Description
Book SynopsisWhen Lizzie Pickering's young son Harry died in 2000, she set out on a journey to understand how she could survive her grief and learn to live with it. In When Grief Equals Love, she details the lessons she’s learned from her own experiences and those of others, who share their thoughts in this moving and tender book.
Lizzie opens her diaries, written in the early years after Harry’s death, revealing her observations on the grief of his siblings and family, what helped and what hurt. Revisiting those diaries, she reflects on time passing, and what has changed for her and her family since.
Lizzie looks at the myth of closure, survivor’s energy and cumulative grief – when life experiences pile up and become too much to bear. She includes interviews with bereaved friends, who share their own insights, and she provides a toolkit based on what has helped her and what she recommends to those she now helps with grief guidance.
In most lives, unfortunately, grief and loss are inevitable. But living with grief can still be living. This book is for those going through grief and anyone who might need to support them. There are no easy answers, but nobody should have to cope alone.
Trade Review
- 'Profoundly moving – every bereaved parent should read this' Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go
- 'This is an extraordinary record of the real-life, lived experience of the most raw grief ... Full of the most precious insight into how we survive and ultimately thrive, despite the great losses life leaves us with' Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other
- 'This book will help to navigate a path through the wilderness of loss, and bring comfort and light to those who have given up hoping for either' Juliet Stevenson CBE, actress
- 'Eloquently describes the rawness of grief but also gives the reader hope and demonstrates that there are so many ways for you to experience and live through loss. I will be recommending it to all my colleagues' Adrian Quest, Acute Liaison Nurse, Royal Cornwall Hospitals' Trust
- 'Sensitive, honest, multifaceted, complicated and revealing ... Will be really helpful to people who want to understand more about grief, perhaps their own and in supporting others' Dr Renee McCulloch, Paediatric Palliative Care Consultant, Great Ormond Street Hospital
- 'Lizzie's diary extracts will stay with me for some time ... A gift for all navigating the peculiar world of grief' Amber Jeffrey, Founder, The Grief Gang
- 'Lizzie has lived a life consecrated by the death, helping others to bear the weight of bereavement, and her book is the best guide I know to befriending the bereaved. She is bracingly practical: keep inviting them. Keep saying: 'Shall we have a coffee?' Let them talk. Make food. Do the washing-up. Turn up with a cake' Charles Foster, TLS
