When we are not telling Elliot the Dragon stories on the way to school, I tell Elliot stories from my childhood. It’s a way of me being known by him, and he frequently requests them. They always start the same way, “Once upon a time, there were four little girls. […]
I knew I had to make a plan for my 36th birthday, or else I would just end up doing nothing, which didn’t feel right. I thought I’d like to do something celebratory, to take what Red Twin taught me and apply it. And my mentor Moyra had written to […]
It’s my 36th birthday this month. See how I used ‘my’ there? 35 birthdays have been ‘ours’, but this one is only mine. I think some people have this idea that twins limit and squash one another, that if they could disentangle themselves from one another, they would be more […]
When Red Twin died, a number of people sent me this image, entitled ‘First Day in Heaven’ by Kerolos Safwat: It’s meant to be a comfort, to picture the relief and happiness of the deceased person, now that they are united with the One they have spent their life following, […]
It’s Advent, the season of expectation and preparation for Christmas, our first Christmas without Red Twin, and the two year anniversary of her cancer diagnosis. Christmas Eve two years ago we were in Iringa for a conference when Red Twin WhatsApped to say the diagnosis was in and it was […]
My grief counsellor showed me this diagram: It’s about ‘grief work’, which is a combination of doing two things: feeling the loss, and working out how you will go on. Healthy grief work is like a pendulum. You swing between the two, and the swings are big at first and […]
Since we moved to Dar I’ve been pretty isolated. I can’t get a work visa, but being a stay at home mum is not really a thing in middle-class Tanzania, so it’s been hard to even find people to be friends with. I had an American friend who worked full-time […]
