SIBBS Newsletter, Spring 2021

SIBBS Newsletter, Spring 2021 | www.tcf.org.uk 3 Dear friends, A very warm welcome to your Spring issue of the SIBBS newsletter. I hope that you and your loved ones have been keeping safe and coping as well as can be with the extra challenges life has been throwing at us. I also hope that this newsletter will offer a splash of colour and a sense of togetherness, as we work harder than usual at the moment to remind ourselves that we aren’t alone. This issue we delve into how loss and creativity are two fundamental parts of being human and share some beautiful tributes to our brothers and sisters - with huge thanks to all our contributors. Creativity has been described by one clinical psychologist as “an essential response to grief.” American author Hope Edelman puts it like this: “Grief needs an outlet. Creativity offers one. Some psychiatrists see mourning and creativity as the perfect marriage, the thought process of one neatly complementing the other” . This doesn’t of course mean that we need be painting or composing masterpieces - that would be a high bar to set! Everyone has the capacity to be creative in one way or another and creativity exists in many forms: the way you put together an outfit, how you tweak a recipe to make it your own, planting a Spring bulb, an ingenious solution to an everyday problem, a beautiful Instagram post, a carefully curated Spotify playlist and many, many more. Equally, when we’re not feeling in the slightest creative, that’s fine too. Each person’s grief takes its own individual path, and as we know there’s no set pattern or time frame. Sometimes we just don’t feel it; long lulls of nothingness can set in and these can be embraced as part of healing. I started writing a novel just after losing my brother. The words flowed through my rawest grief then completely dried up. Only now, 13 years into the healing process, have I eventually worked out the ending and carried on writing. Have any of you had a similar experience, or perhaps an entirely different one? Cold weather and tight restrictions may have made it challenging to do much more than drag ourselves out of bed. But I hope the little emerging splashes of Spring colour offer some reassurance of nature’s innate creativity and a sense that inspiration can and does return. “Embrace your grief, For there your soul will grow” Carl Jung In friendship and with love, Hayley x Letter from the editor