Travels With My Son

I’m not an expert in grief, but I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it as I’ve experienced several bereavements, from the somewhat ‘expected’ yet still deeply painful losses, to the utterly reality-changing ones. The first loss that altered my life irreversibly and threw me headfirst into deep grief was when my father died suddenly at the age of 61, just days before my 30th birthday. Then five and a half years later, my husband and I were forced to somehow rebuild our lives after the completely devastating stillbirth of our beautiful son Stewie, which changed the entire trajectory of our lives and eventually prompted me to start Travels With My Son. 

Despite what society and the workplace sometimes make us feel, grieving is a completely natural and healthy reaction to loss, and a normal part of life – one that we will likely all be faced with at some point. Our capacity to grieve is a huge part of what makes us human, and a way that we honour and stay connected to our loved ones. It isn’t something we can sidestep or ‘get over’. It doesn’t go away and I’m not sure it shrinks – just like our love doesn’t. Rather, we get more accustomed to carrying, acknowledging and honouring it, and eventually, despite the pain, our lives do continue to grow around it. 

So here I share my stories of loss and grief, explore what grief is and our relationship to it, and the varied and often unseen, and unrecognised, impacts it has on our lives. I share my thoughts on ways we can survive the early days, then continue to build meaningful lives around our new lifelong companion – living with grief, rather than after it. 

Some of these stories are intensely personal accounts from my life, and some are more general. But every single one of them seeks to acknowledge that all grief, and the ways we experience and honour it, are completely and absolutely ‘normal’. If you recognise yourself in any of these words, please know you are not alone.