Good Mourning authors Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn shine a light on the many ways grief can impact our lives, and help to navigate heartache and bereavement with an affirmation that we are not alone in the grieving process. We should cherish our memories. Photo: Supplied.
“There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Go whichever way you need.” That’s the advice from the creators of the Good Mourning podcast Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn as advocated in their book.
In Good Mourning, they shine a light on the many ways grief can impact our lives. It is the support-group-in-a-book that helps readers navigate grief and loss with warmth, humour, raw honesty and the affirmation that they are not alone.
Grief is a wild ride – it’s lonely, confusing and can feel like your world has been turned inside out and upside down. Sorrow often brings a sense of loss of control, but there’s a process involved to overcome the death of a loved one, though healing does not happen overnight.
Make the healing choices that best suit you as you select, connect and communicate. Of course, it’s easier said than done, but focus on the present and surround yourself with the best of loving memories from the past. The five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live without the one we lost.
The authors say: “Loss is a natural part of life. It’s something that we will all inevitably experience, yet we don’t know how to talk about it. When someone in your life dies, everything around you feels alien. Nothing makes sense anymore, you can try to imagine grief or prepare yourself for it, but until death comes knocking on the door of someone you love, it’s hard to grasp the magnitude of it.”
Trying to survive something that feels completely insurmountable is unimaginable. Douglas and Carn speak from first-hand experience after they became “fully-fledged grievers when our mums died suddenly, only months apart”. They know how tremendously difficult, earth-shattering and life-changing grief can be.
How can someone we have known our entire life just vanish from this earth without warning?
You start to see life through an unfamiliar and catastrophic lens. For a long time, everything feels dark, but you do find light in your life again. Sally and Imogen say so.
As they navigated their grief together, they wondered whether what they were experiencing was “normal”. As luck would have it, their lives turned for the better. They had no idea that a brief encounter at a grief support group meet-up would change their lives forever. It was not just their shared experience of sudden loss and a mutual feeling of loneliness that created a deep bond, but they also had many common interests.
“We laughed at the absurdity of the experiences we had been through since our mums died – the ‘grief brain’, the forgetfulness, and what not to do when scattering your loved one’s ashes,” they write. “We discussed how little Western society talks about loss and wondered how many other grievers were sitting at home feeling alone in their grief, too. (Turns out, a lot!)
“Fuelled by our experiences, and a hope that we could help others feel less alone, we began the Good Mourning podcast. Our purpose is to create a space to talk about what grief is really like, telling it from the heart.”
Good Mourning is a compassionate survival guide for all things to do with grief. It contains candour, hope and a bit of light banter. It’s a book “we wish we were handed when our mums died, and we hope that it can be your compass as you navigate your loss. We’re real, truthful, a little bit sweary, and on a mission to take the loneliness out of this hugely uncomfortable, yet universal, human experience. It’s time to rip up the rule book on how we’re supposed to ‘do’ grief, and have more open and honest conversations about loss.”
Grief is a forever thing that changes shape over time. The book is written in such a way that you can pick it up, digest it, put it down and assimilate at your own pace. There is no ”one size fits all” when it comes to sorrow.
Along with expert advice from clinical psychologist Tamara Cavenett and “warm words and insights” from hundreds of others who’ve experienced heartache, they offer practical tips on coping with isolation and loneliness, navigating grief at work, managing milestones and so much more.
Whether you’re one month in or 10 years down the track, Good Mourning will help you make sense of life after loss. Sometimes we need reassurance that there’s hope.
Good Mourning, by Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn, Murdoch Books, $34.95
