Planet Grief E-Book

Dipti Tait

• Herausgeber: Flint
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 393

Beschreibung

We all grieve. From the moment we are born into this cold, loud, bright world, we experience change and loss that can often threaten to overwhelm us, but – when managed well – can help mould us into our strongest, most powerful selves. Grief is not only about death: it is part of our everyday lives. We are all grieving something. We grieve when our life changes – when meaningful relationships end, when we move house, change schools or jobs, and when our sense of identity and reality are under threat. We also grieve on a larger level – for a lost way of life and for our planet, particularly in these times of climate crisis, pandemic, fast-moving technology, misinformation and societal division. Grief can even be found in joy and is one of the most universal shared emotions, connecting people across the world in an act of love. In this surprisingly uplifting book, acclaimed grief therapist Dipti Tait draws on her own professional and personal experiences, her clients' stories and the neuroscience behind our emotions to redefine grief for our fast-paced lives and this sometimes alarming yet wonderful world we live in.

Leseprobe

PLANET GRIEF

Flint Books champions diversity of ideas and viewpoints and publishes books that spark conversations on a range of topics. However, all views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and are not necessarily representative of the Publishers. All the material in this book is set out in good faith for general guidance; however, this book is not intended to offer or replace expert medical or psychiatric advice. It is not intended to diagnose, treat or act as a substitute for professional medical advice. In the case of trauma and mental health concerns, professional advice and help should always be sought.

First published 2021

FLINT is an imprint of The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.flintbooks.co.uk

© Dipti Tait 2021

The right of Dipti Tait to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9914 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Foreword by Sharron Davies MBE

Foreword by Penny Power OBE

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Introduction

1 Death: Let’s Get It Over With

2 Growing-Up Griefs

3 Everything Changes

4 For Better or For Worse

5 Our Shared Griefs

6 Moving On …

7 … And Letting Go

8 Global Grief

9 Death: Back Here Again!

Helplines and Support Resources

Select Bibliography

Not everyone can have a good friend like Dipti to listen to us when we need it, which we certainly all do from time to time, so it’s great she’s put some wise words into a book.

Grief is often our companion and through working with Dipti I’ve learnt you can make it something you get used to hanging out with. Wishing something wasn’t so won’t change what has already happened, sadly. We can only learn from mistakes, build support structures and become resilient. When I lost my mum, it was about learning to be grateful for the years I had and knowing there will be days when I’m more aware of the hole she leaves behind. I’m not sure that time repairs a broken heart, but time certainly enables us to live with our grief, whatever form it takes. I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of person, but occasionally every one of us gets lost in a dark place. Sometimes we don’t even realise we are grieving because we don’t associate what we’ve lost with life-changing loss, but in reality our lives take different directions every day, acquiring new things and losing others. It’s good to have Dipti’s guidance on how we deal with the flux of life as best we can, particularly when we forget that the sun will always come up on another fresh day.

Sharron Davies MBE

June 2021

When we hear words such as vulnerability, self-esteem or confidence – human emotions that we all struggle with at some point in our lives – we all understand what they mean. We can relate to the words in our own way. These words might even flip your mind to a moment, a person, a need – they might even make you think of an expert who is defined by their wisdom.

This book is about grief, about Planet Grief, about all the ways that we grieve throughout our lives on Earth; after all, grief is a beautiful emotion that life gives us. So why is it that when we are confronted with the word ‘grief’, and we think of our relationship with it, many of us want to run in the opposite direction? We think of one thing – someone we loved has died.

Dipti taught me, and will teach you, about the diversity of grief, and that grief is essentially about loss. Loss is a life experience, in its many forms. Once you have read this book, you will change your relationship with loss – you will know when you are feeling loss, you will label it as ‘grief’, and you will give it the respect it deserves. Those moments when you are adjusting to change, when you feel uncomfortable, perhaps sad, and are required to dig deep inside yourself in order to move forwards – you will know that you are grieving, and that process is important to your future. Without grieving, we never find closure; fully accepting what has happened enables us to then find the courage and energy to see the new opportunities in the new space that has been created by what has gone.

I know loss in its many forms: I know the loss of loved ones, I know the loss of hope and I know the loss of a business. I know the loss of children running around my home, I know the loss of my dogs and I know the loss of our family home. I know the void these losses created, and I know the strategy of the ‘stiff upper lip’ of survival. I also know the damage of failing to grieve in the way that I should have.

We can all find hope, joy and a new energy to fill the space that a loss has created. There are mechanisms we can learn and adopt. Loss builds our resilience, it builds our empathy, and it does build new opportunities. This is the opportunity for you to learn to see the void and learn to understand the space that has opened up for you, and what it will mean for your future. In loss – in grief – there is transformation.

We should never just ‘put up with the loss’, but we should also never be defined by it. We can chart a positive way to find joy again, and enjoy this world we are stepping into. It will transform us, heal us and give us the strategies we need to live with all the inevitable losses we will have, big and small.

With love to you and wishing you courage and joy.

Penny Power OBE

June 2021

In her early twenties, Dipti Tait started her working life at the BBC in London, and while there she found out her father only had months to live. He was diagnosed with leukaemia and died after only fourteen weeks.

Two years later, Dipti discovered she was having a baby and put her career in the media on hold to become a mum, and a year later had another baby. Becoming a full-time mother to two boys under 2, as well as giving up her beloved career in television and radio, and then moving away from her life and roots in London to relocate to the Cotswolds, made her realise that grief took many shapes and forms.

Her mother was soon after diagnosed with terminal cancer and died suddenly. Dipti was going through grief struggles as an only child, suffering with extreme loneliness, as she was also in the middle of a divorce and moving out of her family home with very little support.

This catalogue of devastating loss and change plunged her into a dark place. Parentless, and at rock bottom, she found a way to begin her life again, independently with two small boys.

Through this deeply troubled time, Dipti realised that grief was helping her to transform her life.

In 2016, she self-published her first book, Good Grief, as a way of coping with change and her losses, while she retrained as a solution-focused hypnotherapist to help others. She single-handedly built a successful online therapy business and to date has helped thousands of people cope with loss and grief, and build their mental and emotional wellbeing.

Now approaching her fifties, with her children grown into young adults about to fly the nest and her career taking her in a global direction, Dipti has built a meaningful life, and she has grief to thank for all of it.

Dipti passionately teaches her clients how to accept and be grateful for grief in life. She firmly believes that when we understand how to navigate and transition through grief, the transformation can be powerful and utterly life-changing.

Dipti is a professional public speaker and regularly contributes to BBC radio debates and has been a guest on ITV’s This Morning and Good Morning Britain. See more about Dipti at diptitait.com.

There are two special people whom I owe this book to. They gave me life and death: Ram and Manju Paul, my parents.

It’s with both of you that I desperately want to share this book, but I can’t. The paradox is that this book would not even exist if you were still here. How ironic. Instead of sadness, I fill my heart with gratitude and I thank you both from the bottom of my heart for everything you did for me and all the sacrifices you made for me. I love you deeply.

Jo de Vries, my incredibly kind friend and commissioning editor – as soon as you came into my life, this book began to emerge in a silent but powerful way. Without your encouragement, belief and gently forceful nudging, it would never have materialised. Thank you so much for being there for me – at all times, especially in this tough year of home-schooling.

The wonderful team at Flint Books – Laura Perehinec, publishing director, Chrissy McMorris, editorial manager, and Cynthia Hamilton, head of PR & marketing. Thank you so much for believing in my idea, and taking my words and transforming them into this beautiful offering. Your dedication and commitment to publishing shine through, and I am so blessed and grateful to be working with you all. Thank you so much to Katie Beard, head of design. The cover and design of this book are outstanding and capture the bright spirit and light-hearted essence of my words beautifully.

Thank you to Katie Read of Read Media, for listening to my ideas and musings, and for helping me share my message with the world. I am so grateful you are by my side – this is so reassuring.

Grief is such a delicate subject and I am grateful for the raw and beautiful conversations I had with all of my incredible contributors – you were brave and courageous to share your stories of loss, change and grief with me. Your impactful stories have enriched and infused these pages and will now help so many people. I would like to thank each of you so much for being honest and trusting me – Sharron, Penny, Elaine, Andy, Melanie, Becky, Maleena, Faraz, Jo, Charley, Sally, Pauline, Anna, Krishan, Liv and Ezra.

Thank you so much to the incredibly knowledgeable Dr Lynda Shaw, neuroscientist, for confirming so much of my own understanding about mental and emotional health with neuroscientific backup. I am so grateful for your time and patience. Your easy-to-understand explanations of how our brains and bodies work together in grief were extremely impactful and hugely engaging.

Thank you to James Bore, cyber security expert, for sharing some illuminating findings and comparisons between technology and how our own minds work. Talking to you was fascinating, and I thank you for your time and expertise.

Siân Storey, celebrant, it was so very lovely to connect with you and for you to give me such an interesting perspective on loss and grief from your professional experience. Thank you so much for your contribution.

Dearest Penny, you are my mentor, my friend and my business mum. Your interview made me cry, and I want you to know that your experience of grief and loss has been a confirmation of how we can turn grief into fuel, and this has been an amazing realisation. Thank you so much for writing my heartfelt foreword as well – that also made me cry!

My wonderful friend Sharron – your stories of grief are so powerful, and I know they will help many others who face similar challenges in life. Thank you for your constant unconditional kindness and support, and thank you for writing such a beautiful and thoughtful foreword to begin this book.

Thank you to all my clients – past, present and future. Without every single one of you, I would not be able to begin to understand the paradox of the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of the human mind – how delicate it can be, and how powerful it is. You teach me about myself every day and hold up the mirror for me to learn about how similarly and differently we as human beings behave and belong on the planet.

David Newton, you were my first mentor into the human mind. Thank you for giving me the gift of hypnotherapy. Neil Crofts, Robert Dilts, James Tripp, Adam Eason, Ian McDermott, Tim Hallbom – learning from you has shaped my understanding of therapy, coaching, the mind and our emotions, and I can’t thank you all enough.

Thank you to my gorgeous boys. Krishan, my eldest, and Jacob, my youngest, for making me burst with pride because of who you both are. You are both my ultimate driving force and my reason to stay strong and always be the change that I want to see in the world. Thank you for being my constant inspiration. You are both perfect in my eyes, and always will be.

Toby. Without you, I would not be where I am today. You are the force beside me that keeps me going. You are my soul mate, forever. Thank you for loving me and supporting me with everything I do. You are my rock, my hero and my best friend. I love you with every cell of my body and every molecule of my mind. (Oh, and PS, thank you for buying me noise-cancelling AirPods so I could shut out the loud and chaotic pandemic-stricken world and fully concentrate on writing this book in the middle of a global crisis.)

Sadly, while writing this book, I have personally known people who have left this planet. Saima Thompson, Amal Ray, Scott McCormick, Neil Hadaway and Clare Dunkel. My thoughts and heartfelt wishes extend out to all of their families and friends. May you all rest in peace.

I dedicate this book to all of you who have faced loss and grief because of COVID-19. I am so deeply sorry, and I hope this book reminds you that you are not alone, and it’s okay not to be okay.

COVID-19, you taught me so much more about our planet in deep grief. I don’t feel ‘thank you’ is the right sentiment. But I do acknowledge the immense power you have brought into the planet with your arrival, as we all now begin to navigate into the ‘new different’.

Finally, I acknowledge grief. Without grief, this book would not be in your hands.

Diddima,grandmother, mentor and guru,I wrote this book in honour of you.Namasté.

Storytelling is a powerful way of connecting us with ideas and concepts, so throughout this book I’ve used stories to illustrate the ways in which grief can impact our lives and how we can learn to live more comfortably with that. Many of these stories are my own (and in some cases names and the detail of events have been changed for anonymity), while others have generously been told to me by clients or interviewees, some of whom have been anonymised to protect their privacy, and others are fictionalised case studies based on decades of observing how people respond to situations of loss and change. Where a story is fictionalised, I have made that clear beforehand and any similarities to real-life situations or individuals are coincidental and unintentional. It is also important to remember that although these stories are offered as a way of illustrating particular themes and ideas, they are not intended to be representative of age, gender, culture, ethnicity, religious and occupational experiences, which will be unique for everyone. Also, approaches that have worked for one person are not necessarily suited to every individual or circumstance, so it is vital that you find the right support and way forward for you.

If any of the stories in this book trigger issues for you, please be kind to yourself and do seek professional help. I’ve listed some sources of support in the back of the book, but this list is by no means exhaustive and the inclusion of these resources does not imply an endorsement of them – it is important that you find the right support for you with professional guidance.

‘I’m not afraid of death anymore, and I think a lot of the struggle we have in life comes from a deep, deep fear of death.’

Naval Ravikant, investor, entrepreneur and co-founder of AngelList

I have a deep question for you to ponder …

If everybody you knew, everything you owned and all that you experienced in life had a ‘shelf life’ or ‘end date’ attached to it – which meant you knew exactly when they would leave your life – would you interact with them any differently?

What about your own life?

We know our ‘start date’ – the day we are born, the day we celebrate every year – as our birthday.

But what if you also knew your ‘end date’ – your death day?

This would also mean that you knew when your friendships would end, relationships would finish or careers would come to a stop. You would know when your parents were going to die and all your friends and family too.

You would also be able to know about when big things were going to happen to you and un-happen to you.

Perhaps you would have already been prepared for the losses that we have faced from COVID-19 coming into our lives in 2020?

If we were to know about these endings in advance, would this mean we would feel okay about them when they happened? Or would we live our lives very differently?

The biggest question for me is: would this prior knowledge of things leaving us, ending for us and dying on us be the end of grief? I don’t think so.

A lot of human beings fear death, but there are some humans, like Naval Ravikant, who understand death and live life as fully as they can because they completely understand that there is a small window of opportunity that we all have on this planet when we are alive.

This window of opportunity for most human beings is between zero and a hundred years. Some human beings even live across two centuries, and that is basically our limit on the planet.

As I write this, I’m a month away from turning 48. If I live to around 81 years old – which is the average life expectancy for human beings living in the UK today – I have just over 33 years, or 396 months, or 1,716 weeks, or 12,045 days left on this planet. That doesn’t seem like many weeks or days when you look at it like that, does it?

That would mean that my potential ‘best before date’ will be some time in 2054. In fact, now that I have just worked out a potential ‘BBD’ for myself, it does feel a bit more real. It also makes me feel like I can’t waste any time.

I suddenly feel as if I have an urgent mission to get close to 2054 – when I will be able to look back and feel so happy with everything I achieved and all that I did in my life, the people I have met, the experiences I have had and the love I have felt.

I want to be able to leave this planet with a huge smile on my face and a wealth of happiness in my heart.

I may not know exactly when I will die, but I do know I will, and I do know that there will be people grieving my departure; even if they know it’s coming, they will still grieve.

We are all creatures of grief, because we have the capacity to form attachments and bonds. Once these attachments and bonds are broken, we feel the loss – this is grief.

If we can learn to overcome the fear of grief, we can also overcome the fear of loss and, ultimately, the fear of death.

Grief is part of life’s struggle, and our struggle with the fear of death can often mean we develop a fear of life.

My hope for all of us is that we learn how to transform all the fears that we may develop in life into fuel and power.

Humans grieve, animals grieve, bees grieve. Our planet has an intelligent way of healing itself (if human beings don’t get in the way).

If we get out of our own way, we can tap into a healing, transformational intelligence within ourselves which I believe is our very own subconscious mind. We can turn our own grief into fuel and use this fuel to power our lives.

My hope is that this book will show you how.

Most of us don’t like thinking about dying nor enjoy planning for our own departures. We tend to do our best to avoid the death talk, push it to one side and change the subject very quickly, because it makes us feel deeply uncomfortable, plus most of the time we’re just too busy getting on with our lives.

We work, we travel, we raise families, we exercise, we shop, we watch movies, we entertain ourselves, we socialise, we eat and drink, and we tick along quite nicely, thank you very much. Days and weeks merge into each other, the months roll on by and the years pass. Until one day, something happens, and we are stopped dead in our tracks as we come face to face with the inevitable end.

This rude interruption to our status quo means that we are forced to think about what has changed and to confront something we had hoped to continue avoiding or denying altogether.

Death isn’t something that passes by silently and quickly without a trace: it’s a biggie, like a tornado, that sweeps you off your feet and you have no idea when, if or even how you will ever land.

When you do land, it’s more like a crash landing in a barren landscape that feels unfamiliar, rearranged and empty of the truths you have clung to for so long. You look around and there is nothing to hold on to for comfort; you call out and nobody replies. You attempt to feel your way around this unknown territory and it just seems surreal and scary – a bit like when you get up in the night and it’s pitch black. You try to navigate the room you know so well and it suddenly feels entirely alien, and potentially threatening – who knows what’s lurking out there (most likely the inevitable trip hazards of the socks, shoes and pants you left on the floor last night!). You then quietly realise that your eyes need to adjust to a brand-new world; it’s like a different planet – a planet that only has you on it, you and death. This is when you get right up close and personal with death and it can either become a silent companion or, if you are not very careful, your worst enemy.

For many of my clients when they first come to see me, they will talk about the fear – the fear that comes with death, the fear of abandonment and abandoning, and the fear of death itself.

Death is a leveller. It does not discriminate or isolate. It connects our planet together in a beautifully exquisite way. It helps restore balance and order. It kills off everyone eventually, despite their size, their status and their ego. If there wasn’t death, there could not be life. But this doesn’t make us less scared of it, does it? It’s so final, isn’t it? It is game over. The last curtain call. Perhaps that’s why for many of us talking about death is the ultimate uncomfortable conversation.

So, why am I talking about it at the beginning of this book? Because if we begin with what makes us uncomfortable and learn to lean into that discomfort, bit by bit, the discomfort feels doable.

Facing your discomfort and taking a good look at your anxieties and fears in a safe space and in a sensible way, where you feel well supported, can help you see through the things that once held you back. Once you begin to see through the layers of your own discomfort, you discover that there is some sort of hope there. There is another version of life that exists beyond your discomfort and you may find yourself carefully edging closer to a new reality of acceptance and curiosity.

Embrace discomfort, says Farrah Storr, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and author of The Discomfort Zone. Farrah argues that ‘Discomfort might just be the start of something wonderful … You just have to take the first step out of your comfort zone and into your discomfort zone to feel those rewards.’ If you can do that, the taut grip of your discomfort zone will loosen and your comfort zone will begin to grow larger in its place, providing you with a solid foundation for personal growth, internal development and harnessing the power of your mind.

What is rewarding about being uncomfortable, you may be sitting there and thinking …

Well, if I tell you that it’s the up-close-and-personal death experiences I have faced in my past that have rewarded me with incredible strengths and superpowers that I didn’t even know I had back then, which I know for sure I have now – then doesn’t that feel worthy of enduring a little unease on the way?

MY STORY

It was Christmas Eve 2011. I sat for hours in the darkness, twenty-five days after losing my mother to liver cancer, and ten days after losing my beloved grandmother, my Diddima, whom I was exceedingly close to – even more so than my own parents – to dementia. I had already lost my father to leukaemia twelve years before and, being an only child, I felt desperately alone. Losing my mum meant I was now an orphan. I was an orphan in the middle of a divorce.

My fifteen-year marriage had ended, and I had moved out of my large Cotswold family home into a tiny two-bedroom apartment with my two small children.

Moving out of my marriage was another whole different process of grief. I had to very quickly thicken my skin. People who I had considered my real friends judged me. Some of my family, through their own shock and understandable disbelief, could not comprehend what was happening and for a short time pushed me away. I was not popular.

Being from Indian heritage, divorce is very much frowned upon. I am the only person in my family to wear the divorce badge because it is simply not the ‘done’ thing. Even though, as I write this, over a decade has passed and my family are all talking to me again and life is lovely … at that time I was very much cast out and my decisions were not supported. I was alone, and I had to deal with that.

In my state of aloneness, I realised something very poignant. I was really alone: not lonely in a crowded room, but actually on my own, dealing with my life with nobody to ask for help or advice. Because of this sense of real aloneness, I began to grow another strength on top of my thickened skin. A strength in my own truth.

Although there was a part of me that had some serious strength and courage, there was also an equally shaky and vulnerable part of me, now fully exposed. My mental health by this point was in an erratically vulnerable state. I had no idea that Orphan Grief was a thing until I experienced it first-hand.

Orphan Grief is a very unusual type of loss. It happens to us when we feel ill-equipped to deal with life as an adult with full agency and control over our lives. When we have our parents or similar guardians, who take care of us and take on the role of teacher and mentor, we as children and young adults learn to reference our existence and actions through our parental guidance.

There comes a stage when we also rebel against the guidance and this is a normal progression of growing up. If we lose parental guidance during our transition into adulthood – like I did, losing my dominant parent (my dad) in my early twenties – we experience Orphan Grief.

My dad was the one I went to for advice, and he was the one who made all the decisions and choices regarding my upbringing, so when he died, I suddenly didn’t have a template of how to run my own life. Even though I craved independence and the agency and authority to be my own person, when I actually got it I felt scared and alone. I had no map, no compass, no direction. I was suddenly very lost.

I felt like I was drowning in deep grief-related anxiety and had obsessive fears about everything. My usual optimism and upbeat positivity were knocked out of me and I fell into a deep, dark hole of hopelessness.

I became withdrawn, didn’t have a job, didn’t want to socialise, and my mind was filled with irrational and anxious thoughts that kept me awake at night for weeks at a time.

Then, when my mother passed away, I was plunged into full Orphan Grief. At this time, my boys were 8 and 9 years old. They never knew what a state I was in. Like an unmarried Stepford Wife, I cooked as normal, I cleaned, I washed, ironed uniforms; I made the Easter hats with them, I went to the concerts, the plays, I helped at the fêtes, I helped with homework (if I was asked), I helped them sell their toys at a made-up shop outside our tiny flat; and we baked cakes and did fun chemistry experiments that involved fake blood and slime. We read stories together at bedtime and it was all good. I was a fun mum, I think, and more importantly – to them – I appeared fine. I felt strongly at the time that I needed to make sure that the transition of one home into two homes was as smooth and as normalised as it could possibly be.

So, I kept my emotions contained and I maintained my composure while they were with me. In some ways, I found this to be a very helpful process, because within the moments of holding myself together, bits of myself indeed seemed to be gluing themselves back together.

But, looking back, I was not fine. I was far from fine. I was smiling on the outside and crumbling on the inside. I felt like, if I let that carry on, I would stand up one day and disintegrate because there was nothing solid left inside me.

I maintained zombie-school-run-mum mode. I dutifully took the boys to school each morning and, after dropping them off and saying the obligatory ‘hello, how are you’ to the other parents and their teachers with a really convincing smile firmly planted on my face (my drama school days came in handy), I used to walk back to the car in tears – tears I felt I couldn’t ever cry in front of the boys. I then got back into my little car and just sat there. I stared into space for seven hours – not moving, just sitting in that car, in complete silence, until it was home time again.

I repeated this weird routine for quite some time.

Luckily, the boys never asked me what I did every day, because I don’t think my brain was active enough to come up with a pretend ‘interesting’ day. In fact, when I asked them what they did that day, they always had three standard replies: ‘Nothing’, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I can’t remember’. Those answers would have had to be my answers too.

My mind always seemed to be filled with noise and fog, and although there was so much noise, everything was also strangely muffled. It felt like my brain had been encased in layers and layers of bubble wrap and the bubbles were constantly popping and then refilling themselves with some kind of heavy gas – like sulphur hexafluoride (the gas that deepens the voice) – and this was weighing down my negatively charged mind.

I felt terribly gripped by a fear of the unknown and I couldn’t visualise a positive future for myself. I felt alone, isolated and stuck. I realised I was deeply depressed.

Life had hit rock bottom.

One dark evening, shivering on a cold bathroom floor, as my dried-up tears started to sting life back into my face, I sat staring into a void of nothingness. I knew I had to do something before I was destroyed by my own thought-torture.

I chose to live, but the thoughts of meeting death by my own hand were very attractive, and at that time it was very difficult for me to push them away.

At night, when I got into bed, I would think the same catastrophic thoughts as I did every night – formulating a genius way to get out of this world cleanly, and wishing that I could find a clever way for it to look natural or like a freak accident. My night-time mind was constantly whirling with dark psychopathic plots that could have hatched from the mind of any best-selling thriller or horror writer.

Every night, I could feel my thoughts transforming themselves into a poison that would flood my body with tormented tension, silent stress and overwhelming panic – meaning I would always lie there, wide awake with adrenaline pumping through my system, keeping me on high alert until the small hours of the morning.

One night, my mind started racing in the usual way – it was becoming a habit – when suddenly, out of nowhere, everything went totally quiet. It was as though the cacophony in my head just cut out.

I was unusually calm, and in that stillness, I felt like I had tapped into a hidden resource that I never knew I had, and the only way I can describe it is as a strong urge to be okay, and an even stronger urge to survive.

I finally learnt to stop resisting those thoughts of ending my life, but instead, I found a new way to think about them. This may sound slightly weird, but believe me, it really helped. If a thought of ending my life came into my mind, I embraced it and mentally spoke to the thought. This is what I said: ‘Hello. I see you, and I hear you. I know you feel real and you want my attention. I know you are giving me a choice to get out of this situation I am in right now. Thank you for giving me this choice.’

The strangest thing started to happen when I repeated this over and over. It was like the thought started to lose its power over me. I could breathe easier and I felt somehow internally held, heard and healed.

The suicidal thoughts were much like other thoughts now – I could allow them to pass through in the sky of my awareness; just like a little grey cloud, they squeezed out a few raindrops and then evaporated and disappeared. However, it is also very important that, if you do experience thoughts like these, you seek professional help, as it can often be impossible to conquer them on your own.

With these words implanted in my mind, I started to see the blue skies again and found the proverbial silver lining, and bit by bit I somehow slowly and painstakingly figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

There are really only ever two options: live or die.

I chose the first option – that is why you have this book in your hands.

At that time, my life felt like a gigantic box of jigsaw puzzle pieces had been emptied and scattered all over the floor and I had no idea how to put things back together again.

I realised I had to start slowly, piece by piece, and so I began to gain clarity. If I ever caught myself thinking about completing the whole puzzle, I would go backwards and feel like I had lost control, and this loss of control was overwhelming – way too overwhelming for me to even contemplate – so I had to start breaking my life down into manageable pieces again.

The first task I gave myself was to look for the corners in my life and then, after that, slowly think about building the frame.

The metaphorical corners of my life’s puzzle at that time were: top right, Krishan, my son – he was 9 years old and such a bright boy, filled with intensity and a thirst for knowledge. His constant intellectual commentary of life made me laugh out loud, think deeply and feel so proud that I had such a wise conversationalist for a child.

Jacob, my other son – sat top left – such an enthusiastic and carefree kid; he was an excitable 8-year-old who saw life through the lens of curiosity and compassion. Everything was a fun experiment and his deeply honest joy for life brought tears to my eyes. He was lively, and there was never a dull moment with Jacob around.

Of course, they both needed me. I was their mother, their rock, their world and, of course, there was no way I could let them down.

This was a good start.

The memory of my grandma sat nicely bottom left. Diddima, I called her. She was always a cornerstone of my world and gave me lots of motivation while I was growing up with her dynamic energy and magical zest for life. She was fierce, though – a tough cookie – and she was small, but I would go so far as to bet that even Lennox Lewis would jump out of the ring if he was ever faced with Diddima. She could knock you out with one word that woman: she was a powerhouse of pure force.

The final corner piece for me – bottom right – was the trusted voice of my father. His gentle but admonishing voice was stamped firmly inside my mind as a source of truth and an audible mental reminder of the stuff I am made from. His voice underpinned my faith. His voice helped me get up and dust myself off and just keep going.

‘Now that you have knocked the corner off the car, you can just get back in the driving seat and drive us to the scrapyard to get another indicator.’ Those were his exact words when, only a week after passing my driving test, as I was turning into a driveway, I took the corner badly and shaved the indicator off on a low wall. I quickly got out of the car, totally mortified, and just stood there, immobile, looking at the damage and shaking with fear and sobbing with disbelief. Dad got out, came over to join me, looked at the damage and simply shook his head, then he punched me on the arm and said, ‘It’s okay. It’s fixable. Everything is fixable, with the right parts.’

I hear that sentence every time I think about the bottom right corner of my puzzle, and it reminds me that if I ever cannot find the parts I need to get through life successfully, the scrapyard is a good place to go and, in amongst all that junk, there is this beautiful chaotic organisation!

The next part of the puzzle was to start connecting my corners with some kind of framework. The metaphorical idea of the frame helped me find some stability in my own emotional whirlwind. I used the frame to hold on to for support while I steadied myself and picked myself up from the deeply unhopeful and seriously unhelpful place I had found myself in.

While desperately clinging on to the frame, I felt like I was still standing on unsteady ground. But, after a little while, what started to happen is that I regained some balance, and the deaths and loss that had initially shaken my world started to solidify in my reality, and I felt them becoming a steady platform for me to stand on and to start rebuilding my life on again.

Part of my ‘rebuild’ was finding Toby. Toby came into my life as my mum was dying. While deep in grief, it was an interesting time to start a brand-new relationship, but a decade later we are still together, so that’s a good sign! Of course, the beginning years of our relationship were hit and miss. We did break up once a month, and get back together; it was quite sketchy, but, weirdly, as soon as we started living together, we became solid. Toby is genuinely not just my rock, but my whole planet. He grounds me, supports me and helps me grow, and very skilfully keeps me centred. Toby and I had started to ‘go out’ with each other just before my mum passed away, and he could see that I was not in a good place at all. He suggested I asked Neil Crofts, co-founder of Holos Change, writer, coach and business consultant, for some help. I was reluctant, but Toby arranged it for me, and the next day Neil and I had an early Friday morning ninety-minute session booked over Skype.

Neil is like a real-life wizard and genius rolled into one human form. Neil shared with me a couple of pieces of his work. He sent me his utterly fascinating ebook Seven Stages of Authenticity to read, which totally blew my mind open, and he also took me through his extremely powerful ‘Life Purpose Exercise’. His Life Purpose Exercise is very simple, but brings about deeply profound changes for people who are standing on the edge of a precipice – like I was. I fell into his work and his work caught me, supported me and sprung me back into life.

After going through these exercises, something different started to happen in my body and in my mind. I was getting rebuilt, from the inside. It felt like I was being reconsolidated and glued back together. I was getting the biggest system upgrade my nervous system could sustain and I was also in full operational defrag. Everything I didn’t need was being destroyed, deleted or was being reused in a better way. I was re-emerging with a faster, more powerful operating system. I had, by the end of the weekend – a bit like Doctor Who – been completely regenerated.

I woke up on Monday morning and took the boys to school. This time, after the drop-off, I got in the car and drove back home. I wanted to do something very significant; I wanted to make a phone call to The Clifton Practice. This phone call was the start of my life’s purpose, and it’s a journey that has brought me here to writing this book.

By the end of that phone call, I was booked on to the ten-month hypnotherapy training programme with CPHT in Bristol. I started this new chapter of my life only two weeks after my coaching session with Neil Crofts, and it was the beginning of 2012.

In Seven Stages of Authenticity, Neil talks about life being a staged roadmap, but not a traditional linear map, rather one formed of concentric circles, like those found in a tree. At the centre of the circle is a dark hole, and as the circles get bigger, they evolve … It’s an amazing concept and, as I am a very visual and metaphorical learner, this appealed to me instantly, and it quite honestly changed my life.

My grief had forced me to stand in the very centre of my dark hole and realise that the darkness could easily engulf me, but with a little bit of awareness, I was able to shine some light on the darkness, which started to feel like pinpricks of brilliance punctuating the sorrow and hopelessness.

I like to think that, by now, I have managed to establish a really nice relationship with grief. I feel very thankful to grief for coming into my life and, if it wasn’t for death, I would have never felt grief as much as I did, and would not be who I am today.

When I say that some people get angry with me because they don’t understand what I mean. I have to explain that I’m not saying I am thankful that I’ve lost my wonderful parents and my beloved Diddima. Not at all. I would give everything to have them back in my world. But – and this is the bit I really need to highlight so I’ll write it in bold – If I hadn’t experienced their deaths, I would never have met grief so intensely, and it’sthatintensity that has made me the person I am today, and forthatI am grateful.

I think grief shook me so much that it literally woke me up to a new reality. This sounds dramatic, but it’s absolutely true. If my parents saw me now, they would not know who I was. I am not the same daughter they left behind.

I am not anybody’s daughter any more, and that used to be the scariest feeling ever. Susan Jeffers coined the phrase ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ in her 1987 book of the same name, and that has become my mantra as I choose to walk into that cold fear and step into the power that grief wants to offer. If it wasn’t for grief waiting for me, I wouldn’t be right here, where I am today.

I am now hope-full. (No, that’s not a typo – I’m full of hope.)

So, my own story shows that death is monstrous and magnificent. Death is the elephant in the room, it’s the huge pile of dust in the corner, it’s the massive lump under the rug. It’s the fact of life that we all wish was fiction and only happened to other people in faraway places, or in stories and films.

We don’t like admitting death is real and it can happen to any of us, at any time. Admitting this means we have no control over death and when we feel out of control we often feel fear, anxiety and complete dread.

So, it’s no wonder we don’t want to think about it very much or talk about it a lot while we are alive and well.

But, in reality – our reality, on this beautiful planet we call Earth – death does exist. It will come for all of us. We cannot escape or stop it. We can run from it and prolong it, but eventually it visits us all. It also comes for our loved ones, our friends, our colleagues and our pets. There is no one it misses.

So, perhaps we have to stop thinking of death as a thing that exists in a vacuum – a monster under the bed – and join the idea of death up with life. We can do this by learning to accept loss and focus on finding happiness from the vantage point of sadness, finding stillness in the noise and harnessing the power of the storm whipping up inside our emotional worlds as we hold on to our own centre of gravity.