Professor Green

With Professor Green we are starting a campaign to have a National Grief Awareness Day in the UK. The aim of this will be to call for more support and education around grief, and to give people a chance to remember and celebrate the lives of lost loved ones.

This follows the reaction to our columnist Professor Green – Stephen Manderson – picturing himself as a child with his now deceased father on the cover of his single ‘Photographs’: he put out a call for other people to post pictures of themselves with someone they’ve lost for a story on The Book of Man, with the hashtag #wishthatitookmorephotographsofus. But the response was more overwhelming than anyone could have expected, both in number and emotionally. The stories people shared with the images were heartbreaking, tender, sometimes funny, and usually just terribly, terribly sad. It had hit a nerve – people seemed grateful for a chance to articulate their memories and feelings. For some it seemed they hadn’t really processed their grief properly, and it was terrible to realise death is still such a taboo in society, which makes it difficult to talk about it and receive the comfort you need.

With this in mind, Professor Green had the idea to declare a National Grief Awareness Day to give more visibility to dealing with death and improving how we help the families and friends left behind.

As Professor Green writes in his latest column and talks about in his podcast, the death of his great-grandmother affected him in a profound way, but he wasn’t given the chance to properly accept or even understand it for many years. It was hidden away. We find that particularly for men, grief is something to be buried, with the hurt and anger then coming out in other, more destructive ways.

If we can have a National Grieving Awareness Day we can seek to offer more professional care for the grieving, but also simply give people the opportunity a time to think about those who have gone and share their stories.

If we can find a day to deal with the deaths that have affected us, in the belief that we can find a celebration of people within it, and come out the other side with a renewed love of life.

Join us and Professor Green in the coming months as we attempt to have a day recognised as National Grief Awareness Day.

If you are affected by any issues around grief, please contact a charity such as The Good Grief Trust or Cruse Bereavement Care.

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