Hope

Now that ‘Eggshells’ is with the publishers for type-setting I needed to keep writing, but I couldn’t find a topic or title. Then I had a counselling session that opened the door for me. I couldn’t just write some random stuff, it had to have a purpose. So, I’ve started writing the second book “Waiting for Enlightenment” and here’s the first couple of paragraphs as a taster:

WAITING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

Chapter 1

Hope.  The last element that came out of Pandora’s Box.  Hope is an incredibly powerful emotion and tool, and gives us the ability to do incredible things.  It may be a false hope sometimes, but that isn’t important.  It exists, it is almost tangible sometimes, and is there waiting to be found.  Hope transcends all else and is a uniquely human emotion.  Without it we are lost.

When Evie our daughter died from a brain tumour, hope was the last thing that I thought I might find.  I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to find it.  I just wanted it all to end. Everything. Life, the pain, the emptiness.  I wanted it all to be over.  I wanted to be with Evie again. Those first few months were terrible, the following ones little better.  Year 2 was far worse than year 1.  As time went on, how we carried our pain changed, and not always for the better. Patsy and I grieved in entirely different ways, and dealt with the pain in different ways too.  Likewise, when it came to trying to heal, we sought out different routes.  Mine started to focus on writing.  Firstly, short pieces called Wednesday Wisdom that were posted on the Facebook page of The Compassionate Friends, a charity that supports bereaved parents, and then as time progressed to my first book, Eggshells, a blog and then a second book.  This one.  At the core of this book is one thing: hope.