Just because it’s called a holiday doesn’t mean it delivers rest. Some leave you more wrung out than when you left. But a recent cycling trip through Sri Lanka reset me in ways I hadn’t expected – and reminded me what kind of break truly restores a burned-out mind.

Had your world turned upside down by grief? Feeling lost, unsure what to do, or how to get through the next hour? Here are five practical tips I often share with people in your shoes—real things you can try right now to ease the chaos and take back a little control.

You can never truly learn a braided river - it shifts day by day. Life’s like that too. In this piece, I reflect on how kayaking New Zealand’s unpredictable rivers helped me let go of control, trust myself to make good-enough decisions, and keep going when the current gets rough.

All week, people have been messaging/emailing me about how hard the build up to Mother’s Day is - all the promo emails advertising ‘gifts for mum’, and the endless radio ads designed for a life we either no longer live or never got in the first place. While I do get to celebrate (I assure you in a VERY low key way in our house) and I’m forever grateful for that - I’ve also lost my mum, and I miss Abi. As Sarah from Sydney wrote in an email to me, “why do we need a day that makes not being a mum even harder?” If this day is hard for you too, I wrote this for you.

We’ve just lost our precious daughter. My world has collapsed. What helped you get through this and keep living? I can’t imagine going on. I just don’t know what to do.

Greta from Brighton.

Oh Greta, I’m so so sorry. Every loss is different, and we all experience grief individually - but I can so feel your pain and how utterly unfathomable her loss is to you, her mother. Let me first say that you will always be her mum, and she’ll always be your girl. Not in the way you imagined, I know, but it’s the truth.

Feeling lost after graduation, career change or personal loss? Discover why trusting the process—as Steve Jobs once did—can guide you through uncertainty. With real stories, reflections on resilience, and a reminder that plans change, this is a guide for finding clarity when the future’s unclear.

“What am I doing, lying here under this blanket, sleeping the afternoon away, missing life?” Just one of the many questions circling in my head as I try to grasp the permanence of Abi’s absence. A reflection from the early days of loss—waiting, watching, trying to understand.

A bittersweet reflection on the final season of family life as it once was. On school shirts drying in the sun, toast at the kitchen bench, and how parenting is really just a long, slow letting go. A piece about memory, love, and the quiet ache of change.

We’re in beautiful Byron Bay. We were here the same time last year: same place, same scene, same glorious weather and long white beaches, only this year everything is tinged with the sadness of Abi’s absence.

Music has the power to shift our darkest mood, to bring back memories, to create and solidify new ones, and the capacity to heal. Four days in my life without it was enough for me.

In the days after losing Abi, we asked her godmother Lexi to “do something beautiful” with her coffin. What followed was an explosion of colour that has travelled the world. This is the story of how Abi’s Dots began — and how they’re helping me heal.

How the fuck could this have happened? What the fuck?

Really, how can my daughter be dead? It doesn’t make any sense. It cannot be.

Friendship isn’t a luxury. It’s one of the few things that holds when the ground gives way. So thank you to my oldest mates - for every effort, shared silence, and reminder that we’re not meant to do life alone.

Today is Sister Day – the name my dear sister, Esther, coined for the intermittent days we get to see each other.

I didn’t just lose Abi, I lost my daughter, and with her my connection to the female world, and a female future.

Is This Helping or Harming? A Simple Tool for Everyday Resilience

I find you everywhere. So many signs of your presence. Yet you have gone.

A reflection on parenting, protection, and the privilege of being a mum—through the lens of music, memory and the people we miss. Inspired by one cheesy pop lyric that still says it all: love and affection, whether we’re right or wrong.

Four weeks ago, we lost Abi. She was twelve. Her friend Ella and Ella’s mum, Sally—my dear friend—died too. This is the first post I wrote. A way to say the unsayable, to begin writing my way through the wreckage, to sort my thoughts.