When BAD things happen in GOOD bikinis
When BAD things happen in GOOD bikinis
LIFE AFTER DEATH
AND A DOG CALLED BORIS
Helen Bailey
Published by Blink Publishing
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Copyright © by Helen Bailey, 2015
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To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
Chinese Proverb
A PROMISE
If you are reading this book because you have suffered loss, there is only one thing I want you to know: however you feel right now, however bleak your life is, however much despair you are in, you won’t always feel this way; on my dog’s life, I promise you.
I hope that you will read the entire book, but if you are at the stage when your mind is so wired you have the attention span of a hyperactive grasshopper and the energy of a banana slug*, put the book to one side, use it as a doorstop or a fly swat, but hold on to one thing: you will emerge from this tunnel of grief to live, laugh and, possibly, love again. Trust me.
You won’t believe me when I tell you that your life will be good again in ways that you could never have imagined. I didn’t believe it either. I had to live it to believe it. So if you are grieving right now and can’t see a way forward, hang on in there, it will all be OK in the end. Trust me, because I’ve been there, done that and bought the coffin. Trust me, because, like you, I’ve known what it’s like to have a mind so warped with grief and despair that I’ve screamed at the sky, prayed to spontaneously combust in M&S, and walked out into the traffic, tempting fate, only to be sworn at by a swerving cyclist.
When our world is ripped apart, we have to start again from scratch. Think of it as learning to ride a bike, a bike with a bent frame, flat tyres and dodgy brakes, across unfamiliar stony ground. Good friends, perhaps family and those who know first-hand the pain of bereavement will be beside you, encouraging you when you think you can’t do it, supporting you when you wobble, picking you up when you fall and steering you in the right direction when you veer off course. One day, you’ll realise that you are peddling on your own; you’ll look back and see a crowd waving and cheering as you speed off into the distance. The bike will never be perfect, but it will get you to where you need to go.
This is the story of my learning to ride that broken bike across the alien terrain of Planet Grief. If I can do it, so can you. I promise you.
Love,
* The banana slug is said to be the slowest mollusc in the world with an average speed of approximately 0.000023 metres/second, making a tortoise look like Usain Bolt in comparison.
BACK THEN
On August 11, I was walking with my supremely fit and healthy partner of eleven years to the scan of our first child, when he said he felt dizzy and collapsed. They tried for an hour to bring him back, but couldn’t. The ten weeks since then have been a horrific blur, and everything you all say resonates so profoundly. It has been so comforting to hear your stories, people that know and understand. At thirty-two I am widowed (and pregnant) before my friends are married, and though my friends are being so kind at the moment, I am aware that they will inevitably stop asking, as life for everyone else carries on, whilst I am trapped in that horrific day when my world and the life of my beloved boy ended. ~ Sam
On Thursday 17th February 2011, I stood on the stage in the dining hall at Dover Grammar School for Girls in Kent, to give a talk about my life as a writer of young adult fiction. I enjoyed giving speeches and running workshops, and the audience in Dover was a particularly good crowd of girls eager to learn more about the life of a writer.
I’ve always loved writing. Throughout my childhood and teenage years I kept a diary, wrote stories and poems for magazines, and entered writing competitions. I never yearned to become a writer because there was never any doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be. Quite how I ended up doing science to degree level and beyond is still a mystery. After a short and rather wretched spell in academia where I experimented on ferrets, a strange choice of research project for someone who sobs when she sees a one-legged pigeon, I stumbled into advertising and marketing. Later, I wrote children’s books and young adult fiction, and have now written or collaborated on 22 published titles.
To me, writing has always been as natural and necessary as breathing; getting words out of my head and onto paper has not only been a life-long pleasure, but a safety valve in times of distress. I have written my way out of anxiety and upset, diffused anger, soothed hurt and put difficulties into perspective.
One of the recurring themes of the emails and letters I have received from readers of my books was, ‘Where do you get your inspiration from?’ and so I always covered this in my talks. I would read out an entry from one of my teenage diaries: the same day of the same month, but written three decades ago. The girls loved giggling over my anguished prose (mostly about boys), but as I read them out, I still found some of those entries painful to recall. I used my diaries as an example of how I turned my real-life experiences into inspiration for my books. I told the girls that material is everywhere you look, everything you hear and anything you’ve been through, and also of something the writer, actress and comedian Meera Syal had said. I’m paraphrasing – and probably wildly misquoting – but the gist of it is that, as a writer, terrible things can be happening to you or around you, but there is always this little voice inside your head that is whispering, ‘One day you will use this in your writing. This is good material.’ Or, to quote the writer Nora Ephron’s mother, Phoebe, ‘Everything is