To draw the picture of a tree, I need to stand back from it, look at it clearly and then depict it as I see it. To write about anything, I need to see it from the outside and describe it as it seems to me. The hope is that the reader will align themselves with me so they can see somewhat what I see and feel somewhat how I feel, when they read my work.
It is frustrating when words prove to be fundamentally inadequate in the aftermath of a child’s death. To give up, walk away and fall back into the ‘anyway, no one understands’ narrative seems like the most natural thing to do. Yet, underneath the disorientation of this profound isolation lies the fertile ground of creativity that wishes to show to the world, that which emerges from a deeper well, that which bridges the gaps between us all by expressing the commonality of our experience of being human.
Beethoven’s profound ability to translate raw human emotion into music was heightened as he approached total deafness. His late string quartets, composed while he was bedridden, are the very best of his creations.
We can be wrenched apart and morphed into divine music by our wounds. One moment the pain rivers down our cheeks and the next, it comes together as a poem on a page, a bunch of fragrant yellow roses in a vase, the swaying flame of a candle or a moving melody.
We cannot run from what wants to emerge through us. We can allow it to dance in us until it flows out and finds a way to be present in the world. We can let it become our wings and lift us up in ways we could never have imagined. We can grant it permission to kneed us into a blob of moist clay and reassemble us anew.
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus
Examples and ideas that you may find inspiring:
- Book: When words are not enough: Creative responses to grief.
By Jane Harris and Jimmy Edmonds.
(Includes a chapter by me on the healing beauty of Ikebana, the art of Japanese flower-arranging.)
- The Grief Opera: https://thegriefopera.org/
YouTube film: https://youtu.be/D6zoZ7AC3RE?si=l7hlTq-dhD-cK1KP
(At 26to 29 minutes you might see a familiar face.)
- A special patisserie: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/05/germany-patisserie-johanna-orth-bereaved-parents-ahr-valley-floods
- Blog: www.kidsaregifts.org