Why can’t I get over this?

Let’s talk about the long – the very long - shadow of grief

Firstly, an apology for my radio silence. I’ve been working on a memoir which is finally seeing the light of day.

A long time ago - 19 years in fact - I published a memoir, Living On The Seabed, about grief and loss. Then I was seven years on from the loss of my daughter Ellie, who died aged only nine, and 13 years on from the death of my husband John Merritt. I wrote the book out of frustration that grief was regarded as something to be dealt with in a matter of months  -  definitely over and done with by the time the first anniversary comes around.

“Time to move on,” people say, when what they mean is – “I can’t cope with your misery any longer!”

In fact, as anyone who has been through it knows, the long shadow of grief can stretch down through the years, even for decades, touching and informing every aspect of life.

I also thought I had found my happy ending. I truly believed that after all the pain and trauma, life owed me a pain-free life. But that, as I discovered is not how the Universe works.

My new memoir Perfect Bound took a long time to write because it meant going deep into how much I was responsible for my own misfortunes. To what extent – and despite writing about my grief and talking openly about it – I wasn’t really facing up to the devastating effects of a loss of a young husband and child. It is the result of my research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which has become a much over-used term. I also delayed publication until I could honestly say that I was healing and how I got there. It is my nature to be hopeful and positive and to try to offer support for anyone who finds themselves grieving for as long as I have done. And that is very many people. We will all be bereaved in the end, unless we die first, of course. It is the human condition – yet, curiously, in this day and age it is still something we still deny, obfuscate and ignore.

“Why can’t I get over this,” we berate ourselves. But maybe grief isn’t for getting over? Maybe it is for incorporating into your life because we are all, in life, in the midst of death.

Perfect Bound is published on July 18, by the Mudlark imprint of Harper Collins. It is available for pre-orders already (through the usual outlets) and such is the media interest, extracts will be running in some national newspapers.

This has already kicked off and you can read the first extract here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13576413/cheating-husband-arrested-assault-former-editor-Good-Housekeeping-Lindsay-Nicholson.html

And, of course, now that my book is “out in the wild” (or nearly) I will be back here on a regular basis writing and commenting about the way the loss of those we love stays with us, forever.

And why that’s OK, too!

Just remember, you are not alone in this.

Lindsay x

Photo by Lezli + Rose for The Daily Mail