Grief Sofa Podcast
I have to confess that I was a little anxious but also very honoured to be asked, by Lucy Dennis and Alice Williams, to take part in my very first podcast interview for their podcast, The Grief Sofa. Alice and Lucy became close friends through their shared experience of grief. They met online through Lets Talk About Loss (https://letstalkaboutloss.org), an organisation for bereaved young people across the UK from 18 to 35 years old. Lucy’s father Rob was a chef in Oxford before he died of cancer in June 2020. Alice’s mother Cathy died unexpectedly in 2013 and sadly her father died suddenly in 2019. They found that talking about their loss and hearing others talk about their grief helped them, and so they set up The Grief Sofa where they invite special guests to tell their stories.
I had been invited to talk about my grief and how life has changed for me and our two young daughters since my late husband Simon’s death in 2016 at the age of 38 years old.
Recorded in Dying Matters Week, we discussed how the campaign for this year had been “In A Good Place”. Although “good” might seem unachievable, I believe that it is possible to be in the best place possible. The podcast explains about my story and how my ‘Be Strong’ ethos and the experience of the single parent mode I went into as a forces wife when my husband was on operations helped me to keep going in the darkest of times. I spoke of my inner conflict between trying to hold it together for the children whilst not bottling up my feelings forever.
In the podcast I laugh with Lucy and Alice about how I thought I was coping well because I believed that I was ahead of people in the grief journey, but how the reality was that everybody except me knew that I was struggling to cope. I mention how at times I felt as though I was living in two parallel universes. A part of me knew that Simon had died, and yet, the girls and I had lived so much of our lives with him away, the solo-parenting felt almost normal at times. It left me feeling as though our existence of a smaller family of three was familiar but not familiar at all.
What you might like to hear in this podcast:
Importance of talking – it can feel easy to bury our head in the sand and avoid talking about death, but I explain why it is important for me to share my story, my legal experience and my interest in mental health to help others. Afterall, death is the only certain thing happening to all of us.
When the reality of death hit me – I talk about when the reality of my broken heart hit me and how I felt both physically and mentally.
My darkest days – These where when I was trying to live our old life, but it no longer fitted the new life we had found ourselves in and when my heart felt stuck between a desire for the old life but I knew that a new life had to be found.
How unique time is – Why I think that the time it takes to learn to live with grief is different for all of us.
My biggest trigger point – Why seeing bereaved children or partners still brings it all back for me and the meaning behind my ‘grief song’.
How physical heartbreak was for me – I had no idea I would feel grief in my body. At times I literally felt broken, physically and emotionally. It would start in my chest as a tightness, then become a solid block in my throat that felt as though I was being strangled, finally, but not always, tears would pour down my cheeks. Every part of me seemed to be hurting, mirroring the hurt inside.
How my girls have been the best thing – Why my heart bleeds for my girls’ grief but how the girls have been my life saving raft in the storm of loss, as well as how important it feels to me to keep my husband’s memory alive for them.
My Achilles heel – What breaks me daily and how I manage to deal with it.
Secondary losses – Why five years later the biggest struggle I have had is the impact of the secondary losses, such as our military life and our forever home.
Trigger warning for those who download this podcast (which can be accessed through this link: https://shows.acast.com/the-grief-sofa-podcast/episodes/episode-14-simon)... the story of my darkest days and my children’s grief made me cry when I re-listened to this. So, please be kind to yourself, set aside 48 minutes and enjoy our lovely chat but make sure to look after your own reactions when listening to this x