Behind Shani's Mind



My name is Shani. When I was 11, I lost my dad to suicide - two days after Christmas in 2009. Since then, I’ve developed generalised anxiety. 

I do not feel that there is enough conversation around what it is to suffer from bereavement when you are only a child. There is so little guidance about how to cope when you lose someone so important to you before you’ve even reached adolescence. 

My aim is to start that conversation. I speak about how my bereavement affected me both then and how it affects me now. The after effects of losing my dad are often found in even the smallest and most unlikely things. I just want to make people feel less alone if they’ve been through anything remotely similar. If I can be the person I needed when I was 11/a young teenager for just one person then I think I’ve done a good thing. 

My generalised anxiety is largely a huge fear of uncertainty. A fear that anything with an uncertain outcome will result in something bad/even death. My anxiety often manifests itself in the most unusual and unprecedented ways. Milestones I have experienced (such as starting university) have been tough due to a lack of support and consistency there (but that’s a story for another time). I hope that detailing my experiences helps others to feel less alone. One way in which I have already found that I’ve helped a lot of people is through speaking about my anxiety about driving lessons. So many people have reached out stating that they felt very similarly to how I did doing their lessons. It means so much to me that people have been able to relate so much!

Thank you for reading/following my journey. I hope it helped some of you!