Why I Wrote my Book ‘Love Untethered: How to Live When Your Child Dies’
Why I wrote my book ‘Love Untethered: how to live when your child dies’
by Vanessa May
Becoming a writer was not an occupation I ever envisaged for myself, but then nor was becoming a bereaved mother. Three years ago, my life changed forever when my 24-year-old son died and, in some ways, it was writing that saved me. There are really no words that adequately describe quite how catastrophic the death of a child is. There is no going back to your old life and you’re no longer the same person. You now walk a very different path, littered with more challenges than you could ever have imagined possible and you have no choice but to somehow crawl forward into this new profoundly changed and unasked-for life.
In all honesty, I didn’t think I could survive the excruciating pain of losing my adored son, Harry. I could barely breathe, my chest was tight, I couldn’t stop shaking, I felt constantly nauseous and my racing heart felt like it would explode. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. One minute I would be on my knees wailing, the next I would be numb and frozen with shock. The severing of the bond between a mother and child is just brutal beyond all imagining.
Somehow though, despite feeling like I was drowning in my grief, that it would consume every part of me until nothing remained, some kind of survival instinct occasionally kicked in and I found myself searching for ways to relieve some of the searing agony. Initially, I thought bereavement counselling might provide some respite. It didn’t. I just sat there stewing in a swirling mire of pain with a well-meaning counsellor who clearly felt completely out of her depth with my raw and visceral torment.
I turned to reading books on grief and this did help. Through reading books by other bereaved mothers, I began to see my own experience reflected in theirs and this enabled me to feel less alone. However, most of them were written by American mothers and I sometimes missed the relevant cultural references and helpful practical resources that were often signposted. Then a friend suggested I might perhaps try writing myself and this planted a seed…
My pain felt like it needed expression and maybe getting it down on paper would help. The words seem to flow and I discovered I liked the process of writing. I’d never really written before, apart from blog posts about nutrition and wellbeing for my website. This was different, this felt cathartic. Writing about what had happened to me, and how I felt, turned out to be the best form of therapy. It didn’t bring my son back of course, and there were many days when I didn’t write because I was so overwhelmed by grief I couldn’t get out of bed. But writing about what had happened to me began to give me a purpose and a reason to get out of bed – not always, but sometimes, and that was good enough.
I was beginning to understand that, in grief, whilst some people step up and are amazing, others behave with a rather shocking lack of sensitivity and compassion. In addition, if you’ve lost a child, you’re living a lot of people’s worst nightmare so you discover people will literally cross the road rather than speak to you. I began to write about this. Writing helped me work through unanticipated situations such as these and I realised that, if it had happened to me, it had most likely happened to others. Maybe if I shared my writing, others would at least get a little comfort from thinking, ‘yes, that happened to me too, that’s exactly how I felt.’
Then I started to see that some of the skills from my previous life could perhaps be incorporated into the book. Now I wasn’t just writing as a form of therapy but beginning to formulate an idea to support others in a similar position to mine. I was a coach so maybe I could coach other bereaved people. I was a nutritional therapist and knew how grief was affecting my body so maybe I could advise others on their physical health and wellbeing during the grieving process.
Gradually, ‘Love Untethered: how to live when your child dies’ took its form. However, it’s path to publication wasn’t straightforward. Although I quickly landed a small independent publisher, very close to the publication date they suddenly decided to censor all mention of anything they considered ‘alternative’, ‘spiritual’ and even wanted to remove the word ‘wellbeing’. Chronicling the profound grief for my child was not something I felt I could, or should, compromise on so I felt I had no choice but to ask for my contract to be dissolved. This, however, came at a price as the PTSD I had been diagnosed with was badly triggered, mostly by seeing red lines ‘deleting’ the words I had written about my trauma. But eventually, I got another publisher and now, finally, ‘Love Untethered’ is going out into the world.
My hope is that this book will help those who have suffered a devastating loss and that they will be able to relate to my story and find some of the advice offered to be of benefit. I also hope it will be of interest to anyone who just like to read about other people’s lived experiences (and perhaps feel grateful it’s not theirs). I hope too that the book will raise awareness about what deep grief is truly like so that those who are grieving will always be given the compassion and kindness they deserve.
Love Untethered: how to live when your child dies’ is published by Ayni Books on 25th November 2022
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Vanessa is a holistic grief coach, certified grief educator, nutritional therapist, wellbeing coach and author. She wrote ‘Love Untethered: how to live when your child dies’ in part to make sense of her profound grief and trauma, as well as in the hope that she can help others who have experienced a significant bereavement. Vanessa believes life-changing loss can affect us on multiple levels: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. As well as being a memoir, ‘Love Untethered’ also offers advice to those grieving based on Vanessa’s personal and professional experience. Her second book ‘Supporting Your Grieving Client: a guide for wellness practitioners’ will be published in February 2023 and she is currently writing her third book which will be a sequel to ‘Love Untethered’.
Social Media Links:
Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/may.wellbeing/
Twitter Page: https://twitter.com/maywellbeing
LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-may-034a7136/
LOVE UNTETHERED
Vanessa May gives a moving account of what she went through after the unexpected death of her son, demonstrating that it’s possible to survive such a shattering and traumatic loss, even when that might feel impossible. By sharing her personal experience, the author enables others who have gone through a similar loss to feel less isolated in their grief.
She also provides advice on supporting physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing using her experience – not just as a bereaved mother, but as a nutritional therapist, wellbeing coach and now holistic grief coach. She offers the reader various tools for withstanding a devastating loss and for navigating a particularly challenging path. Love Untethered is about holding on to hope when it feels like there isn’t any, and about finding purpose as a means of surviving a devastating and life-changing bereavement.
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Category: On Writing
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