Unintentional Poet

Today is Grace’s birthday again.     Many of you who read my blog (thank you for doing so!) will know that I write something, each year, to mark the date and celebrate her life.    For the last couple of years, I have written reflections and poems and thoughts, as a cathartic process, to help me to face this date and remember. The angel we hang on our tree, to remember Grace This year, remembering feels different again.    I mentioned, in last year’s post, the counselling I had been through and how much it had helped.    I am, by nature, sceptical of these things, until I see real ‘proof.'  I’m never entirely sure how to measure change and progress in matters of the heart and mind, but I know that, eight years on, the pain is less than it was at seven and six and five, so I keep going, trusting that healing does take time and energy and that it does get easier, in barely measurable increments. This year feels different for a coup...

It is almost 11 weeks now, since I sat with my brother-in-law, holding my sister’s hand, as she slipped away, after an intense and brave battle with a cancer that wouldn’t let go.   We have reached that point where life returns to normal for everyone else, while we wobble and teeter, trying our hardest to find a new ‘normal’ that feels nothing like normality at all.  Walking through treacle and wading in waste-high mud are the only clichéd analogies that can half-represent how some days feel, how even the ordinary things – the school run, a pile of washing up, a social occasion – can feel like it takes every ounce of strength to face. What does grief really look like?  How should it look?  In the times we live in, a lot is understood about grief.  Psychologists have researched it, books have been written about it, counsellors are trained to help people talk about it and move through it well.  We recognise the truth that no two people experienc...