The Grieving C.U.N.T.
If you've lost your person.
If you've been told to "stay strong" by people who've never lost anyone. If you've laughed in the supermarket and then cried in the car park. If you've sat at family events watching everyone get on with their lives while you fight to breathe through yours.
If you've started lying about how you really are because the truth makes other people uncomfortable. If you've been told it's been long enough. If you still talk to them.
I see you. Pull up a chair.
Why I wrote this book.
Ten years ago, my dad went into hospital for what was supposed to be nothing. Two and a half weeks later, he was gone.
I was thirty-three. He was fifty-two.
Nobody hands you a manual for that. They hand you sympathy cards. They hand you "let me know if you need anything." They hand you the Five Stages of Grief, which I'm here to tell you, is a fucking lie.
I went looking for the book that would tell me the truth. I never found it.
So I wrote it.
The Grieving C.U.N.T. is for everyone who's still talking to the dead. Everyone who's been told to move on when moving on felt like a betrayal. Everyone who's had a good day and then felt guilty for it. Everyone who knows that grief is not something you "get over." It is something you learn to carry.
This is the book I needed when I was thirty-three and the world had stopped making sense.
It's also for my dad. Mick. The original loud-music, room-filling, room-making-better legend. Every word of this book is for him, and for every person we've lost, and for every person carrying that loss right now.
For Mick. And for everyone who's lost their person.
What's inside.
No five-stages bullshit. No timelines. No fixing.
Just thirteen chapters of the truth nobody told you about grief.
Why the stages of grief are a fucking lie. The anger nobody talks about. The trauma that lives in your body. Why talking to the dead is not as mad as it sounds. The guilt that comes with the grief. Why time doesn't heal, it just teaches you to carry it.
Plus two letters to my dad. One written ten years on. One written for everyone reading this who has someone they wish they could write a letter to.
This book is for you if:
You've lost your person and the world expects you to just keep going.
You're tired of being told to "stay strong."
You laugh and cry within the same hour and don't know why.
You still talk to them.
You want a book that tells you the truth, not what you "should" feel.
You're done pretending you're fine.
This book is NOT for you if:
You believe grief has a timeline.
You think people should "just move on."
You're looking for a five-stages diagram.
You can't handle a book that swears like a person actually grieving.
But, if you’re still here: