Everything Changed: a book for children affected by suicide

As we continue to pay attention to Suicide Awareness Month, we turn to Everything changed. A book for children affected by suicide¸ written by Mia, Robin and Jasper Scally. They lost their husband and father to suicide and co-wrote a book about their experiences. In 2014, the year their dad died, Robin and Jasper couldn’t find many books that helped them with this particular loss, so they decided to write their own.

The book is written by children bereaved by suicide for children bereaved by suicide. Robin and Jasper each experienced their father’s death in a different way, probably due to their difference in age, but also as every individual has a different response to death:

“This book is going to tell you about our experience of our dad dying. Everyone’s experience is different, and everyone will feel different things at different times and that’s ok. Your experience might be similar to ours, or it might be completely different”

— Everything Changed. A book for children affected by suicide.

The book is filled with pictures and drawings. It gives some lovely suggestions on what you can do to keep the memory of a deceased parent alive, for example, making scrapbooks, or making a teddy bear or blanket out of clothing of the deceased loved one, so you can literally keep them close.

You can feel the pain of the parent who is left behind, who on top of managing their own grief has to manage a household and the emotions of two small children.

“Everything changed when Daddy died. We moved to a new home. Mummy had to spend more time at work. Mummy didn’t laugh as much as she used to. We stopped going to the woods because it hurt too much. We all found it really hard to accept that Daddy was gone”

— Everything Changed. A book for children affected by suicide.

The book uses clear language, and is to the point. It will therefore be perfect as a tool for children to try and make sense of such a big loss. It takes skill to write about something so complex in such a seemingly simple way, and I applaud the authors for what is clearly a labour of love. They have turned a very painful life event into something that can potentially help many children in the same situation.

The authors will be donating a minimum of 50% of the books profit to Child Bereavement UK.