I’ve run circles around it. I’ve tried to ignore it. I’ve tried to bury it under a pile of comedy shows, in packs of crisps and sweets I’ve been consuming in excess these past few weeks. But oh, I know… I know it won’t go away unless I properly acknowledge it. THE PAIN. You see, this pain is not natural as natural has it. It is not natural for a child to die before his parent so even now, four years on, my instinctive response is to push this pain away. But I’ve learned that it will pounce on me then. Like a sneaky, vicious cat hiding in the shadows, it will come after me. Unless…unless I go for it first. Unless I drag it out of the shadows, expose it and my raw self to the light and say: “I am broken.” Four years ago, the most beautiful boy was born to me. And oh, so many dreams with him. But he was gone before any of those dreams took shape. And from time …

We are approaching a second Christmas without our baby boy. Well, actually, without our toddler, as Georgie should be nearly 2 now, a stroppy, funny and full of beans child and not only a memory on a shelf. We have felt, once we have completed one year onto our loss journey, that the pressure has been mounting for us to start behaving “normally”. My posts on bereavement have been getting less and less views and comments  and the interaction on my Facebook page with bereavement posts is sometimes zero. I get it, life moves on. For us, it has had to move on too, mainly because we have Emma to look after and care for but also because we have started to dare imagining a future, and not only surviving on a day to day basis. I think the turning point has been when we reached the point of what I call “no more questioning“. Acceptance. Both Alex and myself have reached a point now when we don’t want to ask the “why?” questions anymore. …