@rachelhewitt
Author. Feminist life lessons, informed by history and experience. Advice about grief and recovery, and the feminist joys of outdoor adventure. Writing retreats. Substack: https://rachelhewitt.substack.com
Ever wondered what it’s like to be inside a grieving person’s head? And why they can’t concentrate? My head was whirring 24/7 with incessant mental noise in which I endlessly revisited the period before my husband’s death, looking for “signs” I’d missed.
read more: open.substack.com/pub/rachelhe...
Of course! Thank you so much. This page takes you to a list of the posts that I've published so far: rachelhewitt.substack.com/t/when-the-w...
This is the introductory post, explaining what the project is doing: rachelhewitt.substack.com/p/when-the-w...
xxx
I'm running a 3-day residential retreat, themed around Feminist Writing. It's in April, in a gorgeous Victorian ex-spa hotel in Harrogate, and there'll be a heady mix of writing workshops and hikes to clear our minds. Early Bird booking price ends 19 Feb! Join me! rachelhewitt.org/retreats/fem...
I'm running a 3-day residential retreat, themed around Feminist Writing. It's in April, in a gorgeous Victorian ex-spa hotel in Harrogate, and there'll be a heady mix of writing workshops and hikes to clear our minds. Early Bird booking price ends 19 Feb! Join me! rachelhewitt.org/retreats/fem...
Yes please - that would be amazing xxx
I'm publishing my 'When the Worst Happens' project over on my Substack. It's free and you don't need to subscribe to access it. So please do have a look, and RT and share the project with anyone who might benefit. Thank you x rachelhewitt.substack.com/t/when-the-w...
All my posts are completely free to read because bereavement is expensive & paywalls are yet another hurdle to navigate. I’m keeping the posts short and to-the-point, because grief addles your brain. And I’m accompanying each post with videos, because grief makes it hard to read.
I’m also writing for people who are not, themselves, bereaved. This is because, even though many of us don’t want to contemplate it, unexpected bereavements may happen to us in the future. I’m also writing for whose who are supporting grievers but find it hard to know how to help.
I’m writing for the bereaved, who find themselves on this godawful island with no idea about how to survive there long-term. I’m also writing for people who’ve been living with complicated grief for some time, but feel unseen & are wondering how to improve things on their island.
I hope that, in time, the bank of knowledge that is built up here will become one of the first ports of call for anyone who finds themselves dropped onto the worst island in the world: the shitty island of complicated grief. I hope it will help them to feel less lost and alone.
No-one talks about this shit! So I’ll be speaking to other widows & bereaved people; professionals in grief services, such as coroners, lawyers, welfare advisers & mental health practitioners; those who deal in trauma & recovery; and I’ll also be drawing from my own experiences.
I’ll be writing about facets of complicated grief such as the discovery of secrets about the deceased, the fraying of relations with the deceased’s family, & physical symptoms such as ‘widow’s fire’, when grievers experience heightened libido as a weird post-traumatic response.
My 'When the Worst Happens' project will provide the material that I would have found valuable over the last 4 years, for people who are in a similar situation right now: a mix of information, practical advice, and reflections on human experiences of complicated grief.
Very few people talk openly about these painful aspects of grief.
As a society, we prefer to think that ‘grief is just love with no place to go.’
But it can be much more complicated and ugly. And the refusal to discuss this makes grievers feel even more isolated and lost.
I also had no idea about how to deal with my own emotional turmoil, and I found it hard to locate therapeutic advice that felt relevant to my circumstances.
Many people in my life had no idea how to support me or to navigate such complexities – and ran a mile instead.
When my husband died, I had no idea about what to expect from my dealings with the police, mental health teams, funeral directors, his creditors or the coroner’s office. I had to seek advice from multiple different and often expensive sources of guidance, such as lawyers.
These aspects might concern sudden, violent & traumatic bereavements, such as those involving suicide or a missing person, murder, death in state care or prison, addiction, a body that can’t be viewed, multiple bereavements, the loss of a child, or the loss of abusive or estranged people.
Please share with anyone who’s grieving or supporting a griever.
I’ve started a free project to create a guidebook to the shitty island of complicated grief. It’s called When the Worst Happens, & I’m making free articles & vids about aspects of grief that are rarely discussed.
In April, I’m running a Feminist Writing retreat for writers of all genres & levels. We’ll work on how to highlight everyday sexism, describe unequal power between men & women, challenge stereotypes when portraying women and craft female-friendly language.
rachelhewitt.org/retreats/fem...
Please do RT and share these details far and wide with any friends who are thinking of writing about feminist issues - in fiction, non-fiction and beyond - and who would love to meet a supportive group of other writers, and to enjoy challenging themselves in their writing.
You'll stay in a gorgeous Victorian hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, with all meals provided and intensive days of writing workshops mixed with day- and night-time hikes, for some fresh air.
The Early Bird booking price is only available until 19 Feb, so don't miss out!
In April, I’m running a Feminist Writing retreat for writers of all genres & levels. We’ll work on how to highlight everyday sexism, describe unequal power between men & women, challenge stereotypes when portraying women and craft female-friendly language.
rachelhewitt.org/retreats/fem...
‘The hysteria that has developed about abuse of women’ (Chomsky in an email to Epstein).To all the Chomsky defenders, esp those on the left-this sentence, alone, dripping with misogyny & a sexist dismissal of sexual violence against women condemns him.There is no acceptable apology for this #epstein
The world is falling apart so what better time is there to come on a writing retreat with me? Disappear into a gorgeous Victorian hotel in North Yorkshire; eat your body weight in cake; blast out the cobwebs with day- and night-hikes; and, oh yes, do lots of writing! www.rachelhewitt.org/retreats
To read more, please see this week’s Substack: open.substack.com/pub/rachelhe...
And to donate to Sarah Porter’s GoFundMe, please click here: www.gofundme.com/f/sarah-port...
Anyone who believes in equity must pull out all the stops to defend women’s & girls’ right to play sport. Because if we don’t defend that right, men will only be emboldened to dramatically intensify their restrictions on women’s & girls’ freedoms.
And what all these case studies show is that women’s ability to participate freely in sport is far from trivial, but is the canary in the coalmine, the touchstone and bellwether for women’s freedoms in a society.
These may feel different to Porter’s case, because they were perpetrated by individual men instead of an organised regime. But all misogyny is ‘organised’, in that it’s fostered by an ideology & culture, which thrives everywhere from politics to porn, the military to the manosphere.
This is because sport gives women financial & social power, geographical freedom, & greater authority within relationships. There are numerous stark case studies in which men have assaulted and murdered sportswomen to quash these exact freedoms. I wrote about these: open.substack.com/pub/rachelhe...
