Bereaved Parents’ Club

This time last year I was getting ready to start the new job I so badly failed at. But, one of the brilliant things that came out of it was meeting Lauren.

I’d already had the fortune to meet Tracy, another mum bereaved of her only son. Both of us would rather we’d never met, or rather that we had met but under sunnier circumstances.  But anyway, I told her I’d had this idea for setting up a podcast around grief and she responded with encouragement. In the space of a few minutes, we thought of about a dozen topics such a podcast might address.

So when I met Lauren, who’s all about marketing and comms, and she was so enthusiastic and supportive, it gave me an extra boost. She said she’d help. By July 2023 I had the clarity that I wanted to set up a Bereaved Parents’ Club podcast for, well, bereaved parents. Tracy volunteered to do the website, Lauren helping with socials.

‘How hard can it be to put a podcast series together?’ I asked myself. Well, fast forward to right now and I can definitively answer ‘very bloody hard’.

For a start, I was still working full-time. And with the prospect of my assessing work coming to an end in early 2024, I was doubling my efforts to ensure I had some savings for when the end arrived. But it meant only grabbing bits of time to start contacting potential contributors and figuring out a podcast format.

And then I got a book deal. Cue several months of edits and prep on that alongside work and trying to reach the right guests. Oh, and did I mention selling the house and the months of to-ing and fro-ing to Sheffield trying to find a new home? Yeh, chuck that in the mix too.

I started recording in January 2024. And if it was hard finding guests willing and available to talk, it was nothing compared to figuring out the podcast production process.

We moved in February, and my paid job ground to a halt at the end of that month. I was propelled immediately into more recording and seemingly endless editing. If there was a technical aspect to get wrong, I hit it, repeatedly. Guests that couldn’t hear me, microphones that crackled, terrible acoustics, patchy wifi.

Late March and early April saw me grinning and chatting in newspapers and on local telly and radio as I promoted my book, Midowed: a mother’s grief. A huge achievement, I’m very proud and I love that Dan’s story sits on a few bookshelves now. The support from friends has been amazing.

But whilst the fun of the launch was exciting, the podcast was taking up almost all my time. I had to get things done by the end of May as by now the savings have dwindled, and I need to get a proper job again. Every time I hit another tech issue, I felt unable to take the time to stand back and find a simpler solution. I spent hours finding workarounds. And STILL, it’s nothing like as perfect as I’d like.

But the first series is done. It’s been such a privilege to listen to the stories shared by all our guests. It might be the club none of us want to belong to, but bloody hell, there’s some cracking people in here, and I am full of love and admiration for them all. And despite the frustrations, I have loved producing each episode. I was especially pleased that Series 1 could be officially launched on the sixth anniversary of losing Dan. It’s a tribute to him and the impact he continues to have on my life.

There will be a second series, once Tracy, Lauren and I have caught our breaths. Already we have people offering their stories, wanting to share their experiences, the tales of loss and survival, their messages of hope. I want, too, to make sure I reach those whose stories might be harder to find, who maybe feel their voice is rarely heard. So, Series 2 might be a little longer, as our range of contributors widens.

I’m slightly more confident about the technical bits too, thankfully. It means I’ll be able to put the next series together around whatever work I finally manage to get. Whilst podcast production could easily be a full-time job in its own right, it isn’t paid employment, and there’s bills to pay.

There’ll be a new personal website coming soon as well, and this blog might then become an archive…maybe it’s done what I needed it to do. Given me the space to express sadness, missing Dan, and chronicle my active steps towards achieving peace with grief. I think I’m doing pretty well.

If you want to listen to the podcast, it’s here. You can listen on Spotify, Amazon, Apple or wherever you usually get your podcasts.

You can visit the Bereaved Parents’ Club podcast website here and we’re on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

I’m off for a lie down…