'To bury your own child, it's not the natural cycle of life': Mum writes book to help her son navigate grief

ON CHRISTMAS Day 2022, Áine Healy Collins went through the hardest time of her life when she lost her newborn daughter, Hollie. To help her son and other parents navigate grief, the Ballingarry native wrote “a special book” - one that tells a story of love, loss and resilience.

“That Christmas, I gave birth to our daughter Hollie. She passed away in neonatal maternity 15 hours later,” Áine says. “I had a three-year-old at home at the time, he’s four now. He loves books. As a parent, I suppose I was worried about relaying this to him because he was part of our journey.”

Her son, Kai, knew he had a baby sister. Then, he knew she was gone. One night, as her little boy was sound asleep on her shoulder, Áine wondered what he was thinking. An hour and forty-five minutes later, she had written Hollie’s Journey.

“I'm an English teacher, it kind of just came to me. I wonder what he's thinking. I just got the notes app on my phone and I started typing. It was like an out-of-body experience, it was like I got what Kai was thinking and how he was trying to process,” she recalls.

Through Hollie’s Journey, she shares the unbreakable bond between Kai and Hollie, who are separated by loss, but forever joined by love. The book aims to be a guide to help open up the conversation about loss with children and help them understand the emotions they are going through.

Even though she does not like to be in the limelight, Áine wanted to make sure she could help other families going through grief. With this book, she put her family’s story out there.

“I wrote from Kai’s perspective to another boy or girl that might find themselves in the same position, telling them that whatever you're feeling, happy, angry or sad - own it. But mom and dad will always be there,” she explains.

Speaking of Hollie’s Journey, she says: “Primarily, it's a resource for a bereaved parent in the same situation as us, to help them start the conversation, but also to help the little boy or girl, that could fall away to the shadows of grief of the sibling.”

The illustrated book may also be a way to honour Hollie. She looks down at her necklace and briefly holds its pendant - a golden teardrop, which carries Hollie’s ashes.

“They say losing a child is the hardest thing you go through. You lose your parents, you lose your grandparents, they're older than you. It's not easy. But to lose a child, to bury your own child, it's not the natural cycle of life,” she says.

As she talks about losing Hollie, tears roll down her cheeks.

“You do lose a piece of yourself. A piece of me will always be gone, and a piece of her will always be with us. I wear this necklace, my mom got it for me two months after she passed and her ashes are actually in it.”

That same teardrop is illustrated throughout the book, alongside other Easter eggs that are a nod to Kai and Hollie’s story.

When she first showed the book to her son, which he calls the “special book”, he recognised himself, his dogs - and of course, his granddad’s horses.

“He was like, ‘Oh, that's me and my dogs’. The illustrations in the book are actually very true to our life. To our eye, we recognise little things the whole way through. But to everybody else, it's a generic kid's book. It definitely helped me as much as it could have.

“But it brought up an awful lot at the moment, she's gone a year now,” she says, softly.
Children always have questions. Page after page, the author hopes Hollie’s Journey might help bring answers to some of them.

“This book actually says ‘Hollie died’, so it’s just kind of a smack in the face every now and again. The book goes through the emotions grief might bring.

“All the emotions come over Kai. Anger, happiness, sadness. But it's okay to have them. There's a page of him and his friends comforting each other. And then, there’s the rainbow at the end. The hope maybe, after the storm,” she smiles.

Áine hopes Kai will always remember that love trumps everything.

“If something hard happens, if you have the right support and if you have love in your life, you can overcome anything. I think love trumps everything and that people can see the love in the book.”

She continues: “The message for him is to ride the storm, but surround yourself with love, and there'll be light at the tunnel. That’s the important thing, if you don't have family and love, you don't really have anything in life.”

When she lost her daughter, Áine’s family rallied around her and she found herself enveloped in a cocoon of love.

“When she passed away, my husband Mark was amazing. He was my rock and delivered the news I couldn’t deliver. He took over, and he told the people closest to us, he rang my parents and his family, our inner circle. Our family really rallied around us, and they were just like a cocoon. It was Christmas and everyone has priorities at Christmas, but they really just kind of dropped everything,” she recalls.

Through her experience, the author has found comfort in knowing that they are not alone - a message she hopes to convey through Hollie’s Journey.

“There's comfort in hearing other people's stories. I think that Mark and I found comfort in speaking to people and hearing other stories similar to ours. You never get over something like this.”

Hollie’s Journey will be launched in O’Mahony’s Booksellers in Limerick, on February 7 at 6.30pm.

The book, in partnership with Cube Printing, is now available to pre-order online. The book will be available in bookshops from February 8.

All proceeds of the sale will go to Féileacáin and Children’s Grief Centre Limerick, to help families navigate the complexities of grief.