Description

By Nick Owen

ISBN: 978-1-84991-755-1
Published: 2012
Pages: 178
Key Themes: Mental Health, Grief, Journal, Poetry, Photography

Description

This book is the story of a grieving process in prose, poetry and pictures.

Nick Owen met Gillian Darwent in 2003. They fell passionately in love and started to live together in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, within a few months of their first meeting.

In 2004 they were hand fasted in a Druid ceremony among the prehistoric megaliths of Avebury at the winter solstice. They were legally married a few days later in Oxford.

They rented a stone cottage in the hamlet of Over Norton, in the north Cotswolds, where they lived and worked until Gills sudden death, aged 47, in 2009.

Nick was very much aware of Gills physical and mental frailty. He also knew that her level of alcohol consumption was sufficient to threaten her life.

Nick worked part time, supervising counsellors of people with serious and life threatening illnesses. He also worked for Mind, helping people create poetry and pictures as part of their way of dealing with mental distress.

Gill worked as an English teacher in Oxford.

When Gill died very suddenly in June 2009, Nick decided to record his experiences in words and images, as a way of working through his own process of grieving. It was a survival strategy as well as a labour of love.

Two years later he has decided that many others might find his account helpful in making sense of their own life experiences and grieving processes. Many of the poems and pictures here have been shared on line on social networking sites such as flickr. Nick gained much support from people in this way, and also provided support and insight to others.

This book is the fruit of his decision to share all this with a wider public.

While some of the journal may appear disjointed and rambling, it has stayed true to the rawness of the feelings at such painful times. Much of the poetry is beautifully written and very moving. The pictures are powerfully expressive.

Nick hopes to be able to offer courses in grief work, using words and pictures, for others who are attempting to make their own journeys through grief. Nick may also be able to help professionals develop skills in creativity to sustain their clients through deep feelings of loss and bereavement.