Sometimes a book reaches into the past and brings memories back that you weren't expecting.

I've just finished reading Searching: A Love Story by Ian Proud, a novel set against the devastating Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. Ian was working at the British Embassy in Bangkok at the time and was one of the first British diplomats sent into the disaster zone. His own experiences of the tsunami and its aftermath, including PTSD, helped inspire the novel.

Reading it took me straight back to that same Christmas.

While the world watched the unimaginable devastation unfolding in Thailand, my family was facing a very different kind of loss. My husband, Sandy, was dying from leukaemia. Against the odds, we'd managed to bring him home for Christmas. He died just a couple of weeks later, in January 2005.

More than twenty years on, Ian's story brought some of those memories back and made me reflect on grief, how differently we each cope with it, and the things I've learnt through my own experience and my later work as a counsellor.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve.

For me, coping initially meant keeping incredibly busy. Looking back, I can see how exhausting that became and how close I came to burnout before somebody recognised what was happening and helped me to stop.

We can become very good at saying:

I'm fine.

I can cope.

I don't need anybody.

But sometimes the very people we push away are the people we most need to let in.

In this episode of The Curious Pause, I reflect on death, grief and PTSD, why we find death so difficult to talk about, and why allowing ourselves to receive support can be part of finding our way through loss.

We never forget the people we've lost. They become part of who we are, and those experiences shape us.

But we don't have to navigate grief alone.

Love will always win the day if we allow it.

📖 Searching: A Love Story

Ian Proud's novel follows Hatty and Monty, whose relationship is changed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and its aftermath. Ian draws on his own experience working in the disaster zone in Thailand and living with PTSD afterwards.

You can find out more about Ian and Searching: A Love Story here:

Ian Proud's official website: https://www.prouddiplomat.com/

In this episode

🌿 A novel that unexpectedly brought memories of my own grief back

🌿 Christmas 2004, the Boxing Day tsunami and the final weeks of Sandy's life

🌿 Why death is something we still struggle to talk about

🌿 Why there is no "right" way to grieve

🌿 How keeping constantly busy became my way of coping

🌿 The importance of recognising when coping becomes exhaustion

🌿 Why grief can make us push away the very people we need

🌿 Letting other people support us when life becomes too much

If you're struggling

If you're living with grief, depression or PTSD and finding it difficult to cope, please reach out. Talk to someone you trust or seek support from an appropriate professional or support organisation.

You don't have to carry everything alone.

Pause. Listen. Remember.