Guidance and Signposting for Life's Challenges
And It Doesn’t Expire When People Expect It To There is a quiet pressure around grief. In the beginning, the world allows space. There are messages.Flowers.Time off.Permission to fall apart. But slowly, gently, almost invisibly; expectation returns. You are expected to steady.To adjust.To move forward. As though grief operates on a calendar. It doesn’t. Grief […]
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The anniversary is looming, a week today, and this has been playing on my mind more than I expected. It has been seven years since I was first sexually assaulted. The same year our Mark died. Sometimes people separate those events in their minds. I can’t. They live in the same year. The same body. […]
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Stress doesn’t always look like panic. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s exhaustion. Sometimes it’s staring at a pile of washing and feeling like you might cry. We talk a lot about trauma, grief, and hardship here at the Mark Hewitson Foundation — but underlying all of it, more often than not, is stress. Big, heavy, […]
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We don’t always know when trauma begins — sometimes it’s one moment, one event that changes everything. Other times, it’s drip-fed over years. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a slow erasing of safety. At the Mark Hewitson Foundation, we work with people who’ve lived through all kinds of trauma — grief, assault, abandonment, illness, violence, […]
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Grief isn’t polite. It doesn’t wait for the right moment or show up in neat stages. It crashes in when you least expect it. Or sits quietly in your bones for days. Sometimes it hits like a wave. Other times it’s background noise — dull, heavy, always there. People like to talk about “closure” or […]
Read MoreMany people have asked me what to do, who to contact and how it’s expected for you to be when your person dies, so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned during the last 6 months. What to do? Be hysterical. Be calm. Be whatever you need to be. There are no rules when your […]
Read MoreHoliday 2 of 4 cancelled. Part of me is pleased because COVID is still amongst us. When I add to the fact I’m nowhere near ready to leave the house and mingle with people, it makes for a good outcome. The other half of me is conflicted; I should leave the house, I should be […]
Read MoreHow do people who have suffered trauma cope with lockdown, with every day a Groundhog Day of pain? I can only speak for myself, but I’ve been on my own lockdown for the last 142 days. Yes, I’m counting. Each day presents new or repetitive challenges but the basis is the same. Dealing with the […]
Read MoreI’ve always bounced back. From every knock I’ve ever experienced, I’ve found a way to reflect, rebuild and go again. My Psych on Wednesday was pretty hard. He pushed me to recall really difficult stuff, he challenged my thinking, my self-esteem, my perception. Considering it was the second day after we said “in a bit” […]
Read MoreOn 13th December 2019 my husband, Mark, passed away. The reason he passed was unexpected, the Coroner came back with `undetermined’. That shit is hard to reconcile with. Mark was 52. Christmas and New Year passed in a blur, as have the days and weeks since. How can I possibly explain how I feel right […]
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