Mindful grief
I wrote Bella's Way for my daughter Annabel soon after she died in 2004.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, one bright Saturday morning in September my daughter Annabel died. Nothing could have prepared us for the shock of that awful day and the desperate days to follow. She had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy, and that was a contributing factor leading to her death, but this book is not about the experience of epilepsy so much as the experience of loss.
In Part 1 of the book, my poems are an outpouring of fresh, raw and sometimes harrowing grief. (My wife would have preferred me to make the poems Part 2, but there it is....)
In Parts 2 - 5 there is a growing sense of calm, where I try to share some of what I know about Mindfulness, which is the practice I had coincidentally been learning at the time.
I wrote Bella’s Way all those years ago for several reasons - to honour my daughter’s life and to inspire others to learn more about Mindfulness.
Being mindful in everyday life won't inoculate you against life's tragedies, but it definitely helps in coming to terms with them.
