CW: Death, mental illness, suicide
I want to start by thanking everyone who took part in this project. I couldn't have done it without you and your contributions. Every single person was so lovely and a pleasure to meet and thank you for your bravery in opening up to a stranger.
This project is dedicated to my wonderful Dad, Simon.
06/06/1975 - 13/07/2020
‘I would usually advise my clients to keep busy…’, my grief counsellor said over Zoom, ‘that’s why it’s so hard at the moment. You can’t keep busy, go out and meet your friends. You are told that your desire to go out and live your life, which you will feel more intensely now that you have been hit with how short life can be, is selfish. That it could possibly end with another family having to go through what you are experiencing.’
October 2020. Not only was there a global pandemic, a sudden apocalyptic, surreal reality that had been thrust on us all, but I had tested positive for COVID-19. I was stuck in my bedroom in my house at uni. It was the lowest I have ever felt and I couldn’t just ring my Dad for advice and hear his rational and positive encouragement. A week later I was going to turn 21; what is meant to be an amazing milestone to be celebrated. Most people describe being 21 as their peak in life. But I couldn’t care less. Everything felt so trivial and meaningless.
Three months earlier I had lost my Dad. Over the last few years of his life, as I was starting to mature and become an adult, I could feel us transitioning from Dad and daughter to close friends. We went out for drinks in bars together and met up for lunch in my revision breaks; but I still felt like a little girl again when I was over at his house, with the fire going in the wood burner, hearing him blasting out Led Zeppelin or Dire Straits in the kitchen whilst he made one of his epic Sunday dinners.
He was such a character and didn’t care what anybody thought of him (very clear as he skipped like an excited little girl into Harry Potter world a few years ago). His advice to me was never lose your childhood excitement for anything, because then life becomes boring. He would wake up at 5am on his birthday and be jumping up and down to open his presents. He was friends with everyone; you couldn’t walk down the street in Leeds or his home-town of Macclesfield without hearing ‘Si! Nice to see you! How are you?’. Over a hundred lined the street at his funeral, with only 30 of us allowed into the church.
It was safe to say I was in shock for about six months. Maybe I still am. I felt, and still feel, so lost, some days wishing that I would just die to be with him again and then other days feeling happy and full of life, as he would want me to be. I replay that horrible day over and over again in my head, traumatic memories flashing through my head whilst I eat my breakfast and then a few minutes later my head is filled with mundane tasks like choosing what type of bread to buy in the Co-op. I have days where I cry at nothing, like dropping a plate, and others where I feel so numb to it all, like I am watching it happen to someone else.
Seeing Simon Bray’s grief photography project on the One Show with my Mum, I told her to turn it off. I couldn’t face it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it and later looked it up. I felt connected to it, with my photography hobby being something that I do to clear my head and keep myself busy and creative. I thought it was amazing what Simon Bray did and I wanted to help others too, as well as myself.
I knew there were other students feeling the same as me. Not only were we grieving, but also stuck inside and constantly being reminded of death every day in the news as well as being expected to produce high level essays, reports and presentations to tight deadlines. I wanted to meet some of these people, who knew a lot about how I was feeling. I wanted to listen to, and share, their stories.
Freya
‘I lost my Mum, Julia, suddenly in February 2020. To me she was ‘home’, being around her just gave me a sense of safety and comfort that is irreplaceable. I relied on her for everything. We were very similar in the weird and niche things that we enjoyed and it was like we were becoming best friends at the time that she passed.
I woke up to my Dad calling me, telling me that she was seriously ill, and as soon as I put the phone down I slapped myself to make sure I wasn’t in a nightmare.
As time has gone on, I have mostly felt despair and a kind of ‘void’ in my body. Lockdown has made it so much harder, because it has been months since she passed, but it only really feels like a month ago.
I feel very lost, as she was my version of home and now I feel like I don’t really belong anywhere or have anywhere to go back to. I am also grieving my childhood as I was only 19 when she died.
I try to cope with it by keeping busy, but we are in a pandemic so that has been pretty hard. Grief for me comes in sudden waves and I’ll have weeks where it’d be harder than others. The support of my friends is what has mostly gotten me through the past few months.’
Molly
‘I lost both my Grandparents six years ago. They practically raised me and I saw them like a Mum and Dad. My Dad wasn’t around a lot, so my Mum and Grandparents raised me and made my childhood complete bliss. They both passed when I was 14, within six months of each other. My amazing childhood meant that I wasn’t prepared for the emotions and wasn’t able to deal with it.
My grief for a long time meant that I completely shut down and didn’t speak about it to anyone. I would carry on in my social life and at school, but when I was alone, I spiralled into such deep places that I didn’t know how to describe it to people. I think that is why I refused to talk about it.
I think it forced me to grow up very quickly and, after losing my other two Grandparents within the next two years, I became quite numb to experiencing loss. I still yearn for them and constantly think about them everyday. I still lie in bed and cry because I am missing them at least once a month, and it has been six, almost seven, years.
I have struggled a lot with forgetting the sound of their voices. We have old home videos that I listen to sometimes because I don’t want to forget. I still think about the nights I last saw them and what I wish I had said to them, but I finally understand that I can’t change that and I am now able to feel content.
I find comfort in talking to people about it and telling them my Grandparent’s love story. I feel completely open to be able to share my experience and am happy to help friends who have only recently lost family members.’
Lauren
‘I would describe grief like a figure following me down a dark alley. I can sense its proximity and its danger and all I can do is run from it, I can’t fight back. It’s always lingering.
I lost my Grandad in November 2007, four days before my 7th birthday. He was the main father figure in my life and his loss was, to me, like the loss of a parent. I felt so similar to him, even though we were 75 years apart in age; we enjoyed the same things and had the same sense of humour. Since talking to my Mum about him, I’ve come to realise we both liked politics, books, history and music. My Mum says we would probably spend hours debating together.
"I'm so grateful to know someone that was remarkable enough to live in my family's memories every day. He is all we talk about."
From the morning of his death, to the funeral, I didn’t cry or even acknowledge his death. For a child, grief is so hard to comprehend, I don’t think I ever fully realised he wasn’t here anymore. My grief, for so long, wasn’t even there. I didn’t even contemplate thinking about it.
My grief has developed slowly over time as a deep fear of death. All the sadness and hurt that has been buried for so long, has resurfaced and this irrational fear of my life ending, it’s something I’ve had to go through counselling to heal. My brain doesn’t understand death, and so it fears it intensely. I feel the pain when I see my friends with their Grandads. It’s like the lights down the alley have come on and the hurt is easier to see. But I’m still running from it.
I have grown to acknowledge the loss of my Grandad. I’m immensely grateful for the time I got to spend with him. I’m grateful for the traits he passed down to my Mum, and I see him through her every day. I’m grateful to know someone that was remarkable enough to live in my family’s memories every day. He is all we talk about.’
Ricardo
‘I lost my Dad at the age of 10 and I was very close to him as we did everything together and he coached me a lot while we were at the football club. He gave me everything he could so I was always inspired by him. The way I coped at the start was trying my best to not think about it and I was lucky that my family was happy to talk about our emotions and we always help each other but as time went on I started to ‘man up’ and stopped crying in front of my family to show them that it was going be okay and that it would just get better.
For years I used to lay in bed every night and have a conversation with my Dad and ask him questions, just as if he was there. I wanted to try and keep that connection, I didn’t want to lose it. However, in the first years when I started hiding emotions, I also became colder and started to not show emotions to anyone, whether I hurt or not.
As 10 years went by I started to understand that it is okay to talk about these problems and that it was silly of me to not communicate to anyone but also now I know I can talk about that experience and my Dad without getting sad.
I think mainly when I think about him now I just get really happy as I think about all the good things we did together but it was definitely hard for me and my family. One of the hardest thing was hearing my Mum cry but as time went by it seems everyone has had to adapt to him not being there.’
Olivia
‘I lost my Mam in October 2020. I loved her more than anything and it hurts to know that no one will ever love me the way she did. She was my everything.
Grieving feels like being lost in an unfamiliar place with no sense of direction and no place to call home. Some days I think ‘okay, I can do this’ and then others I am completely overwhelmed with the magnitude of loss I’ve suffered.
Grief is the most permanent thing I've experienced and I know I'll spend a lifetime with it.'
"Grieving feels like being lost in an unfamiliar place with no sense of direction. and no place to call home."
Holly
‘My Grandad died in July 2020, a week after his 75th birthday. I have lots of fun memories of spending time with my Mum, Grandad, and my younger sister. He was a fun and funny person.
In the last few years of his life my Grandad moved back to our local area so we saw him a lot more often. When he was dying, we were able to visit him in hospital, which I was very grateful for given the situation with Covid. When I saw him that last time I felt a lot of love and sadness for him. He had become very ill physically during the pandemic, and I believe he went downhill a lot because my Mum wasn’t allowed to visit him weekly like she normally did, due to restrictions.
I was, of course, very upset when he died but I also felt a huge amount of relief because I knew he wasn’t suffering anymore. For the funeral we decided that I would lead it, and I found that very helpful because it gave me something to occupy myself with in those first few difficult weeks following his death. I had practised the order of ceremony many times before, so on the actual day I felt a bit detached. We were only allowed 13 people at the funeral, but I feel it was a very nice service with input from all of his family and friends, even those who couldn’t attend.
"I know the importance of being kind to myself."
When we scattered his ashes, we went to three different places and involved friends of his who couldn’t attend the main funeral. In the first few months, I felt very, very sad and found it really difficult to see the strain it had put my Mum under. She had loads of paperwork to sort and she became very absentminded and forgetful. I helped her with everything I could and after a few months she seemed much better, although obviously grieving.
Because I was also struggling with some unresolved health problems, and feeling a bit overwhelmed, I had some counselling when I came to Leeds in September. It was good to be able to talk about things (I’m a strong advocate for counselling!) and since then I’ve gradually started to feel more like I’m coping again. There are still some moments when I feel really sad and cry, but those are becoming less, and I think I am starting to realise a bit more that my Grandad isn’t there anymore.
I have a lot of experience of grief, sadly, and every time it has been different, but I know the importance of being kind to myself and talking to my Mum when I need to. There is no denying that this has been a difficult time, but I feel really grateful that I have my other family around me to support me as we all grieve together.’
Emilia
‘Forever my brother, our sunshine and our Tigger.
I lost my brother, Jakob, when he was 19. We lost him on 7th November 2019, but officially on the 18th. When we were younger, we doted on one another. He used to follow me about everywhere and just wanted to be with me. Don’t get me wrong, we would argue and bicker but what siblings don’t?
As we grew older, we grew apart as we had different lifestyles and became super busy, but I like to think he knew I had his back regardless. We’d text from time to time when I was away at uni, but we’d always miss each other when I was home with work and socialising.
To me, grief looks like the heartbreak you feel in your parents’ voices as they try to tell you your brother lost his silent battle to mental health. The shock, the blame, the what-ifs. The pressure of being alive as an only child, the longing to hear his voice and see his cheeky grin; these moments you wished you had captured. But you just don’t expect someone to die so young.
It didn’t feel real at first. I was having to arrange the funeral and see his body, because my parents didn’t feel up to it. Around his birthday in August, it got really hard as I finally had to accept what had happened. Christmas was also hard. I found it hard to be around my cousins whilst they were with their siblings.
Thankfully since day one I have had an incredible support system. Leeds Suicide Bereavement connected to Mind charity was a brilliant help when I needed them. Nowadays, I use art and music as an outlet and it really pulls me through.’
Felicity
‘I lost my Mum in 2010 when I was 11. She was my best friend and had guided me through life. So understandably I felt lost (and was lost) for a very long time after she passed. To me, my grief looks like a big red ball that follows me around. You can either hug it and feel it, or you can throw it away and try to suppress it. But it will always bounce back to you. For a while, I suppressed it, but now I choose to feel it and allow it to be a part of my life and a part of me.
When my Mum passed I was in shock for a few weeks. I didn’t feel sad and didn’t feel angry, I just felt nothing. The house that was once so warm and bright was suddenly just empty and cold and the days all blended into one. I tried desperately to carry on as normal, I insisted I went into primary school the next day, but nothing about my life was ‘normal’ anymore and it would never be ‘normal’ again. I didn’t even cry at the funeral because I still felt so shocked and out of touch with my feelings. However, the people around me confused this with strength.
"If I don't let grief become a part of my life, then it will force itself to be in my life in other ways."
The main feelings of grief for me are anger and sadness. I was so angry at the world for so many years; I was angry at myself and angry at her for dying. Along with the sadness came guilt. I subconsciously felt guilty for her passing, even though she had died of cancer. I lost my teenage years to sitting in my room and drowning in grief and depression because I couldn’t admit to anyone that I couldn’t cope. I hated myself and the world.
One of my coping mechanisms now is re-connecting with my inner child. I remember my Mum and allow myself to feel the heart ache. Recently I’ve put together a memory box and when I miss her, I look through it. I put her favourite songs on and I know that it is okay to cry. If I don’t let grief become a part of my life, then it will force itself to be in my life in other ways.’
Elle
'I lost my Nana last January, and she was basically a second Mum to me; we were unbelievably close. We spoke on the phone every week and we were best mates.
I internalise a lot of my grief and appear to be coping okay, but during the times on my own I breakdown and struggle a lot. I also feel like being away from family in lockdown has meant I have struggled with speaking about stuff as I feel like other people don't understand as well.
Trying to complete my degree was so hard as usually when I got my marks back or finished an essay she was the first one I wanted to tell- so I kind of lost that motivation. I've now finished uni and out of work and I think without the distraction of deadlines it has been very difficult.
A massive emotion I feel is guilt: for being at uni and being away from her for so long the year before she died. I didn't see her in person a lot at all as I was at uni or working a summer job.'
Keerthana
‘I lost my cousin around the start of 2017. Though we didn’t spend a lot of time together, we were very close during the times and conversations we did have and we felt like sisters. She passed away from a rare form of cancer so she had only been seriously ill for a few weeks and had come to stay with me during those weeks as my Dad was a doctor, so he was asked to watch over her. By the time we realised it was serious and admitted her to hospital, they didn’t realise, but she was in a terminal stage and passed away.
It all happened so quickly so I think my initial emotions were just sort of blank emptiness and confusion. I didn’t want to believe it and couldn’t process it. Her parents were very emotional and it made me very distressed at the family loss. I had a lot of unprocessed grief as she and I had talked about our future plans and dreams together and she was similar to my age so it all did and still does feel very scary and painful.
I think since then I have continued to feel the pain of the loss, I don’t think I will ever not. I feel a surge of emotion in that I should have lived my life to the fullest as anything can happen, somewhat in her honour. My immediate family never talk about her as it brings them a lot of pain but when we go to visit my aunt and uncle they bring her up and it brings a lot of grief and sadness but generally I try not to think too hard about it as I end up getting severely emotional.’
Ben
‘I lost my step-father, who was effectively my dad, when I was 18. My mother had me at a young age and raised me as a single parent with the help of her family. She met my stepfather when I was around 4 or 5 years old, they later married and moved in together. Him and I were very close, he became my father, and his children became my siblings. Although him and my Mum split up when I was 15, my relationship with him didn’t change.
Around a year later he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. We were lucky enough to spend the next year and a half with him and then a week before my A level exams he passed away.
"I think of the memories of him with happiness and joy."
It didn’t feel real and his passing completely took over my mind. The following days were the hardest and I shut myself away from the world which allowed me to self-reflect. I knew he would have wanted me to pick myself up and finish my exams to the best of my ability. This lit a fire in me and I was able to achieve A*AB and get into the University of Leeds, which I saw as a long shot at the time. I knew how proud he would have been of me to this day and his death completely changed my outlook on life. It has inspired me to be consciously grateful for the positions we are in, the opportunities we get and the people that we have around us.
By sharing my story with this project, I am allowing my Dad’s memory to live on and I can express my gratitude for the person he helped me become. I will never shy away from sharing a little memory of him with my friends or family when it pops into my head because I think of the memories of him with happiness and joy. I know I cannot change the past, but I can view the glass as half full. I can look back at his memory with fondness and work hard to create the future I want for myself and my family.’
Paige
‘My mum was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s aged 53, after 3 years of symptoms. It was a process of ambiguous grief, as she was not the same person anymore.’
I used to be a young carer for my Mum since the age of 13 as she is a type 1 diabetic and progressively her health and mobility deteriorated. She had her first stroke in 2017 just before I was due to move from London to Leeds to attend university. After the first stroke, she recovered quite well, and I thought that was the end of it. I subsequently became her power of attorney, aged 18, and had to manage her property and financial affairs.
Within the next 2 years she had three further strokes and it was only in Christmas 2019 when I returned home that I realised my Mum was not the same person anymore. She had lost all awareness and could not remember the Christmas presents she had bought, or even how old I was. It really hit me when she began not calling or texting me anymore, as she used to do this all of the time.
I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to as it was a quite unique situation. When I left my last exam in second year, all I wanted to do was call my Mum, but she didn’t even know where I was, nor that I had exams. I felt so confused, I felt a real sense of loss, but I didn’t feel entitled to grieve because she was still physically here. I felt helpless and angry, and this led to complicated relationships with friends.
It was only when I was sorting out my Mum’s council tax and applied for a ‘severely mentally impaired’ exemption, that I first heard about dementia and Alzheimer's. I came to realise that the hospital nor GP had no records to prove this, which was so disheartening as it was almost a denial of what had occurred over the past three years. In December 2020, my Mum was diagnosed, aged 53, with young-onset Alzheimer's. Due to the lockdown, I last saw my Mum in August 2020, which was incredibly difficult.
I completed my third-year exams in May 2020, but not my dissertation, and i took a year out to complete it as an external student. I am now working in Manchester as a full-time Paralegal.
In January 2021, my Mum was admitted into hospital and a scan found a mass on her brain, which may or may not have been the cause of her memory loss. She later caught hospital acquired Covid and passed away following a brain haemorrhage on 14th February 2021.
It has been an incredibly difficult and testing journey, and an immense grieving process in itself. However, I look forward to graduating this year, and to making my Mum proud.'
Chloe
'I lost my Aunt the day before Christmas Eve in 2019. Everything happened very suddenly and she was the first person in my close family to pass away. One day she got into the hospital and a few weeks later they told me she was gone. I still don't know why I am so affected by her death, because we were not very close, but she was one of the kindest people I knew and she was very very beautiful.
I think I still feel very emotional about it because I was the last person she saw. We visited her at the hospital a day before she passed away, and I still picture her kindly smiling at me, thanking me for coming back from England to visit her.
What really broke my heart was to see how affected and upset my family felt about it. Seeing people who spent half their life with her, who shared so many memories with her, was definitely one of the most difficult things. This has shaken me up and I felt like I was in mourning for the whole of 2020. She was a very joyful person and today I truly believe she is watching over her loved ones.'
Ellen
‘Grief is very isolating when those around you aren’t going through the same thing. It looks like staying in bed for the full day and not really caring that you’ve been unproductive.
My Grandad passed away on 10th October 2020. He was a funny person who never took things seriously and we’d spend long summer days in the garden where he’d fill up paddling pools and let me and my sister help out with his vegetable patch. I’d had a really weird feeling in the week leading up to his death, I didn’t know anything was going on but I had caught Covid-19 and wasn’t able to travel home to Newcastle to see him or to say goodbye.
"I felt almost annoyed that life was carrying on as normal without him there."
After isolation, my Mum picked me up and told me he had died the night before. Initially I felt just kind of numb, it had happened so suddenly and my family had downplayed how ill he was so that I wouldn’t feel guilty about being unable to come home. I went through phases of feeling completely unmotivated along with feeling really guilty and angry about not being able to say goodbye. I eventually had to come home from uni because I wasn’t coping well.
I felt almost annoyed that life was carrying on as normal without him there. I’ve been feeling better recently, but I think it is just time that has healed me. I returned to my therapist who reassured me that everything that I was feeling was valid and that there is no correct way to grieve. I try to take a bit of time every day to think about him and feel what is necessary. I feel like I have come to accept that it has happened, he suffered with Alzheimer’s so wasn’t himself towards the end. Now I mainly just feel grateful for knowing him.’
Chantelle
‘I suddenly lost my Dad on 4 April 2020 to liver cancer. It happened quickly, within the space of a week, and it was the most traumatic experience to ever go through. When my parents divorced I was young and went to live with my Mum. I unfortunately didn’t see or speak to my Dad as often as I should have, until I was about 16. However, after this point, our relationship became so strong.
He was extremely proud of me for getting into university and turned up to my house with a new laptop before I left. I really looked forward to my graduation so that we could celebrate my achievement together. Since my Dad’s death, I see my life in two parts. Before and after it happened, because life is and always will be so different. When he initially died so many people would say to me ‘it’ll get better, time is the biggest healer’ and it made me so angry. I couldn’t comprehend only ‘time’ solving this indescribable pain which I would have to live with forever. This was my new normal.
I was angry with my Mum for ruining my relationship with my Dad and couldn’t look at her for weeks afterwards. I wouldn’t have my Dad to walk me down the aisle or come to my graduation. Initially I became quite self-destructive. I couldn’t accept that such a good man was taken away from the world. I became very bitter to everyone and wasn’t bothered about getting dressed or finishing my essays, I just wanted to be in bed.
After the first six months I realised that I needed to speak out loud in order to accept it. Luckily I could speak to my siblings, close friends and my boyfriend who I try to tell when I am sad about it. Although I still find it difficult, I’m learning to speak to others about how I feel. Still now, when I hear my housemates talk about their Dads, I can’t help but feel so jealous and hurt that they have something that I no longer have.
Since my Dad’s death I’ve learnt that grief is an extension of love with no where to go. I’ve learnt that grief has no limit and I will be grieving for the rest of my life. I know that it will get easier to live with, but the pain will always be the same. I know that it is okay to have days where I just want to sit in bed, listen to his funeral songs wearing his jumper and cry. I also know it is okay to not have to think about his death every minute of the day and I am allowed to smile and continue to live my life. I take comfort in knowing that one day I will see him again, but for now he’s looking over me every single day.’
Anna
‘My brother, Benny, died in an accident when I was ten years old. He was twelve. I have a lot of happy memories laughing and playing together, and a fair share of memories squabbling and fighting too, in the way siblings often do.
It’s hard to place a lot of the details around his death, but I starkly remember the first few days when it happened- the confusion and panic, the sickness in my stomach, the raw pain in all of our hearts. And then I kind of put it in a box, went back to school and grappled my way back to a relative normality. It’s actually only more recently, over ten years later, that I’ve started to really process the loss and realise all the ways it impacted my life.
"I also felt more connected than ever before...to this challenging, wonderful world."
My Dad also died when I was twenty-one. He had to have an operation on his heart and there were some complications which he never recovered from. It was very different from my brother’s death, maybe because he was older and I was older too, maybe because it was less of a shock, he was unbelievably accepting of his death, and I got to say goodbye too.
There was still that awful sickness and raw heartbreak, but it was also weirdly beautiful. In the moments my grief was most heightened and I felt most vulnerable, I also felt more connected than ever before- to the people around me, to who I really was, and to this challenging, wonderful world.
It’s hard to describe what my grief looks like because it changes all the time. Some days it feels so heavy, so hard to comprehend, and all I want to do is sit in my room and cry. Some days it comes out in frustration, exhaustion, confusion. Then other days I feel positive and full of hope, grateful for all I have and excited for everything to come. In fact, most of all time (it’s now been several years) I live a pretty ‘normal’ life and am happy. But losing my brother and my Dad won’t ever go away. It shapes how I see the world and how I act within it, and they continue to be an important part of my life.’
Orla
'My first experience with grief was when I was six years old and lost my beautiful Nanna. It's interesting how, now fifteen years and six more unfortunate losses later, the pattern of my grief has remained similar. Typically, I need some time, alone, to absorb the news that someone I love has died. Meanwhile, life loses its structure; time passes with indifference. There are bursts of shared reminiscing, an influx of phone calls to the landline, weird dinners made with whatever ingredients the local offie stocks and an attachment to one random hoodie which I continue to wear until it has one too many snot stains on it.
Reflecting now, I really rely on funerals to force me into a space where all I can do is remember the person I'm missing and mourn them without any barriers. Grief from the point of funerals onwards comes in waves- of pining for the smell of my Grandma's perfume to fill my nostrils or longing for my uncle to ask me with genuine interest how school is going.
My Grandma's death has undoubtably shaped me. I remember articulating at the time of her passing that it felt like something had ripped my tummy, leaving it crying constantly. I still haven't mastered a better way to articulate that particular sensation of grief, but to add to it- I would say that it's an undercurrent of unease, vulnerability and anxiety. My Grandma and I were very close. She was gorgeous, tall, impeccably dressed and exceedingly intelligent. Although the acute grief that I felt immediately after her passing has subsided, it's been replaced with a sense of longing. Longing for her to see how I've grown up; longing for her to have been part of those years.
The main difference between what my first experience of grief looked like and what grief has looked like for me since- is that now, grief for me begins with a sensation of dread. I dread being grief-stricken, I dread having to watch my family grieve, I dread not really knowing when the immediate sadness with subside and be replaced with a lower-level state of unease and longing.'
Helpful Links
Check out Simon Bray's project:
@studentgriefnetwork on Instagram
@thegriefgang podcast on Instagram
Samaritans: 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or text SHOUT to 85258
Leeds Nightline for students: 0113 380 1285
Cruse Bereavement Care Charity, Leeds branch:
0808 808 1677
University Counselling Services:
University of Leeds:
Leeds Beckett University
Private counselling services:
Orchard, Leeds:
Pheonix, Leeds: