Losing mum and dad; with Giles Paley-Phillips

Losing both of your parents from a young age has a profound impact on your perspective on life as an adult and your approach to grief, loss and love. This week’s guest is writer and podcaster Giles-Paley Phillips, best-known for his award-winning children’s books and the novel One Hundred and Fifty Two Days, based on his own loss of his mother as a child, and as host of the Blank Podcast. Another ‘platinum’ member of the DPC - Giles was six when his mum died after contracting leukaemia and his dad a week before Giles’ 21st birthday. In this episode, we discuss what it was like navigating this huge loss as a child and how balancing his dad’s alcohol addiction and other personal tribulations meant he never faced his grief head-on as a child or young adult, even after his dad passed just a week before his 21st birthday. We go on to talk about how becoming a parent confronted him with his grief, particularly how this brought him closer to the emotions his mum must have felt and how grief and sadness can live side by side with gratitude and happiness. Despite these immense losses and the impact they had on Giles’ own mental health, he has become a huge grief advocate on social media; particularly Twitter where he offers a safe and welcoming space for people to speak openly about their losses. You can find Giles on Instagram and Twitter at eliistender10.You can also watch this episode on YouTube.To find out more, visit our website at www.deadparentclub.co.uk, drop us an email at [email protected] or follow us on social media by clicking the links below:InstagramFacebookTwitterSpecial thanks to This Is Distorted for their time and effort in producing the podcast! Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deadparentclub. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.