. But she was also honest. I remember when I told her I wanted to get into magazines she said “I know you don’t want to hear this but no one is looking for you, you need to put yourself in front of these people, get in the room any way you can.” And she sat with me sending out hundreds of emails for internships. I now work in the industry I dreamed of. 

There are so many things that make living without her hard. One thing that comes to mind is that I have binge eating disorder, triggered by emotional stress. She also had B.E.D when I was growing up and it’s hard not to have her to talk to about it. She understood my disordered eating so much. 

Mother’s Day has always been a mix of emotions. I used to hate it and cry, and eat my feelings watching Gilmore Girls. Sometimes I still do, avoiding social media or leaving the house where I might see people and their mums. One year though, a friend of mine invited me to spend it with her and her mum and, after that, I decided to reframe it in my mind. I see the day as an opportunity to be happy for my friends who still have their mums in their lives. I also have enjoyed watching my friends become wonderful mums to their babies. I also make sure to send my Nan flowers and a card because that’s what my mum would have done for her. Mostly I make sure to remember how lucky I was to have mine and feel grateful for the time I got with her. 

Nicole

“I donate the money I would have spent on a present to charity, so some good can come out of a bad day.”

We used to openly mock people who said “my mum is my best friend” but, there were times, when it did feel like my mum was my only friend. We didn't always see eye to eye, particularly when I was a teenager and we were experts in pushing each others buttons but I was incredibly proud to be her daughter. I lost her to cancer in 2013. 

For the first few years without her I felt completely untethered. I turned to self destruction, drinking too much and self harming for the first time in my 30s. The grief was so acute, sometimes I felt like it would kill me. Whenever anything big happens, good or bad, she's still the first person I want to tell. Everything I have achieved feels less special because she's not here to share it with. 

Mum was a big perfume fan and whenever I catch a whiff of Chanel No 5, I immediately think of her. We were big fans of trips to the cinema and I still find it tricky to go and see films where I know there will be mothers and daughters sitting together. It stings. As does going on social media on Mother’s Day, seeing the declaration of love for mums who are still here.  On the day I acknowledge any sadness and check in with friends who are also in the same boat. I donate the money I would have spent on a present to charity, so some good can come out of a bad day. 

Cath

 “I now have such a thirst for life, and I think this is what her love has transitioned into.”

There’s a bit of a cruel date alignment this year – it will be four years on Sunday (Mother’s Day) since we lost her. I was always so heavily connected to Mum, and her absence has been so intense and yet so numbing. She struggled with mental health issues, and consequently addiction, and that meant our relationship was quite complex at times. I find that as I grow older, I understand her more deeply and I struggle to come to terms with the finality of the loss. 

 I still find myself reaching for the phone to call her when I have any news to share – it’s been four years now but I still have that initial instinct! I really think the Mother-Daughter bond is so precious, and it’s hard not to feel that missing presence as I navigate through life. It breaks my heart when I think of all the things we should have experienced together. The upcoming Spring days always remind me of Mum. She loved being outside and was always so connected with nature. I feel her all around me when the world starts opening up for Spring and Summer. She was so radiant – just like the open water, and the sunshine!   

The experiences I had with Mum – good and bad – have really changed who I am and how I deal with different things. She loved so deeply and felt everything. The loss of Mum has given me an acute awareness of life, and I feel everything so much more profoundly. I now have such a thirst for life, and I think this is what her love has transitioned into.  

  Yet I still dread Mother’s Day! Each year I think I am mentally prepared, but it always triggers some unresolved emotion. I like to spend the day doing something that I knew helped bring Mum peace – usually getting outside in the elements! I’m also so lucky to have such a wonderful support system and my friends and family will go out of their way to make sure I’m okay on the day. I’ve got a couple of friends who are new Mums and that’s really heart-warming for me.  

Bethany

“Whether you have somebody to plug the gap or not, it's still a gap.”

I've been estranged from my mum for 20 years now, since I was seven. Ultimately I can't forgive her for some of the things that she has done. Whilst I understand and support (and, in fact, advocate for) the fact that everybody makes mistakes, especially and even as parents, there are some extreme scenarios in which this doesn't apply for me morally.

I think at first, I made it difficult for my mum to have a relationship with me (to be clear though: I do not blame myself) - I lived with my dad full-time and was starting to show symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I made excuses not to see her even from that young age of seven. In the end she gave up, and as I got older I felt I needed to explore this a bit. So I found her and met up with her when I was 16. That was my opportunity to ask her all the questions I had. I learned I'd never get the answers I wanted and that ultimately it would never be alright. For my recovery from PTSD, my relationship with her just couldn't happen. 

Estrangement really is a last option. It's not one you take lightly. It's when things are totally irreparable or cause such damage to you that you just can't anymore - I've thought about it a lot in adulthood and wondered back and forth for a few years but ultimately my mind never changed: the relationship did me serious damage. Families are complex and they hurt each other and some things you can forgive, some you can't. The only person who could decide that for me, was me. There is a real vibe of 'but she's your mother', 'you only get one mum' - yes, but I also only get one life, and I've really learned the importance of that. If you wouldn't put up with something from anyone else, you shouldn't put up with it from your family either. The pressure around forgiving family for things you wouldn't forgive other people for is baffling. Controversial, but look at Prince Harry.

I had a lot of healing to do as a teenager (and in my early twenties) and I used to find the estrangement really difficult. I had a lot of anger to shift. My two closest friends are very close with their mothers, and I would see them together or hear about them doing things like getting manicures or going shopping and it bothered me a lot. I also hated hearing about how ‘a hug from mum’ could heal anything. It’s a phrase said a lot and it always upset me. But as I went further and further through PTSD recovery and learned more about who I am and what I'm doing, I honestly just discovered that I'm so much better off without her.  I have a brilliant step-mum who has been around for a long time which cushions the blow nowadays somewhat, but I still know in my heart that my birth mother is out there somewhere going about her life. But ultimately, as more and more time has gone on, I don't need or want a 'hug from my mum' anymore - when you learn how to navigate the world as your own biggest advocate and supporter, you know with certainty what is right for you and what isn't. She isn't right for me and my life.

Mother's Day is bittersweet. It's a reminder of what's not there - but it's also a reminder of what is. I celebrate my Stepmother on Mother's Day because she really has played that role as best she can and has done a lot for me. I truly believe in the concept of 'chosen family'. But I do tend to avoid social media (or at least massively reduce my time on it) and remind myself that it's just. one. day. Whether you have somebody to plug the gap or not, it's still a gap. That's tricky. But the two can co-exist: gratitude for who you do have, and mourning for who/what you do not.

Hannah

As for me…

So, what do I have planned for today? It could look like a standard Sunday (gym class, roast with pals) but actually it’s playing a part in the tiny rebellion that I want to see influence my whole life. And that is celebrating all love. All the time.

I know there’s a lot of promotional info around at the moment that you can also celebrate other mother figures in your life… but I don’t have that either, in the sense of an older woman who can offer me guidance. What I do have is a multitude of friends, from all walks of life - those with children and without. A dad who is the opposite of anything I’d ever see when it comes to promotional materials about ‘happy’ families. A sister who is an incredible mum herself, and the first person I want by my side if I ever injure or hurt myself. A household made up of a kind man and a huge cat. Plus, a new one I only realise through writing this letter. I also have the love and connection to others, like those above, who understand my pain.

I plan on focusing on all that love. How lucky I am.

While… let’s face it… probably also feeling a little sad at those I see, on social media or in real life, celebrating with their mums. As Hannah says above “whether you have someone to plug the gap or not… it’s still a gap.”

Oh… and I have booked that wax. With a good friend. God help the poor waxer if she tries to challenge my validity to that discount…

What do you think? How have you spent today? Oh and if you’re into the idea of celebrating all different sorts of love, please consider buying my book - a kinda anti romcom romcom that does just that. It’s here. Or, if you love Cath’s idea of donating to charity (I ADORED THAT) can I point you in the direction of Showerbox? They’re a homeless charity I volunteer for, they provide showers (and other hygiene essentials) for those experiencing homelessness. The money donated will go directly towards those they help, or towards launching showers in other locations.

And… as, always I am sending so much love to you.

Is yours a bruise? One that’s both fascinating and frightening in equal measures, a swirl of purple, blue, meek yellow? A bruise you’re sometimes tempted to press, incite pain on yourself, and you’re not really sure why? One that’s bumped by others, sometimes unconsciously, yet at times, deliberately?

Or perhaps it’s a scar? One that’s raised and tender still? That you feel strangely proud of, for it shows what you went through? But God! At the same time don’t you wish the scar wasn’t there, that there wasn’t this constant reminder of that white hot pain? Has it has been stitched or glued? Tackily repaired in a way that makes others think the wound has healed… but it hasn’t really?

I often compare grief to physical ailments. It’s too hard to grasp otherwise, this thing that we exist within. It also makes it easier for people who, perhaps are yet to experience it intensely, to understand.

I recently had Covid (again) and found great comfort in that second blue line forming on the test. I had a solid reason to pull myself out of my daily life, say to friends, family and work, that I needed to slow down. I liked knowing what was wrong with me. I mused how wonderful it would be if we could have tests for everything - for tummy bugs, colds, headaches - something to tell us when it’s right to push on, and when it’s time to scale back. The whole ‘listen to your body’ thing is too wooly for my liking. My body is in constant war with my brain - I never know which parts of myself to obey. I’m just too conditioned to think of rest as laziness.

Looking back on my past, I can see how much of my behaviour was an automatic reflex. I was living through grief, but I was in such denial about it. If I’d been able to test myself, shove a cotton bud into my brain matter, and it come out as a warning sign - this girl is in trouble, tread carefully - would I have taken better care of myself?

I don’t know. I do know after my conversation with Mary-Frances O Connor who studies the impact of grief on the brain that it is damaging. That although grief (or indeed any mental health issue) does not show up in the form of a bruise or a scar, there are no x-rays or tests for it, it still is silently causing havoc. I also recently wrote an article for Women’s Health UK examining how grief impacts our health and our bodies. You should read the whole thing (it’s in the issue on news stands now, with P!nk on the cover) but it further confirmed this.

I interviewed experts and forced my easily-distracted mind to study complicated scientific papers and, at times, felt utterly hopeless and lost. As all the research glaringly pointed to one thing: grief fucks with our health.

Particularly when it comes to stress. Stress is felt in extremes and scientists have discovered that losing someone is the greatest life stressor we face. And while there’s not actually many studies examining the impact of grief on the body, there’s plenty on stress - it batters our immune system, elevates our blood pressure, increases inflammation in our body… (and increased inflammation contributes to almost every disease in older adulthood.)

I began to wonder at this point of my feature whether I should carry on. Surely by typing all of this out, printing this impact in a magazine read by thousands, I would be further contributing to the stress of those grieving. After all, we can’t take back what has happened to us. Is it helpful to know that, underneath our skin and bones, beyond our brains and all-encompassing emotions, there’s further damage being done? It felt hopeless, negative and pointless.

But then I began to think of the denial I once lived in. A state I created for myself, out of the fear of feeling so pathetic that I still suffered. I know I’m not alone in this, so many of us try to minimise how we’re feeling. We try to brush off how much grief has impacted our lives.

These studies that show just how impactful grief is can be comforting, in a strange way. We shouldn’t deny how deeply distressing it is.

I’m writing this from the UK where we have an extreme stiff-upper-lip, keep-calm-and-carry-on attitude to death. When I went to a death cafe at a music festival I learned we aren’t alone in this either. It’s typical for employers to only offer us five days off, in the wake of a bereavement. I know many people who have taken funerals as holiday. For something that impacts our health, both mentally and physically, from top-to-toe? We need to get better at discussing what grief does to us, how long it lasts, how it isn’t something that we ‘get over’ after a few big cries in a black dress.

We shouldn’t have to relate our grief (or indeed any other mental health issue) to something visible and physical in order for it to be taken seriously. I shouldn’t be wishing for a test for it, just so I can grant myself permission to speak out on what I need.

When I was researching the feature I so wanted some scientist to have discovered a cure. Some form of medicine that, like knocking back a shot of Night Nurse, would take the pain away. I did discover that there are some steps you can take (including embracing ways to keep the person you lost close to you) but mostly what I learned is that talking about grief, how painful it truly is, doesn’t add to the stress. It simply tells us we need more support, we can’t just carry on as we did before.

If you’re feeling destroyed by grief that’s natural. You’re going through something monumental. These studies and conversations are our x-ray, our tests, they help show us - and those around us - that though the pain isn’t a bruise or a scar, it’s there and it’s oh-so-real.

How did you find grief impacted your body? Your health? Let me know in the comments, I’m sure you’ll be far from alone in feeling that way. And please do pick up a copy of Women’s Health magazine - I think it’s really important that we keep paying for journalism, and supporting publications and writers. That also applies to this newsletter so if you can become a paid subscriber it would help me do so much more research. If you can’t afford it right now, that’s OK, please do share my work with others so I can reach more people. Thank you!

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Every year she comes with the crocuses.

Time constantly confuses me. I know it’s boring small-talk fodder but really, how is it almost March? But it is. It’s almost March. It’s that time of year where people are both hopeful, and wary. It’s Fool’s Spring. Don’t trust the sunshine, a beast is on its way.

It’s the time of year she died.

Except, back then, in 2005, we were in the beast. I don’t mean that metaphorically. Maybe I do. The day I went to view her body The Meadows were covered in a thick white sheet; a bunch of children pelted snowballs at me. I wondered what would happen if I turned around and yelled, “my mum has just died.” They’d probably have just laughed.

I had begun to notice the flowers. The crocuses. I’d first spotted them the day before, staring out the hospice window – sunshine yellow and fighting through the snow. They soothed me. And there they were again, clustered around trees, the harsh weather no match for them.

A year later I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t know why. It was so confusing. I wasn’t sick, yet every time I swung my legs out of the duvet to try, I felt consumed by the urge to pull them back in. I was being held in bed, something invisible holding me down. I cried all day and it was only later that I considered the date. Her anniversary.

One year - and I cannot remember why, - I laid flowers for her in the middle of Hyde Park roundabout. I think I had got stuck on that terrifyingly confusing intersection and I had wanted to place them elsewhere but I was too exhausted. I needed to do it right that very second. What I can remember is the cars whizzing around, the navy blue sky, my husband’s solid chest as he held me.

I used to think it was silly. How much this day meant. But eventually I began to sink into it. I thought, if I’m going to feel miserable then I may as well make something of it. Use it wisely. It began, at first, as my day where I “allowed” myself to feel sad. I was running away from grief, and the 24^th of February, was my rest day. I’d throw myself into all the things I had been avoiding – I’d read her obituary, I’d look at photos of her, I’d sit and try to conjure up memories of her, finding so often that I couldn’t.

Over time, I became more comfortable in the longitude of grief. I began to learn that missing her, years on, didn’t make me weak. That my natural emotions didn’t need to be hidden away, displayed only in secret once a year. Then, the day became something else – a chance to celebrate her. Recently I’ve enjoyed going on long walks, looking at all the springtime flowers – yes, the crocuses but also the daffodils, the snow drops… The ones she loved.

Yet it’s the crocuses that have begun to represent so much. The way they fling out a blanket of joy, over an otherwise unremarkable piece of grass. It doesn’t matter if we’re in Fool’s Spring, or grasped in the arms of a Beast they’ll show their heads. They are bright warriors and they remind me, not only of her strength, but of my own. Of all I’ve been through, all I’ll go through, how I’ll survive.

This year I wasn’t able to see them. I was stuck in bed, much like that very first year. Only this time, it wasn’t an invisible sadness holding me in place, but day 15 of COVID (this strain has hit me badly). I wasn’t able to go for my walk, I wasn’t able to do very much at all. It wasn’t a good day.

But, between the coughs and the crying, tiny doses of joy were being delivered to me. I’d asked on Instagram if people could send me pictures of the Spring flowers they’d seen, and soon, my phone was filled with her. She was blooming beside a Loch, far up North Scotland, she was in all the London parks... She was alive in my mind, and she was alive in the minds of others. Even those who had never met her.

I can’t quite capture how much all these photographs meant to me. I’m still foggy, floating within my virus mind. Microsoft AutoCorrect keeps telling me off and everything I type sounds glib. I’m also slightly worried I’ve just swallowed a spider… but that could be my cough telling tall tales.

The point I want to make is that, I know anniversaries are hard. Sometimes all you can do is just push through the day, make it to the other side. But, if you can, try and do something to remember them. Even something small. I used to just order a Domino’s and get a lottery ticket, as that was something we did together when dad was away.

It turns out, I wasn’t doing something silly (I’m beginning to learn that whenever I tell myself I’m being silly… I’m normally being sensible) but I was actually ENGAGING IN HEALTHY GRIEVING PRACTICE! I recently spoke to a whole load of grief experts for an article in Women’s Health (I think it’s the one out now, with P!nk on the cover but I’ve been too ill to check) and through that I learned that doing little rituals, whether on an anniversary or not, helps give some control back to us, the grievers, and that helps us process it in a healthier way. (I wrote about that more here)

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I really love that, all this time, my brain was guiding me towards something healthy. Even if I didn’t realise it. Even when I told myself it was silly.

I’m going to stop typing this now, as it feels like about a million pieces in one and the editor within me is screaming at me to tidy it up. But the deep inner voice within me, the one that also told me each year to mark her somehow, even when I didn’t know the date, is also telling me to go back to sleep. I better listen to it. As it seems it’s never been wrong before…

Thank you so much to everyone who sent pictures. I love them so much and am going to include some of them below. Hopefully you don’t come after me for photographer’s rights, or money! As I don’t have any! But if you’d like me to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, I have some fun benefits coming up for paid subscribers. Thank you! Wow, turns out being ill makes it slightly easier to ask people to become paid. I normally just pop the button in.

It’s a strange sort of silence. We’re in central London, Soho, on a Saturday afternoon so, rationally, I know it can’t be silent. There will be the whoop of a hen party, the blare of a car horn… But I can’t hear anything. I can feel the hammering of my chest. The breath of those around me. 

Over the weekend, I stood shoulder to shoulder with my best friend and hundreds of strangers. We were attending one of the many Brianna Ghey vigils, standing together for the murdered teenager. Her friends say the 16-year-old loved pink, gaming and “was so proud of being trans.” In her picture, the one now known around the world, she looks like a wonderful person, in oval glasses and a rich, full smile. 

I’ve had these words swimming around my head all week. I’ve been reluctant to put them down on paper. I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to take a tragedy and create ‘content’ around it. Or that I’m trying to take up space on a matter when other trans voices should be the centre. I don’t like to use other’s blood as ink for my pen. 

But, more than all of that, I wanted to do something, however tiny, to let the trans community know how loved they are. I want to add my words to the outpouring of sadness and solidarity on social media right now. If I stay quiet it might look like I don’t care. When the opposite is true. 

I’ve often lived with a heightened sense of fear. The small buzz in my head that tells me “something bad is going to happen.” It’s amplified, always, when transphobia in the UK is rife. You could say it’s been going off like a klaxon recently. I try to squash it down, and not place that fear on my dad’s shoulders. But it’s there. This fear that she will be attacked, for simply being who she is. 

Of course, attacks come in many forms. She once arrived at my house in London, her phone lighting up with jabs and swipes on Twitter. She’d been named one of Scotland’s coolest women, and the TERFs of the internet didn’t like it. They bitterly name-called, piled on. Took this achievement and soured it. That day, dad said to me, “for the first time in a long time I looked in the mirror and saw a man staring back at me.” Their words stripped her of her identity. There have been other incidences like this, denials and misgendering and not allowing her to use the right toilet, pointless incidences of cruelty. I won’t go into them. I don’t like to think of her reading them, reliving them. 

These attacks are awful, I don’t want to undermine them. But that fearful buzz in my bones? The call that I dread? Physical attack. Statistics have long confirmed these fears. Last week’s news cemented them in the back of my throat. Brianna’s family received the call that no one should have to receive. 

When I heard the news of Brianna’s murder, I tried to kid myself it might not be a hate crime. That it could be something else. We won’t know until the trial in July but, considering the brutal bullying Brianna was experiencing in school it seems incredibly likely.

I feel this strange mix of wanting to say that her death has to have been a one-off, that it can’t be linked to the growing transphobia in the UK right now. Denial is often needed as a form of protection. While also screaming, look, look this is the reality of your poisonous printed words, this is the reality of your strange, cult-like Twitter TERF wars. Please, something has to change. 

The first feeling, of wanting to minimise this, I know is impossible. I can’t minimise a tragedy. It would also be cruel of me, seem as if I’m trying to deny a very valid, very real fear. But I feel this way is because I don’t want anyone to live in fear. How I feel will be tenfold for the trans community, for their own lives, their own existences. This murder, the reality that transphobia has reached this dizzying, terrifying peak could have them staying in the safety of indoors, of the closet. Stopping them from living their lives. The knock-on impact of this tragedy, rippling through the community. 

I can’t take that fear away. I want to. But I can’t. What I can share is some words of my dad. Words that I tattoo across my own anxieties, when the panic arises. 

One day, after not wanting to burden dad with my worries, I opened up to her, asking: “are you not scared?” And she replied…

“Yes, but I spent fifty years hiding my true identity, pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Living like that, the anguish it caused, believe me… that was so much scarier than now. I’m no longer being attacked from the inside. I’m happy within myself.”

It’s deeply sad that this is what I use to comfort myself. That’s not a trade anyone should have to make - hide who you are and face mental torment, or become your true self and face attack from strangers. But I’m sharing it now as I think it showcases how much strength, and how much beauty the trans community have. How strong and beautiful and brave Brianna was. 

After the vigil’s two minute silence, pigeons causing chaos in an otherwise still, grey sky, one of the speaker’s urged us to turn around and tell a stranger we loved them. My heels sinking into the grass I swivelled left, then right, hugged people I don’t know, will never see again. Told them I loved them. 

I do. I so do. 

It’s been hard to write this letter, as really, what use can my words bring? When hope feels impossible to find. But all I can say, all I can try to say, to the trans community right now is harness that strength and beauty inside. It holds so much power. 

And I, along with so many other allies, will be beside you. 

I love you. 

I can remember the mustard yellow. How the walls, floor, even ceiling seemed to be awash with the mucky colour. How I was sitting, in a thin, paper hospital gown, wondering if anyone was ever coming for me. How afraid I was.

I was in the bowels of Inverness hospital, my legs hanging awkwardly from the wheelchair I’d been placed in. The pain I had been experiencing, so sharp and consuming it was as if I had existed within it, had dulled to a threatening, low twinge. I wanted to pull down my mask: it was damp from where I’d been biting it and there was no one around. But I was scared that, any minute, someone would appear to whisk me back to my bed. That I’d be told off.

The night before, around midnight, I’d heard the nurses whisper about me. They’d been saying how selfish I was to be here, in a Scottish hospital, from London (the word London dripping with germs) during a pandemic. One came to my defence, pointed out that the borders had opened, that I was allowed to travel, that I was visiting family. “Still,” one said. “Still, it’s about personal choice isn’t it? I wouldn’t have come.”

Perhaps this entire conversation didn’t happen. It could well have been morphine-induced paranoia, a night terror etched from my own brain, during a time when we all lived in a frenzied confusion of what behaviour was right, and what was wrong.

I remember I felt very alone. No one was allowed to visit me and I’d decided that the staff had concluded that I was immoral, and infectious. I felt immoral and infectious. There was very little that could have pulled me out of my woe-is-me state.

And then, the small plug in radio behind me, suddenly, switched half-way through a song to another one…

“You’ve got the love, I need to see me through.”

With it, I was back in that emptying night-club. Approaching 5am, a hand-written letter clutched in my hand and being poked over the DJ booth, until it was under his nose. It was New Year’s Eve, Hogmanay, and I had a glitter encrusted eye patch on my face and a double sided note begging the DJ to play You’ve Got The Love, the Florence and The Machine version, because…

Sooner or later in life, the things you love you lose, but you’ve got the love I need to see me through.

I knew this to be true, I explained, in my wavy scrawl. I was surrounded - that night - by the seven people who had seen me through. My best friends, hugging me, dancing, novelty eyelashes sticking to their cheeks.

My mum loved Hogmanay. Each year she’d print out the lyrics to it, hand them out on Calton Hill, just before the bells, to ensure that everyone got them right.

That night when we sang Auld Lang Syne my best friend squeezed my hand. She knew who I was thinking of, how I was feeling in that moment, her simple movement let me know that she was here. She did it again this year. She’s done it every year since I lost mum.

She’s always here. They’re always here. Their love, along with that of my family and the other loves I’ve collected along the way, got me through that time.

The same song juddering out, in that lonely corridor, was surely a sign from somewhere that I’d be alright. And I was. I am. The next day I was discharged from hospital, I eventually got the surgery I needed to free me from pain. I had, I have, so much strength given to me by the people around me. That song, and that lyric, will always remind me of that.

Here are a few other lyrics that, I think, speak to my grief, or have done in the past. What song lyrics speak to yours? Let me know in the comments…

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Am I sweating… Or are these tears on my face? Should I be hungry? I can't remember the last time that I ate. Call someone, I need a friend to talk me down. But one foot wrong and I'm gonna fall… P!nk, One Foot Wrong

This was how I felt hiding my grief from everyone. By day, I’d be in my room, sleeping, ignoring the mouldy bowls of uneaten noodles gathering around me, in a fit of sadness that I blamed on boys and hangovers. By night, I’d have covered myself in a cloud of Charlie Red, pulled a smile onto my face and was laughing, joking and pretending everything was fine. I felt as though, any minute, my facade would slip and I’d be consumed by grief… That once I fell there would be no way out for me. I was hiding, yes from others around me, but also from myself.

Anyway, turns out the song is about a bad acid trip! But hey, I felt very understood by it at the time. (I also once got to tell P!nk about the time I saw her, at a festival on my own, and how I am convinced my mum’s spirit stood beside me during her set. Or at least I tried. I was splutter crying so much. She was so kind to me.)

And it's you when I look in the mirror. And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own… Don't leave me here alone… U2, Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own

I went through a short period, just before mum died, where I couldn’t visit her in the hospice. I don’t like to talk about it, it’s a memory I’ve pushed deep down within me. But I listened to this song, which I think must have been out around the time, on repeat. I was so fucking afraid of the day she would eventually die, her face was everywhere I looked. Except she wasn’t in front of me, except I wasn’t holding her hand. I could have. But I was too frozen with fear.

And the only solution was to stand and fight. And my body was bruised and I was set alight. Florence + The Machine, Only If For A Night

If you can’t hold on, hold on. The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

So, turns out that The Killers lyrics are ‘if you can hold on, hold on’ but I always thought it was can’t - and I’ll continue to sing my version (ditto with ‘slam your body down the wine is all around, in Spice Girls Wannabe). Essentially both of these reminded me that - even if you’re going through something that feels literally impossible to live through, and you feel like you can’t hold on… You somehow do. You’re bruised, charred, in physical pain… Yet you’re still there. Somehow. Fighting. How do we do it? I don’t know. We just do.

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And I complained the whole way there. The car ride back and up the stairs. I should've asked you questions I should've asked you how to be. Asked you to write it down for me. Should've kept every grocery store receipt. 'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me. Taylor Swift, Marjorie

How do we truly appreciate the people we love? How can we ensure that, when they’re gone, we don’t regret missing moments, regret not asking the right questions…

This entire song reminds me of my grandma (so much so it inspired this poem). As a teenager there were so many moments, with both her and mum, that I was a heel-dragging brat. I’d resent having to go to the shop for her, or go and see the things she liked on holiday. Of course I regret that now. Certain spoiled words, and actions, creep up and hiss at me on dark days. But how can I use that regret to ensure I don’t make the same mistake again? We’re all so consumed by ourselves… yet how do we stop?

I don't want to feel safe. I don't want to feel free. All I feel is nothing. And right now that's all I can be.

I don't want to be loved. I don't want to be understood. I don't want to be around when the vibes are good. I don't want to feel safe. I don't want to feel free. All I feel is nothing. And right now that's all I can be For Those I Love, The Myth/I Don’t

I came across this album quite recently - and, for me, it encapsulates the raw, all-your-skin-seems-to-have-been-torn-off-but-no-one-has-noticed stage of grief. So much so it can be quite hard to listen to. This lyric, in particular, showed me that it was actually really natural, and normal, to have spent many years in that numbness. Everything I came across was about healing, getting back to normal, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to remain in the nothingness. Eventually, with time, I broke out of it. I don’t feel this way any more, it can come every now and then, but I think that’s OK.

I wish you never had to go. Wish you could meet my wife, wish you could see my life. Willie Burke Sherwood, Killer Mike

I believe this is why we carry our grief with us, why we will never truly ‘heal’ from it. As there are always going to be moments missed. People that they’ll never meet. My husband never met my mum. (I think she’d have loved him.) I didn’t get the chance to meet my husband’s dad. That tears at me, sometimes. For me (and this may not work for others) the only way I can get through this is to sit, and listen, to the small voice inside me that tells me mum is somewhere in the ether, somewhere inside of me.

(for more on that thought, here’s the time I went to see a medium)

Wow! I actually only meant that newsletter to be a short one, as I’ve been so busy with an external project. Let me know what lyrics help you… Perhaps I could make a Spotify playlist…

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I used to lie. A very specific, strange lie that I doubt anyone will have clocked. It wasn’t that Martin Compston once hit on me, or that Ant and Dec personally gave me a cuddly toy in the shape of a spotty dog (though those are both strange, specific lies that yes, forgive me, I’ve told.) 

It was that I cried at television adverts. I’d find a way to work this lie into conversation, aping how I’d seen others, mostly women, confess to how emotional they were. They’d tell people how easily they could shed tears. “I even cried the other day at a sofa advert” they’d say, giggling. I’d copy them, almost word-for-word. “Can you believe I cried at a sofa advert the other day?” I said to a crush (one of many) one night. I can’t remember how he reacted. That wasn’t the point. I suppose, at the time, I thought it was. That I was building this fictional version of myself to impress him, and others. 

I can see now I created a persona out of confusion. Out of shame. I wanted to be vulnerable, feminine. I was Pinocchio, wooden and desperate to just be a real girl.

I had been thrown into a grief that was both unexpected in its sudden sharp circumstance but also in how it displayed itself. I didn’t cry. I was numb. I pulled pints in rainbow jumpers, I learned how to listen and smile through a fog.

Movies and TV shows had kidded me into thinking that loss involved screaming, endless tears, being carried - light, delicate, all bones - in the arms of a tough, yet sensitive man. I wanted that. Instead I was this super noodle stained, plonk-of-a-person comprised of fake laughter and an ability to outdrink most people at a party. I was going against what I thought it meant to grieve, particularly what I thought it meant to grieve as a woman. Did this make me uncaring? Hard? Did it mean I didn’t love her as much as I should have? I wanted to feel sad. But I didn’t. So… I lied. 

One of my visions for this newsletter is to apply my skills as an investigative journalist to grief. To find out what trauma does to us - and why.  I’ve learned that not crying in the wake of a bereavement is incredibly common, particularly in cases like mine, where the person you’ve lost had a terminal illness. A trauma that came in slow motion, rather than a sudden explosion. It’s known as anticipatory grief. Then there’s delayed grief, when you muddle along organising, keeping busy, nodding as people say how “strong” you’re appearing but something (usually an anniversary, or birthday) triggers you into a state of varying grief ‘symptoms’ which include anger, fatigue, sleeplessness, the list goes on… 

There are lots of these different types of grief, scattered across the internet. Lists of emotions you might be experiencing, things you might notice in yourself. But some of these bullet points are so vague, including “sadness”, “loneliness.” Almost as if these states of emotions are easily recognised, and all consuming. When, as Suchandrika Chakrabarti wrote recently in her guest post, “emotions rarely exist on their own, but spill into each other and mix like paint on a palette.”

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I could also recognise myself in some ‘symptoms’ and not in others. It began to remind me of the days when I’d search for where I was in the “seven stages of grief” - as if it was a map I had to follow, and somehow, I’d got lost. I felt a failure for that, even though I didn’t actually want to reach its destination of ‘acceptance.’ 

The seven stages of grief has, now, been largely debunked. Its creator Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (who, by the way, wrote the stages based on people who were dying, not on those grieving) has been praised for opening up research surrounding grief, but this particular theory has been criticised. As, when it comes to a state of being so extreme, so mind and life-altering, there can be no route. We can’t check our way through a list, as if grief is homework to be completed. It doesn’t work that way. The seven stages made people, myself included, feel as if there was a ‘right’ way to grieve. Is typifying grief just another iteration of this? 

I don’t doubt that these websites are useful. Many of them are written and run by therapists and grief experts. I am neither of these things. And, at first, I did find it helpful to assign a label to who I was back then. I think I was in a state of ‘avoidance’ grief, and I’ve carried the patterns of that with me since. It’s also worth bearing in mind I’m exploring all of this years after my initial loss, perhaps if I’d been able to pinpoint my grief back then I’d find it so comforting, I’d be able to say to people around me “look, this is where I’m at. Please accept me, or try to help me - if you even know how.”

And it’s here that, personally, I think the real problem lies. It’s not in the stages, or the types (as I really admire those who work in the field and who have identified the different types) but instead in the desperate need to be able to tell others that we’re normal.

To tell ourselves that we’re doing OK. Why do we demand this of others? Of ourselves? Why do we try to slot everything neatly into categories and then beat ourselves up when we’re not who we expected to be?

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I keep thinking of that seventh stage, the destination on the map I should have torn up. Acceptance. As, I do wish I could have found it back then. Not acceptance of her death, for I saw that as shrugging her away, nonchalantly pretending she didn’t have an impact. But instead an ability to accept who I was. Being able to see that emotions are as sloppy, messy and stained as that bowl of super noodles. That I didn’t have to be anyone else. That there was no need to lie. Acceptance.

I’d absolutely love to know what you think! Have you found the different types of grief useful? What resources online have really helped you? Also, I’m feeling slightly self conscious that this newsletter has been a bit me, me, me recently - I’ve got another brave, beautiful guest post next week and a few good interviews lined up, so bear with me and thank you, as always, for your support.

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