When 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.
‘Lizzie’s refusal to be broken by grief, indeed her decision to record it, to study and understand it, have combined to make a book that is of practical use to anyone who has to face the loss of someone they love. And, let’s face it, at some point, that is every one of us. There are over two decades of wisdom, tears, anger, joy and friendship distilled into these beautiful pages. When Grief Equals Love is less a grief memoir and more a fizzing rattlebag of smart ideas, inspiring stories and survival strategies; its energy – like its author’s – is irresistible and infectious.’
John Mitchinson - UNBOUND
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