Paul Presents | Postcards from the Land of Grief with Richard Littledale

RICHARD LITTLEDALE is an author, preacher, pastor, BBC broadcaster and, above all, a highly skilled communicator, innovator and expert storyteller. 26,000 people read his regular blog.

Grief can often feel like a gnawing homesickness for a place where you used to live, but to which you can never return.

Richard Littledale has written a series of short, candid thoughts and reflections from his own experience of widowhood that will resonate and bring comfort and understanding to anyone experiencing bereavement.

Richard has also written a number of children’s stories, including The Littlest Star, The Tale of the Little Owl and a collaborative musical venture entitled The Note.

This show was 1^st in the global news chart and 5^th in the global interview chart.

A long awaited moment

A few weeks ago, a little boy was colouring in church whilst his parents were busy with various jobs around the place.

I stopped to ask him what he was working on, and he explained that this was the cover of a book he was going to write all about endangered species.

The book had no content yet – but the cover was full of promise!

In my experience, the cover is often the last piece of the writing puzzle to fall into place.

In the case of ‘Postcards’ I could not be happier that it has been that way round.

Husband and wife team Vivian Hansen and Alejo Porras have taken time to familiarise themselves with the book.

They have accorded me the grace of walking through the landscape of grief in such a way as to understand it from my point of view. It is a curiously vulnerable thing to entrust a manuscript which has cost you so much to someone else to give it a face.

I need not have worried – since it was clearly in very safe hands.

The design features a tiny, plucky tree which I encountered in Cornwall, on the last holiday Fiona and I ever took together.

Battered and bashed by the strong winds blowing in from the coast at Port Quinn, it was holding its own.

Twice I stopped to admire it, before getting my camera out on the third occasion. To see it fighting with the wind – and winning, inspired me then and inspires me now.