SIBBS Newsletter Spring 2023

SIBBS Newsletter, Spring 2023 | tcf.org.uk 8 Short piece around the BBC Sounds Coping with the death of a sibling podcast. I love listening to podcasts and audio books, so when I was suggested this short 26-minute listen, I jumped straight to it. It’s an interesting piece consisting of a conversation between two people. One an Irish writer and the other an academic from Botswana. Although they were born in two completely different areas of the world, they both share one common link, the unfortunate loss of their sibling. They both highlight the pain of losing a sibling one by an unexpected accident and another from cancer. I found it fascinating to hear how different cultures and religions treat the topic of death, grief and loss, how there are different things expected from those who are still living. But one thing they both described which I could relate to enormously was the lack of compassion they received as a bereaved sibling, how they were treated very differently than their parents. Carmel, the Irish writer spoke about having “a crisis of meaning” after her brother’s death, highlighting how much you change within yourself after losing a sibling as whether you realised it or not, siblings are a huge part of your identity and who you are. She expressed having a period of sobriety, feeling like it helped her to heal but in turn she mentioned that she “suddenly started crying every day. It was just years of grief just piling up.” This line really stuck with me, as I too felt like I experienced this feeling 7 or 8 years into my journey with grief. For years I pushed a lot of my pain and anger to the back of my mind but one day it seemed to become unbearable to keep down and hide. I too found myself crying daily, feeling hopeless, having zero motivation for things I once enjoyed and it’s only a few years on that I can now see that it was the