The Grief Matrix
In the early days following the death of my father in 2013, I found it hard to know if the unfolding chaos was ‘normal’.
So a few years later I wrote The Grief Matrix, a compact handbook that distils the experiences of early bereavement and offers some comforting words to help process them.
It uses a simple visual model to bring into focus eleven key aspects of life impacted by loss, offering a practical insight into the range of responses that might be triggered.
With the help of my stellar agent Vix Marshallsay, I’m working on getting it published.
Sometimes I Feel…
I’ve been working on this handbook of challenging emotions for pre-teen children for more than a wee while. It keeps evolving and is still being updated.
It spotlights 40 of life’s prime challenging emotions from Anger through to Worry: what’s the point of it? Will it pass? Is it fruitful?
The key message is that negative feelings are a healthy part of being human- to be experienced, then released.
I wrote it to support children and their parents by providing an entry point for discussion of their emotional lives.
Each emotion has a lyrical feel and will be partnered visually with a piece of street graffiti.
I bet Vix can’t wait ’till I bug her about this one.
Emotional Media
Following on from Sometimes, I have a minor obsession about the emotional resilience of children as they embark on using social media.
Emotional Media is a light-hearted ‘a’s, b’s, c’s’-style psychological quiz for pre/early teens intended to start important conversations around the day-to-day well-being issues of social media use.
Lurking behind the real dangers of false profiles and inappropriate content lies the equally pernicious threat inherent to the playing-out of interpersonal relationships in public.
The idea is that the more these issues are discussed, the smaller the risk of bullying and depression flourishing.
I’m excited to have landed my first secondary school to use it as part of their year 8 internet safety workshops and will be trying to get more to take it up.
It’s currently available to share as a pair of Google docs. To give it to your child’s school or to your own early teen at home, please request access HERE.
Sophie Stout 