MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: On moving through grief, and what it's like to watch it

the hardest chapter of the book to write

Hello crushes!

I’m back after Carmen Sandiego-ing last week to my friend’s wedding in Amsterdam, where I can definitely attest that love is well and truly real and alive! How gorge to see and know! Thought I’d just pass on that enlightenment to you <3

I also always forget how extremely humbling it is being in an international airport extremely hungover, trying to navigate through customs with your hands full and a dangerous layer of wine still seeping out of your skin. I’d like to thank the sweet woman sitting next to me who ordered me to keep my sunglasses on the entire flight, a bloody mary for me to drink and enthusiastically signed up to the newsy while I sipped at it like a newborn puppy <3 (hello, I love you, thank you for saving my life).

Also - before we get into it, did you know that you can get cute extra shit when you preorder our book rn?? Like a free annual sub to the newsy, a postcard pack, an exclusive poem and some stickers??? Yeah, I know. You should preorder it now!

---

What grief feels like

Ok, massive tonal change here, and I’ve been wondering when the best week is to write about this actually is. Is there one? Luce and I always try to be a cute beacon amidst the chaos of life (and your inbox), but sometimes life does its turning thing and shocks you in a way you could never have imagined. And by this I mean losing someone.

Grief was something we both wanted to cover in our book because it’s had such an impact on both of our (and, achingly, I’m sure so many of your) lives. I also think if you’ve felt it on such a deep level - or watched it from the sidelines, it changes the way you live your life completely.

The questions we were wrestling with were how do we make sense of grief and how is it changing? What’s it like to feel it in a digital age (how do you say this without sounding like a MEDIA101 lecturer in 2017?) where you’re just out living your life, say, trying to enjoy it, then an iPhone memory pops up, or a cringe note you shared on someone’s wall before they passed away blinks on your phone as if they’re still here and it was all a painful analogue fever dream?

These are the questions that turned over a lot when we wrote this chapter, and more of this will make sense (cringe, I know, this happens ALL THE TIME) when you read the book.

I get asked a lot about the wavy, unpredictable direction of my life - moving around a lot, getting myself into foreign or strange situations and coming out alive, going somewhere new. I don’t mean that in a way that glamourises it into a TikTok supercut, but in a way that means it’s often verged out of safety towards the unpredictable. When I was 19, two friends of mine died in two unrelated accidents and ripped a shock wave through our university year. The intimate details are not my stories to tell, but it’s a grief we all shared - and walked away from that year with a very real feeling that life was more fragile and fucked up and impossible to predict that we’d ever realised.

Going through grief quite young - and watching friends go through it - turned life into a quest to make my tiny existence meaningful in whatever way it could. We ripped our hearts out for this one. We hope this chapter helps you feel your way through it <3.

---

Also - an excerpt from Make It Make Sense because we love you:

Things I’ve done for no explicable reason after losing my brother
(By Lucy)

• Ditched the nice beer garden everyone went to after his funeral to sit on top of a grotty car park with all my friends instead.

• Gone on an annual capo bender (capitalism bender, to support

  both the local economy and my emotional wellbeing) where every year on the anniversary of his death, I get to buy whatever I want, no questions asked.

• Bought his strange favourite drink (Canadian Club whisky and dry ginger ale) to band practice and made everyone drink it while we toasted him.

• Put his old teddy bear up on the dashboard whenever I’m on a road trip so it can see the scenery he used to love.

• Continued to send him photos and messages and memes because even though he’s missing, I won’t let him miss out.

• Became obsessed with Formula 1 because it’s something he used to love.

• Watched races with Dad and my brothers while our favourite photo of Jimmy in a Ferrari leans on the fireplace.

• Replayed the message my cousin sent me from a psychic so many times I can repeat all fifteen minutes of it by heart.

• Became irrationally angry when I’ve read quotes about death saying shit like, ‘What is grief if not love persevering?’

• Hidden a geocache in his honour at his favourite place so that

  random people get to read about him when they find it.

• Started feeling okay about it all.

Love you,
Xox

---