Dr Lucy Hone: The Day My 12-Year-Old Daughter Died - and How I Survived It

Now before 2014, today’s guest, Dr Lucy Hone, was a resilience psychologist studying how people cope with stress, uncertainty and change. She was immersed in the science of flourishing, working with schools, organisations and emergency response teams – and basically, helping others navigate unwanted disruption.

And then, on a bright morning in May 2014, her twelve-year-old daughter Abi was killed in a road accident. As a mother of an almost 12 year old daughter (and a 13 year old daughter), this feels excruciatingly heartbreaking to me. How do you actually get over something so unimaginably tragic? I honestly can’t imagine I ever could.

In an instant, everything Lucy understood about resilience stopped being theoretical. She needed to find a way to live with what she describes as “the difference between where your life is, and where you thought it would be.”

That experience reshaped her life - and her work.

Today, Lucy is an internationally recognised resilience expert, bestselling author and the voice behind one of the most watched TED Talks of recent years, Three Secrets of Resilient People. Her new book 'How Will I Ever Get Through This?' has just been published.

Lucy's message remains grounded and human: tough times are affected times are part of life - and with the right tools, we can all find our way through. Yes, we really can.

In this episode, we talk about the myths of grief - including why the five stages don’t tell the whole story. We unpack why grief can be so physically exhausting. We explore intrusive rumination, post-traumatic growth, and bravery that looks like simply getting up and showing up again the next day.

This is a conversation about loss. But it’s also a conversation about love, meaning and choosing life, even when it feels unbearable.

We talk about:

• Why most people are more resilient than they think
• The concept of oscillation - how you can live and grieve at the same time
• The difference between toxic positivity and pragmatic hope
• Post-traumatic growth (and why 60% of people experience it)
• The quiet bravery of getting up again tomorrow

Thank you for listening ❤️

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