"She knew I loved her, although I didn’t tell her enough”: what Mother's Day is like without a mum, Stylist 
Collecting moments like autumn leaves, The Hungry Heart newsletter
Why I write about Mum, Tweet thread
On doing grief 'properly’, Tweet thread
Would you join a grief club? The new generation changing the way we deal with loss, YOU magazine
Talking Grief with Poorna Bell, Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine
Mother’s Day getaways, Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine
Writing about love and loss, interview with ehospice.com
Writing my way through grief, interview on The Grief Gang podcast
Motherless Daughters  and navigating ‘missed mum moments’, interview on BBC Woman’s Hour (31.42 minutes in)

The State of Disbelief by Juliet Rosenfeld, Close Books
My husband has ceased to exist – I still can’t understand how, Guardian
My husband never smoked a cigarette but died of lung cancer. I wrote to keep him with me a little longer, i News
I’m a psychotherapist, but therapy didn’t ease my grief, Guardian 
The State of Disbelief: ‘My husband’s death was traumatic. I wish I could unsee it’, The Times
Talking Therapies: Grief and the state of disbelief,  interview on Psychologies magazine & UKCP podcast
How Freud helps me to mourn my husband’s death, The Observer 

On Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund Freud
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life), Kate Gross
A Grief Observed, CS Lewis
Cry, Heart, But Never Break, Glen Ringtved
Why We Write About Grief, NY Times 
Elizabeth Gilbert on Love, Loss and How To Move Through Grief As Grief Moves Through You, Brain Pickings 
How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on messiness of mourning and  learning the live with  loss, Brain Pickings
How Grief and Creativity Work Together , Headspace
The Love Of My Life by Cheryl Strayed, The Sun Magazine
The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap, Modern Love, NY Times

Clover Stroud – author of The Wild Other: A Memoir of Love, Adventure and how to be Brave, The Grief Cast 
Alica Forneret – exploring grief, death and dying through story telling, Mud to Lotus podcast
Writing your grief, Grief Talks with Meera Shah
David Kessler and Brené on Grief and Finding Meaning,Unlocking Us with Brené Brown 
Julia Samuel meets Cathy Rentzenbrink, Grief Works
Moving On, Part 1 — With Claire Bidwell Smith, Dear Sugars
Janet Ellis, On the Marie Curie Couch
Cheryl Strayed On Grief, Beyond Well with Sheila Hamilton 
Shaping Grief with Language with Gregory Orr, On Being Podcast
Jennifer Bailey and Lennon Flowers — An Invitation to Brave Space, On Being
Mary Oliver – Listening to the World, On Being  
David Whyte – The Conversational Nature of Reality, On Being  
Joanna Macy – A Wild Love for the World, On Being  

“It is the same with life and death…
What would life be worth if there were no death?
Who would enjoy the sun if it never rained?
Who would yearn for the day if there were no night?”
―  Cry Heart But Never Break, Glenn Ringtved (children’s book, read about it here). 

Wild Love
Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?
Flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. 
Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness
Give me your hand.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by the philosopher of ecology Joanna Macy

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.” 
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

Tickled Pink
At times in our pink innocence, we lie fallow, composting, waiting to grow.
And other times we rush headlong like so many of our ancestors.
But rushing or fallow, it doesn’t matter
One day you’ll round a corner, you’ll blink 
And something is missing
Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a person
An innocence is gone
Your path, as though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted, and has left you in a new direction.
Some won’t approve
Some will want the other you
And some will cry that you’ve left it all’
But what has happened, has happened, and cannot be undone.
We pay for our laughter. We pay to weep. Knowledge is not cheap.
To survive we must return to our senses…touch, taste, smell, sight, sound.
We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in breath.
With each breath we inhale, we exhale.
We inspire, we expire. 
Every breath holds the possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song.
Every conversation is an exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue. 
Every scar is a monument to a battle survived.
When you’re born into loss, you grow from it.
But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it.
A slow move to an embrace, 
An embrace that holds tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque, 
An embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance, a dance of pink.
– Kevin Kling, (from On Being episode, The Losses And Laughter We Grow Into)

“Perhaps the only recompense for tragedy—for death and loss of innocence—is the chance to create some measure of beauty. The marvel of a well-crafted sentence—finding just the right diction and syntax—is a small triumph over pain, a way to create order in the world.”
– Tara DaPra, Writing Memoir and Writing for Therapy 

Getting Started
Sitting down to write about a lost loved one, particularly if you haven’t before, can feel really daunting. I always try to set aside at least 15 minutes and find myself a calm, quiet spot at home. Often I will light a candle, have photos of whoever I’m writing about around me, and if it’s Mum, I’ll also wear her jumper. In this way, I feel like I’m welcoming her into the space, which can help me tune into memories and moments long past.

The Mundane Memory Bank
These are a few techniques I use to access memories that may be tucked away in the bottom drawer of my mind. I’m talking about those small everyday interactions with our loved ones that can fall between the cracks of time. It could be a conversation over a cup of tea, an afternoon snuggle on the sofa, tickles in bed, or a joke shared over a bottle of wine – ordinary moments made special by the fact we can no longer enjoy them with that person. Not only can it be difficult to ‘just remember’ these memories day-to-day, but it can also be difficult to bring them to the surface when we’re faced with a blank page and a want to remember them. Here are some ways to tap into your memory bank and, hopefully, travel back in time with your words:

RITUALS – Think of something you and your loved one used to do often – perhaps it’s that you’d watch America’s Next Top Model together on a Tuesday, or the fact you’d always get fish ’n’ chips on a Friday. Sometimes it’s in remembering ‘repeated’ memories that we can uncover specific moments within the ritual. You can start by ‘telling’ the page what the ritual was, then you can move from the what to the where, the how and the why of it. Where did it take place? How did you go about doing it? And why did it matter? Gradually start filling in the details and what that ritual meant to you and before you know it, you may find yourself totally reimmersed in the everyday of life when your loved one lived.

SAYINGS - My mum had a habit of latching onto phrases from TV shows and then repeating them at inappropriate times, often as a way to wind up me and my brother. One of these was a creepy line from Dr. Who: ‘they’re heerrre’. Just thinking of Mum saying this, and even speaking it out loud in her voice, brings back such vivid memories of what would follow – me screeching ‘Mum!!!!’ and hitting her leg, and Mum’s mischievous cackle as she’d reach over and playfully tickle me. It just takes two words for a whole scene to unfold in my mind (and on paper).

SENSES – Honing in on the physical elements of a moment – the music playing, the smell of perfume, the taste of a particular dish, the feel of fabric on your skin – can help you build up a memory around specific senses. I find that closing my eyes and focusing on each one can often allow me to relive the memory in my body, and it’s from there I can write about it evocatively – as if sketching the moment with words. Our bodies hold a lot of sensory information, particularly physical touch, and words can be a powerful way to access that body memory.

OBJECTS – I often use specific objects as a way in to memories that can feel a little out of reach, or perhaps just too overwhelming to tackle. Just bringing to mind an object, whether it’s something you still have, or one you remember, can sometimes open up a whole scene, and story, around it. Recently I wrote about my gran, who died two years ago, and it took me writing, without plan or purpose, about an embroidered jacket of hers to open up the whole story of our relationship. Once I started I couldn’t stop, and the jacket proved a beautiful, tangible anchor point for the whole piece.

DIALOGUE - Conversations can be a brilliant way to bring to life a memory on the page. Sometimes we may just remember the gist of a chat we had, but that doesn’t matter. In letting ourselves ‘be’ in a scene, even if we’re not quite sure of the minutiae, it’s amazing how sentences emerge out of the mist of our mind. It may not be word for word, but in simply existing in the half-shaped memory, and then writing snippets here and there, often we’ll find we’ve captured the very essence of a conversation. I was lucky enough to interview my gran before she died, and that hour and a half is one I’ll cherish forever. But the recording is just one of many conversations we had, and although technology has memorialised that specific one, my mind holds many others. In fact, what strikes me when I listen back is that gran was reminiscing about chats with people long gone. She didn’t need a recording to remember. What the recording did do though was inspire me to have a conversation with my brother about my mum. Just engaging in a meandering discussion with someone else who knew your lost loved one can, I’ve found, help unearth lost exchanges. You’ll end up with lots of “Remember when she said that? And I said….",. which can be a great entry point to start writing.

Finally, if you are struggling to get into the ‘feel’ of a memory, or just have a real block, I recommend timing yourself for 15 minutes and then letting yourself write freely about what your lost person means to you. A good way to do this is to write a letter, either to the person you’ve lost, or to your past self before your loss, as this can be an effective way of reflecting back and entering into a creative exchange with your present, your past, your grief and, of course, your loved one.

Good luck! I hope this serves as a useful jumping off point for you, and I’d love to hear how you get on.