Eight years ago, my beautiful sister died from brain cancer. It was a tragic and devastating loss and it shaped both my life and my life’s purpose in so many ways. The fact that she died on my birthday brought with it some practical considerations and because I know this scenario is more common than we might think, I thought I would share a little bit about what it has meant for me. Hours after my sister’s death, while we were still drafting the message that would be shared with family and...

You've lost someone you love. In the months that follow, alongside your grief, you notice that some of your friendships don't feel the same anymore. Friendships change for many reasons once grief arrives. For some people, having gone through the most painful and challenging experience of their life so far, they don’t feel the same sense of connection to a particular friend. Grief has a way of influencing which relationships you have the time, energy and emotional capacity to invest in and...

As I sit to express my thoughts on the book “Resilient Grieving” by Dr Lucy Hone, I’m reminded of my initial hesitation about this book. Even after I had purchased it, it sat on my bookshelf for a while before I read it. I think my hesitation was based on the use of the word “resilient” in the title in a book about grief. Sometimes the term resilient is used in the context of “being strong” or “bouncing back from adversity” and I was hoping the book didn’t lean into a narrative that pressured...