The Gifts From Losing You

The Gifts from Losing You is a poignant chronicle that shares a family’s experience of their first year grieving the sudden loss of their only son and brother, Patrick, aged 19.

Written by his mother, it is a story of personal tragedy, immeasurable love, heartbreak, and sadness, coupled with gratitude, courage, and perseverance.

Her reflections explore the themes of loss, shock, pain, acceptance, and eternal love.

She focuses on how her family found a way to weave their grief into the fabric of their lives while opening their hearts and minds to the gifts bestowed on them. 

She discovers that deep despair and blessings can co-exist simultaneously in grief. This unique perspective has guided them in their healing, enabling them to live alongside their heartache. From her experience as a health coach, she shares the self-care practices that enabled her to cope with her devastating reality. 

For anyone suffering the loss of a child or a loved one, this part memoir, part self-help book provides hope and inspiration, with insights to help you navigate your path out of the dark, towards the light.

Welcome to my heart.

What I am about to share with you is an intimate and authentic memoir about losing someone who I deeply and greatly love, my magnificent son, Patrick. 

This is a story of personal tragedy, immeasurable love, heartbreak, and sadness, coupled with gratitude, courage, and perseverance. I see my family’s experience as an opportunity to serve and help others as our story has meaning in the gifts that it has given us. I feel strongly about this because Patrick’s death should not remain senseless. My family cannot lose our son, brother, grandson, nephew, and cousin without there being some blessings to share. Patrick’s friends cannot lose their mate without learning from the lessons available to them in his passing.  

Shifting our view from devastation to seeing something good is far from an easy task. You may be reading this and thinking, in grief, what could possibly be good?  In trying to cope with your own loss, perhaps all you can see is darkness and not a sliver of light. I get it, I really do. Losing Patrick has shaken me to my core; I feel the pain in every cell of my body. 

The dark moments are all-consuming, and especially in the early days, they felt as if they would last forever. In my healing, I have focused on the gifts we have received to help lift me out of my despair. I acknowledge that this is my experience, which may look and feel vastly different to someone else’s. I recognize that there is extreme suffering in the world where there are no blessings to be found. I honor each of your stories, and I offer mine from a place of love.  

Perhaps you have lost a child or a loved one. Possibly you’re supporting someone close to you who has experienced crushing heartbreak. Loss generates a grief response, and grief looks and feels different for everyone.  

You may be able to relate to the waves of sadness that hit you like a tsunami, where you can’t get your footing, and you can’t take a deep breath; you feel as if you may drown. I hope I can give you a nurturing space to explore your loss and find a way to start living with your grief. I hope you can open your heart and mind to know that you can survive, your life still has meaning, your feelings matter, you can find peace, you are loved, you are enough, your story is powerful, your truth is your anchor, your vulnerability is a strength, and you are not alone. I hope that what I share in these pages can bring even the slimmest shard of light to your darkness. A softening to the raw edges of your pain. A bridge to hope for your days ahead.  

Many books have been written about grief and, at first, I doubted whether there needed to be another one. But one day, about four months after losing Patrick, I woke up, and I just knew that I needed to do this. I was called to write. I asked Patrick what he thought. 

Straight away, I heard a response, “Mum, you have to do it. I will help you. My words will come through you.” That was all the confirmation I needed. I let go of the doubt, and I knew that through our tragedy, I could be of service to others.

This memoir follows our lives during the first year after Patrick’s death. From the soul-crushing moment when we found out that we had lost him to the days, weeks, and months that followed. I will take you on a journey of love, heartbreak, sorrow, discovery, purpose, healing, self-care, and generosity as my family and I faced all the ever so painful firsts and received the many gifts that we never thought possible.  The gifts that have come to us are the light, and they have helped us begin to heal.  

Revealing our pain is difficult but telling the tough stories is what connects us. I share our experience from a place of authenticity and love. I am real and honest because I think this helps us remember that we are not that different. We will all suffer a loss of some kind in our lives. Grief is non-discriminatory; it touches all of us regardless of who we are.  

The chapters are non-sequential; they are based on themes. I discuss how to look after yourself in grief and ways to find purpose in your life following a tragedy. I share words from Patrick himself, his dad, and his sisters, as well as stories from others about their encounters with him and how he left an everlasting imprint on their hearts. I speak to the lessons Patrick taught us so that we may all be inspired to be better in his memory. I discuss life beyond the physical body and the communication that is possible with our loved ones who have passed.  This book serves as a legacy for all Patrick’s goodness that he so willingly shared and gave to others.  

This is my family’s love story and tribute to Patrick.  As you read it, I hope you feel the immense love that is woven through and radiates from the pages.  You will experience many emotions as you learn about our beautiful boy.  There is a lot of sadness but also immeasurable love and light.  Take my hand and allow yourself to feel it all.  I hope you smile.  Patrick would want you to smile.  He would want you to soak up all of the love and the joy that we had in our time with him.  

Patrick was, and always will be, deeply loving, fun-seeking, charming, inclusive, loyal, uplifting, inquisitive, magnetic, sensitive, handsome, humble, evolved, and compassionate. 

These are the reasons why he is now being remembered as someone we and others will never forget.

(Purchase ‘The Gifts From Losing You” on Amazon.)