Hello

Welcome to my first ever blog. As I write, my laptop is low in charge. I’ve deliberately not plugged it in… to curb over thinking, to avoid further procrastination, and in the spirit of offering you something concise and meaningful to read.

I have exciting updates to share with you regarding the publication of my new book To Grief With Love, as well as some more pensive feelings, as World Suicide Awareness Prevention Day 2024, is soon upon us. For many of us, this can be a time when heightened emotions become re-activated.

Book News

The book has been made from my diaries – inner work that I wrote for myself, following the suicide of our son Elliot in 2018. It’s a lyrical and pictorial voyage through loss, mostly featuring sketches of a stick lady, who later became known as Doodle Lady. She was born of my grief-self, able to depict my innards when words were too wordy, as I tried to find my place in it all. She was a kind of download really and I started to share Doodle Lady posts. It seems she met other hearts. My mess became my message, and even though I was encouraged to publish, I do so with great humility.

It will be released as the beautiful hard back book I imagined, with pages that alternate doodles, scribbled musings, poetry and other grief wisdoms that found me… also narrative I added later, to proffer things that helped, and things that didn’t. I share To Grief With Love as a hug, to honour fragility and to connect in compassion with other wayfarers in loss. Though it’s a book I wish I hadn’t had to write, I hope that something useful has been forged out of molten sorrow, and that the reader feels the invitation, as I have, to keep our inner pilot lights on in the dark, so we might all shine a little brighter on our darker days.

Books should be ready for purchase in November, and priced somewhere between $30 and $35. If you would like to reserve a copy from a first limited print run, please visit my web site www.zoestricklandpublishing.com click on the notify me tab on the home page and I will email you as soon as I have a delivery date and E commerce is up and running.

Grief Triggers

There are so many things that activate our grief aren’t there? It’s six years since Elliot died. A universe ago and yet just a blink in time. My grief-self today is not the grief-self I was, five, or four, or even three years ago. Time is a healer, though not exclusively. I think deeper healing happens when we lean in, and with the relationship we nurture with grief.

World Suicide Awareness Prevention Day is around the corner. It’s very prevalent in my social media feed at the moment and rightly so. On September 10th every year, organisations and communities come together to raise awareness of how we can create a world where fewer people die by suicide. Grief of course is always just around the corner too, and my six year grief-self can readily become my one, two, or three year grief-self. I expect you have noticed just the same.

I’m learning to be mindful of this, to listen to my body, and not to be scared in the dark. In these moments I send grief love. I ask her what she needs, and whisper to myself a favourite breathing meditation, from Buddhist monk and compassionate teacher, the late Thich Nhat Hanh. This calms me, and brings me gentle strength. The word sorrow can be replaced with any overwhelming emotion we might feel. I’ll share here.

Breathing in        I know sorrow is here
Breathing out     this sorrow is not pleasant
Breathing in        this sorrow is not all of me
Breathing out     I know this sorrow will pass
Breathing in        I send love to this sorrow
Breathing out     I am strong enough to take care of this sorrow

Thank you for being here … battery nearly out …

In kindness,
Zoe