
Welcome to
The Crossroads Blog
We all face crossroads.
What matters is how we respond.
In my blogs you’ll find responses to the questions people ask me most often, reflections on grief and loss, and thoughts on navigating the tougher edges of life with strength and honesty, when you find yourself at life’s crossroads.
Some posts are grief-specific. Others are more broadly about what it means to live a meaningful, connected life when things fall apart. And in the good times too! Over the years, I’ve learned that one person’s question is often shared by many - so if there’s something on your mind, please ask. I’m always open to exploring what’s happening for you here and I love responding to real-life questions in a two way conversation rather than me preaching away in a cone of silence.
Some blogs are raw, written years ago after Abi died, others are more recent.
I’m not into pretence or perfection. Just being human - like you - trying to piece together a life out of the cards we’re dealt. I’m proud to hear these blog conversations have helped many. I hope they help you too.
Ask Me A Question.
Lessons from Braided Rivers: Real-life Resilience
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.
Mother’s Day is Complicated
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.
What to Do in the First Weeks of Grief
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.
Trusting the Process: What Steve Jobs and Life Detours Teach Us About Purpose
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.
Waiting for My Brain to Catch Up
“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.
The Last Term of Parenting As We Knew It
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.
Making Memories
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.
Alive Inside: Grief, Music and Memory
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.
Abi’s Dots: How Colour, Memory and Community Helped Us Grieve
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.
Why Old Friends Matter Most
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.
Hooray for Sister Day!
Today is Sister Day – the name my dear sister, Esther, coined for the intermittent days we get to see each other.
Severed from the Sisterhood.
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?
Is This Helping or Harming? A Simple Tool for Everyday Resilience
The Relics of a Life
I find you everywhere. So many signs of your presence. Yet you have gone.
A Lot of Love and Affection
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 Since We Lost Abi: Living with the Unthinkable
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.