Too Young - a book about childhood parental bereavement

When I was eight, my mother told me she was going to die. Six days before Christmas that year, in 1981, the leukaemia she’d had for five years killed her. Forty-three years on, I have written a non-fiction book about my experience growing up with a “dead parent”, also including those of dozens of other Kiwi adults who dealt with parental loss aged eighteen or younger. 

Our stories illuminate what it’s like to lose a parent “too young”, and how that experience affected us as children, and as we grew into the adults we became. We want our stories to give comfort to others like us, and we want to show to adults around tamariki going through this today how they can perhaps best care for that child. I am seeking support to independently publish the book. 

Just me, and the voices of 73 - and counting! - adults whose parents died when they were still children, as well as the vocal support of the grief and death sector in Aotearoa, recognising this book will be a much-needed resource.

This funding is not for me, it’s entirely for the editing, proofing, production and printing process.

After five years of working on the book self-funded, putting in thousands of unpaid hours and covering all the book's travel/work costs, I need your help to complete the final step in getting this book, the bulk of our stories, out into the world.

I am independently publishing, and this is not a small book. In fact, it's likely to be more than 300 pages, encompassing the stories of 35 New Zealanders and their experiences.

Therefore it is not cheap to produce! I am working with Mary Egan Publishing, which is enthusiastic about the book and supportive of my mission, but they’re a business, so...

In short, I need $16,000 to get the book through the editing process and into a publishable file.

After that, $4,000 will cover an initial print run.  

And at least that will be a start…

And it is just the start! I am also forming the Too Young Trust, which will raise funds to pay for support services/counselling for bereaved children, ideally using some profits from this book… 

I also plan to work with schools on how to support bereaved children back into the classroom, and generally to teach death literacy to children – this is a thing, and the UK has just introduced 'death literacy' into its curriculum. I'd love to see that here... 

So, the book is just the beginning. The mission to do good with our stories, our experiences, will continue!

This is very much a 'for good' project and fundraising campaign. 

I am independently publishing a book that captures the experiences of New Zealanders who had parents die when they were tamariki and rangatahi. I have called the project and the book "Too Young", meaning too young to die, too young to experience death, too young to grieve. This is a story I know well – too well.

Over the 43 years since my mother died, I’ve often wondered how my mother’s death changed me, and what should have, could have been done better with my care over that time and the years beyond. Books on childhood grief, such as those that exist, are old – written mostly in the ‘90s – and they generally focus on what goes wrong. However, most of us become broadly functional adults, so, using our experiences, my book also focuses on what went right – exploring how we got through, how we managed through our parents' deaths.

Through our stories, I am illustrating what it is like to lose a parent young, what it’s like to deal with the most acute grief when we are the least equipped to process it, and how that experience affected us growing into the adults we became. Through our stories I also want to illustrate to adults around grieving children today what that child might be thinking and feeling, and how they might want to be supported. 

I am already doing some of this work as my book does not exist on its own:

• Website: I have built a website to host stories not included in the book. This will sit alongside the book and promote it, as well as extend its messages wider – including globally. See www.tooyoung.org.nz for stories that show the style of the writing and the strength of my stories. Imagine a whole book of these...
• Social media: Countless channels on Instagram and TikTok have created close communities for people – especially young people – going through grief. I have set up Instagram and FB pages for "Too Young Book", through which I can promote the book and its messages, and connect with other related people/organisations.
• The Too Young Trust: I am in the process of creating a charitable trust. This will allow me to use profits from the book, as well as extra money raised, to fund support services/counselling sessions for children, and to work with schools to increase capability around supporting bereaved children back to school after a parent dies.

Childhood parental bereavement is a story not often told. The few books available date from the 1990s. It’s time for an update. 

We need to get people talking about death and how to care for our most vulnerable – our tamariki and rangatahi. The time is right to tell stories of bereavement, resilience and growth, as grief is very ‘now’, with books and podcasts about death, grief and loss ranking highly on best-seller and top-podcast lists, Instagram and Tiktok accounts and hashtags.

My book has several audiences, each with its own desired outcome. For adults who experienced parental loss as children, the book sparks recognition, healing. For adults around grieving children, they gain a sense of what it might be like for that child, so what to do, what not to do. For parents facing a terminal diagnosis, we want to give them hope that, with the right supports, their children should be okay even without them. Finally, we want young adults going through this now to know that we were where they are – we understand, and we got through.

Ultimately, we want to get the NZ public talking about death, grief and how to support bereaved children with more understanding.

But my book is not just for New Zealanders, as early parental bereavement is a global experience. Culture around death changes somewhat across the world, but kids are kids are kids. I am making a concerted effort to ensure my interviewees are as multicultural as possible. Also, many I’ve interviewed were born and bereaved overseas before moving here.

I firmly believe this book has a worldwide audience. There is no other book like this available today. "Motherless Daughters" is the closest, but that was written in the 1990s and covers only daughters losing their mothers. My book explores the experience of early parental death, its impacts and required supports, much much wider.