I am a Wellington-based former journalist-turned-writer-editor. For the past four years I have been interviewing NZers who experienced childhood parental bereavement - in other words, had parents die on them when they were 18 or younger. My plan is to write their stories into a book, arranged by the age of bereavement, and to build a website to host the many other stories I can't cram into the book.

I am the best person to write this book because this story is mine. I lived it. I live it still. I have an immediate affinity with others who have also lived it. I have been a journalist and writer for getting onto 30 years and have already published a book depicting the experiences of adults abused as children, Hidden in Front of Us. My writing life of the past twenty years, give or take, has been spent telling people’s stories – which I love – for Fairfax/Stuff and North and South, but mostly for NZ Life and Leisure.

I also have two children, and many many times I have looked at them over the years and thought about how young I was when my mother died. I have also tortured myself thinking what effect losing me would have on them. It's a question none of us want to ponder, but all of us should ponder - and prepare for.