10 years without Elspeth. She is missed today just as much as she's been missed every single other day. She is always present with her absence. 

This Christmas dinner, like the 5 before it, we will have an empty chair at our table. It's a chair that shouldn't be empty. A chair where there should be laughter, and smiles.

The empty chair is more important than anything else in the room. It represents the space in our lives, the hole we all navigate around every day. It can't be ignored, and as we go through our Christmas preparations, we plan and we buy, decorate and bake, the empty chair becomes more important.

At first it is quiet, sitting, watching. You catch it out of the corner of your eye, and you remember everything you try so hard to put to one side.

The chair gets bigger and more unavoidable as December progresses, until that innocuous piece of furniture is the loudest thing in the house. It becomes the only thing you can see when you look into the room.

Christmas is almost here and 5 years in we are getting used to our new sort of Christmas. Some things change in more ways than others. I have a real problem looking ahead and I only started buying presents two days ago, but we're doing it. It'll happen. We're further ahead than this time last year.


We knew doing decorations would be hard and started at the beginning of December, so our living room now looks amazing and we have a huge LEGO Winter Village. When the tree is up it'll be perfect, and it's first time we've felt able to really go to town with the decorations since losing Elspeth.

She is constantly in our thoughts anyway, but now more than ever because she loved Christmas so much. She looked forward to it for months and every Christmas song on the radio or Christmas movie on the TV reminds us of her, and the fact she isn't here. Every gift idea seems it would have suited Elspeth best. In honesty we've kept ourselves busy to stay distracted...

December may be hard, but we've still managed to collect plenty of smiles and I've caught a few of them on camera. We've been to see Father Christmas, Black Beauty, Slapstick and The Forest Of Forgotten Disco's and we've definitely discovered the benefit of woolly hats....

We love books and Christmas is a great excuse to read together. Snuggling up under a blanket and reading is the perfect way to spend a Winter's evening and Owlet Press have sent us a couple of their Christmas storybooks to take a look at...

Both of our books have a very strong message about what is truly important:
Santa's Wish considers, what would Santa want for Christmas?
The Christmas Next Door is a book about a family coping with their first Christmas after losing a loved one and features a main character has Autism.

It's an absolutely manic time of year for me just now with all of the Christmas toys and books, and the small matter of Christmas Present Giveaways. I've also just had a day off for my birthday, and an other day off to visit my daughter in Sheffield with the Co-op to find out what she's really been eating! Well worth it despite having to catch up...


Autumn has definitely arrived and your photos are very Autumnal!! It's lovely going back seeing all of the Halloween costumes and firework photos, because that already seems like it was months ago. Christmas will be with us before we can blink.

I especially love that we have so many grown ups in photos this month, it's nice to see you the right side of the camera, taking photos for your children to show their kids when they are your age. You don't have to have lots of followers or a fancy camera, ANYONE is welcome to join in and a HUGE thank you to everyone who does.

In the UK today, if you are aged 5-34 you are more likely to die from suicide than anything else. It is the biggest killer of our younger population. Just think about that for a minute. More people die by their own hand than for any other reason. It takes away our children, our parents, our siblings, our friends.

But we don't talk about suicide. No-one talks about suicide.

It's really hard to talk about suicide. It's really hard for me to write about suicide.


When our 16 year old died all of the older members of our family had counselling. We'd have been completely lost without that opportunity to talk. To sit away from the children and let it out and sob and be angry and say "it's not fair". To express our worries and fears, to find out if what we felt was 'normal'. To find out if our children's response was 'normal'. To keep us going.

My youngest 2 children were under 7 when they lost their sister and deemed too young for counselling. Children under 7 react differently and in general it's expected they should be able to cope. While that might work in some cases, our whole household was shattered and those young boys had a lot to try and understand.

As time went on and my boys still struggled with their sister's death, we were dumbfounded at how to help them. I built myself up and then emailed a UK charity for children who are bereaved.

I was given internet addresses where I could download information sheets and signposted to another well-known children's charity. The information sheets were more for advice immediately following a loss and didn't really help. They focussed on Cancer and long-term illness. I contacted charity no.2.

Children's charity no.2 simply suggested that what I needed was someone who was actually more used to dealing with our specific type of loss. They directed me to a charity for people who have lost loved ones to suicide. Maybe they were right. Maybe it wasn't children's charities I needed.

This post is for Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 and carries trigger warnings.

For most of my life Mental Health was something I felt affected other people. Don't get me wrong, I've had my fair share of sobbing into my pillow, not wanting to leave the house, drinking a few too many because it made my reality further away. My life has not been plain sailing, but in general I seemed to skim round all the sinkholes and emerge relatively unscathed.


As a teenager I was a volunteer for MIND, spending my evenings playing pool and smiling yet again at photos of a stranger's family and great times, carried around as precious treasure. A reminder that life can be good, and a reason to carry on. I learned quite quickly about some of the realities of poor mental health.

It's easy for me to feel bitter and angry about the state of Children's Mental Health services in this country at the moment. I have every reason to believe it's a failing system that is understaffed, underfunded and consequently takes a long time to access and for any action to be implemented.

Last October the Care Quality Commission published a phase one report on children's mental health services. The full review and recommendations will be published next month. They've already found that because many different agencies can be involved, access to CAMHS and other services can be difficult and incredibly time-consuming. I could have told you that. So probably could anyone who has ever wanted to access CAMHS services.


Over the past 4 years we've learned far more about children's mental health services than we ever would have believed. Our family has been given an immense amount of help, for which I am eternally grateful. We had extreme circumstances and jumped to the top of the queues at first, and in the subsequent months we've had to wait patiently with everyone else and at times watch our young people deteriorate, completely impotent and unable to pull them out by ourselves. We've seen the holes in the service, the lack of knowledge-sharing, the time-pressure, the wrangling for financing from different departments in order to make things happen, and the waiting for red tape and meetings to sign off plans and be able to move forward.

I cannot fault any of the professionals we've met. I don't have a bad word to say about any of them because they were every bit as frustrated as we were. Their job often seems more about admin and knowing who to speak to than it is about clinical care and spending time with the people who need it.

It's December! And Christmas is almost here. And if you are like us, you will have done very little preparation. Christmas can be very hard and there is more on that in the second half of this post. I am going to be taking some time off the blog though, starting with my first weekend off in 3 months - so hopefully we'll have a tree up by Sunday.

This month we had lots of suitably festive smiles shared on the #TBCSmiles hashtag. Visits with Santa, Christmas trees, festive baking, Christmas jumpers and so many youngsters with their first real taste of snow. We also had a few princesses and even a King. You can find all of the photos by searching the hashtag on Instagram, but here are a few of those that really made us grin this month.

On the face of it Raymond Briggs, cartoonist and children's writer, might have little in common with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the Victorian poet, but they both left us with the same over-riding message - it's just that Alfred did it in words.


Briggs lost his wife to Leukaemia in 1973, they never had children. He wrote The Snowman in 1978, when the wind blows in 1982 and The Bear in 1994. His works are full of loss, and it is shown in such simple terms that even the youngest of children can understand.

Characters enter your life and then they leave, and at some point you will leave too. Briggs teaches us that well, but he also teaches that it is better for the story to have happened. The story ends, but we are glad we were able to share it while it lasted.

Three years where time has flown past so agonisingly slowly and the majority of it has faded completely. That morning three years ago is embedded into my yesterday, it recurs so frequently, yet I can't remember what life was like before it happened. Time is almost non-linear, the past creeps in constantly and not a minute can ever go by when you don't think of what has been lost for now and the future. How would life for the other children be different, the family dynamic altered. Where would you be now? How many courtships, part-time jobs, driving lessons. Borrowed make up, lost shirts and spilt tears. Exam results, friendships, nights out. How many times would you have made us laugh? The 3 years has gone so quickly and yet so slowly and it's been such hard work, although the sludge is reducing and the trudging getting easier, but always never a minute without remembering.

It'll never be easier without Elspeth.


Last year at Blog On Conference I won a holiday from Canvas Holidays and it took us more than ten months of build up, but we finally booked it and did it. We finally felt confident all of our young people were strong enough to leave behind - although they all had the option to come.

Over the past few days suicide has barely been out of the headlines. Chester Bennington has been discussed a lot in our house and always with the same end to the conversation. Suicide isn't harmless, it has a massive, rippling negative effect, and anyone who treats it with purely sympathy is sweeping a lot under the carpet.

There's been a real backlash condemning Brian Welch for his outburst against his friend, and I don't agree with it at all. I think he's allowed to call his friend a coward. He will think that. He'll also spend time thinking his friend was selfish, nasty, foolish, wasteful, hurtful. When you end your own life, the people left behind will without a shadow of a doubt spend time thinking that all the pain they are feeling, and the hurt and sadness that they and your loved ones, your friends and everyone else is going through, is due to you.

As those who are left try to make sense of the shock, as they scramble to rearrange what is left of their life into some sort of workable order, and struggle to see why they are bothering, they will find it almost impossible not to think of the person who died as a coward.

Blaming the person who died isn't an option because we know full well it's not their fault. As Brian Welch found out, you'll be pilloried for suggesting it. Everyone will wave their fists and say that 'you don't understand'. You do. You know that actually the person who died was the one unable to understand. Right there and at that second, they forgot why they shouldn't. They couldn't see the right path ahead and you weren't there to save them. So you can't blame them, you have to try to lay blame somewhere else. Probably at least partly with yourself.

Summer is here! Or was here....or at least popped by... There are loads of awesome sunshiney photos among this month's #TBCSmiles, plus it's awards season and so many graduations and trophies - well done to all of you. Well done to everyone who did something to be proud of.


We did things to be proud of, including a day out in Blackpool where we actually relaxed - for the first time in years no-one cried, no-one had a tantrum and no-one wanted to go home early (I'm mainly talking about the grown-ups). It's actually quite scary to have less to worry about. You have to try hard not to fret over the 'nothings' instead.

Today when I woke up Elspeth was still dead. She has been dead every single day for the last 24 months, 3 weeks and 4 days. But sometimes, just for a moment, I forget.

And then I remember...

And it's not just me. I see it when her Dad, or her brothers and sister forget. And I see it when they realise. I see that flash across their eyes as they remember she died.


Elspeth felt she was alone, weird, different. She felt no-one would miss her, it would make life easier if she went. She thought we'd all just carry on regardless, as if a car backfired outside, or the living room lights simply flickered.

She wasn't alone, she was surrounded by people who cared, but she hid that she needed help, and none of us were able to spot it. We weren't given the opportunity to help.

This isn't a blog post I wanted to write and it isn't one you were hoping to read. 23 months after losing Elspeth and one of our children is back in hospital long term. Finally they are beginning to discuss their sister's death truthfully, and admit how much they miss her and need her. And finally, when they have truly reached rock bottom, is everyone hopeful that they can see the way through to climb out.

Yeah, okay, I'm a day late. I'm not even sure how that exactly happened, but I was really stunned when I realised today was not the 15th. It's got to be a good sign. It's also an indicator of just how busy we are at the moment - we're getting out more. It's definitely a good sign.

Life is becoming more normal, we've had some amazingly successful trips out this last month and one of the big differences is we've begun to 'last the day', rather than wanting to go home after an hour to the safety of our own surroundings.

I've always known life has to carry on, it has to be good for the little boys. They have a right to enjoy the things the big kids had. My teenagers have to be teenagers, they have to do normal teenage stuff. Sitting down and giving in would be so easy at so many points, but then what? Nothing. You can't lie down and give in, you have the rest of forever to consider.

Grief is an unwelcome journey. The treadmill starts immediately the moment you know. It slides into place and it gets you through those first days, doing all of the essential things while running. No time or chance to look to either side or get off, you can only run ahead. Everything gets caught in the treadmill, dragged along and it gets heavier and heavier. You can't escape, you have to run or no-one will eat, or have clean clothes, no bills will be paid. From one essential to the next, no time happens, no pause for breath, just running.

The treadmill slows with the weight of all it drags along, but you have to keep going. Behind you everything is trampled and crushed, destroyed. Lives, friendships, work, sleep, memories. Sometimes you can spot things and grab hold of them, but sometimes you can only watch as they are dragged under and fall behind you into the distance. You want to remember to go back for it, you know you intend to, when you can. Everything left behind is too much though, you can't remember it all. You hope it remembers you.

The first Christmas after you lose one of your family is incredibly scary.

Christmas was always one of Elspeth's big things, she adored it and drank it all in with a glow of excitement. She'd sing carols from November onward and watch marathon sessions of Christmas movies. We had no idea how it could possibly be good without her there. As Christmas drew closer we began to panic more and do less.

One of the most crippling things about the depression following grief is that everything takes so much effort and seems so hard that you can't face it, but the longer you leave it, the scarier it becomes. Eventually you simply don't understand how it can ever be possible. We realised on 7th December that we were going to be letting our small children down if we didn't create Christmas.