EP.7: RESILIENT GRIEVING: DR. LUCY HONE ON LIVING WITH LOSS

On the 31st of May in 2014, on a public holiday in New Zealand, Lucy Hone’s 12 yr old daughter, Abi, was killed in a tragic car accident along with her best friend Ella and Lucy’s best friend Sally. Lucy said her life was smashed, as she put it ...

“ I mean your entire life scheme - your life story your identity - has been smashed to smithereens…It's like someone had taken a mallet like a croquet mallet to life and smashed the entirety so it just no longer exists.

How do you pick up the pieces and put your what’s left of your life back together?

In the months following the loss, Lucy turned to writing to help order her thoughts. You see, Lucy is a practicing academic in the field of resilience and wellbeing psychology at AUT University's Human Potential Center in Auckland, New Zealand and at the time of Abi's death working on a PhD in public health and wellbeing sciences.

Combining research and personal insights she first wrote a blog which attracted a large international audience and led to her book “Resilient Grieving.” It quickly became a bestseller. While she says learning to live without Abi is still very much a work in progress she acknowledges the work she does to support others to inform them that they do have choices in how they grieve has gone some way to make sense out of the senseless.

Let's be clear, grief should be felt rather than immediately treated as a problem to be solved and done away with. That said, what, exactly, is the grieving process and how do we manage it before it manages our lives ever orienting all else around loss?

On the podcast Lucy discusses the research that tell us there are some grieving models that can help one through it, grieving experiences that are common to everyone and common myths about the grieving and grieving phases.

If you have suffered a loss, listen to this podcast. If you have not suffered such a loss others in your life probably have, listen to the podcast and learn how to help them.

For show notes and more visit www.larryweeks.com/resilient_grieving_lucy_hone/m/podcast

Discussed on this episode

On preparing for loss
Whether certain grieving processes can weaken us
Lucy tells her story, the loss of Abi
On sudden loss vs. prolonged loss
Defining resilient grieving
The truth about the five stages of grieving
On ambush grief
On secondary losses
How can you help others who are grieving - and what not to do