Travels With My Son

This photo was taken by my husband Adam six weeks later, when we escaped to Cornwall to seek peace, space, and the ability to breathe deeply again. The ground had metaphorically been ripped from beneath us, and whilst we were surprised but relieved to find we could still remember how to smile, and even laugh on occasion thanks to the undeniable joy that our son had brought us in our short time together and that we found great comfort in sharing and re-sharing with each other, our hearts were completely broken and we were in the very deepest trenches of grief. This catastrophic, devastating loss changed every atom of our lives, rewriting the entire future we had planned together. In fact it wasn’t anything as neat and reliable as rewriting. At the time it felt like it was simply smashed into oblivion.

This wasn’t my first introduction to profound grief, but it was certainly the worst. I had first been thrown head first into deep grief five and a half years earlier when my father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly just a few days before my 30th birthday, leading me to grieve both my beloved parent and what should have been the start of a new and exciting era of my life. Instead of confidently leaping into my thirties, I found myself reading my father’s eulogy in front of the people who cared about him most, then stumbling down a dark path of emotional and physical pain alongside chronic anxiety as I battled with deep grief for what felt like the longest time. I did eventually emerge from the darkness though, learning a lot about myself and developing some effective coping mechanisms for the inevitable moments when my grief would take me by surprise, as well as the times when I knew to expect it.

Navigating life after the death of my son has been something else altogether however – a visceral and indescribable confusion of pain, love and bittersweet joy, alongside a complete and absolute loss of purpose.

But I am a writer, talker, sharer and educator by nature and profession, and seven months after my life changed forever, I realised what my new purpose was. I wanted to take the words, emotions and experiences that had been swirling around my mind for months, even years, and see if I could use them to help or inspire others, as well as myself. 

So Travels With My Son was born from the ashes of my loss. 

What is the purpose of Travels With My Son?

Travels With My Son was started as a place for me to share the many words and ideas that had been stuck inside me for a long time. But my hope is that it will also inspire anybody who visits, as well as providing some comfort, solidarity and support to anybody who needs it.

I feel so strongly that part of our son Stewie’s legacy can be to help other people, spreading the gift of his short but significant life beyond us, because there are so many ways that he improved our lives – most significantly exponentially increasing my capacity to love and care. So now I feel that his life and story could help grow awareness of the different faces of loss and grief, normalise difficult feelings and conversations about and beyond grief, help advocate for bereavement and grief awareness, training and education in all walks of life, and even remind us to prioritise our mental health and the things in life that are truly, deeply important. 

Back when my father died I didn’t really understand grief, and I had no idea what it meant to be kind to myself. Maybe you or someone you know are experiencing this now. If I had known then what I do now, I think I could have been spared a lot of anguish. But we usually learn from our experiences, and so I hope that perhaps somebody might learn something from mine. 

So I also want to use our story and my voice to explore what it can mean to really live with grief; to travel, create, home-make and build, nurturing ourselves as we remember and honour our loved ones. I want to show that even though it takes time, it can still be possible to live a life full of moments of joy, happiness, peace, inspiration, pride and accomplishment, even whilst we grieve deeply for those who can’t experience those moments with us. 

I’m not here to sugar coat loss or grief however. They are just as awful and as painful as they seem, and cannot and should not be denied or bypassed. They are not something we will ever ‘get over’, they will never disappear. But this makes me even more determined to share my personal experiences in the hope that they might spark a glimmer of light in somebody’s darkness, to show that life can still (or eventually) be good, even when we are faced with deep grief and intense pain. I also must acknowledge that what I write is based on my own unique experiences and so not everyone will have the same outlook as me, and perhaps what I say won’t resonate with every individual. But still, I hope that by sharing my own stories I can offer even one person a guiding light, like I needed after my son died. Because sometimes when we have experienced profound loss, it can feel like only others who have also experienced profound loss will ever come remotely close to understanding our pain, or could ever be a beacon of light for us. So I hope that we might be that beacon of light for somebody.

If you’re reading this because you are grieving, I am just so sorry. I hope that you will find some solace, comfort, guidance or inspiration in these pages. My greatest wish is that you will find ways to be kind to yourself and prioritise your wellbeing as you allow your life to slowly grow around your grief – and trust me, eventually it will. Above all, please know you are never alone, despite how isolating grief can feel.

But if you aren’t here for the grief bits, I hope you’ll stick around to find some inspiration to try something creative, finally tackle that DIY project, test some new recipes or incorporate new ideas and habits into your daily life. I do hope you’ll take some time to learn about grief though, in case you or someone you care about need support one day. The smallest gesture can make the biggest difference. 

Thank you so much for being here.