A Worthing woman, who took up writing to help deal with the death of her father, has penned a heartwarming children’s book exploring themes of loss, grief and friendship.
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00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers, and it's
00:06 lovely to be speaking to Ash Hunter of Worthing, who is joined by - how many kilos of Lilo
00:11 is that?
00:12 Thirty, thirty-four-ish kilos!
00:13 Well, it's lovely to see him, and I'm glad he's on your lap, not mine. But, Lilo, Ash,
00:21 it's really lovely to speak to you, and congratulations on a very, very significant book which you
00:27 just had published called A Different Day, and it's written in the wake of the death
00:33 of your father, Kenny, who died three and a bit years ago at the age of 51. What were
00:38 you wanting to do in this book, which is a children's book, isn't it? What was the aim
00:43 behind it?
00:44 Yeah, so it's a children's picture book, and it tells the story of a little girl, Mo, who's
00:51 lost her dad, and a puppy called Lilo, a golden retriever like mine.
00:56 Where did you get that name from?
00:59 So I've got a chinchilla called Stitch, and when we got Lilo, we thought we would make
01:04 a book.
01:05 Oh, I see, I see. So she's been using the book, but the book obviously has a very serious
01:10 theme. What did you want to express in the book, then?
01:15 So I think it's really important that you support people through grief. Obviously, it's
01:20 a really difficult time to go through, but my dad first got poorly when I was 12. So
01:28 it was a long time going through it. So 16 years ago? And one of the biggest things I
01:39 felt all the way through it was just really quite alone in it, because, you know, he was
01:45 going through this horrible thing, but also I didn't have anyone around me who had any
01:49 idea.
01:50 No.
01:51 Of how to deal with that, and, you know, how to kind of even talk to me, really.
01:56 And it is important to talk about these things, isn't it?
01:59 Yeah, it is. And so the idea of the book was to kind of, you know, it's quite a lighthearted
02:06 way of going about trying to cheer Mo up, because she's obviously upset about her dad,
02:11 and Lilo does all these daft things in the story, which was inspired by my own puppy,
02:16 who can be very daft at times, but it ends with the kind of message that actually, do
02:23 you know what, you don't need to try and cheer them up, you just need to sit next to them
02:27 and hold their hand and let them know that you're there with them through whatever it
02:31 is that they're going through.
02:33 And that's enough, is it?
02:36 That's the main thing, really. Yeah.
02:39 And important too, to talk about the person we've lost, isn't it?
02:43 Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the thing. I lost my dad in lockdown. It was from cancer,
02:51 not from, you know, not from Covid, but it was at a time where communication was quite
02:57 a hard thing to do anyway. And I think, you know, everyone had so many things going on
03:01 themselves that actually, you feel a bit, you felt a bit forgotten.
03:05 Yeah. As I was saying, I lost my father during the lockdown too, in the March, the months
03:11 before yours. Do you think that the whole lockdown experience made the grieving so much
03:16 more difficult? Did it delay the grieving? What did it do?
03:20 Yeah, I think, I think actually in the moment, probably things were a little bit easier because
03:28 life had kind of stopped, which is kind of how it feels. I think everyone was kind of
03:33 on the same wavelength with us. And so, I think initially we felt a little bit, the
03:40 funeral, you could only have 10 people. And actually, as horrible as that was for all
03:47 the people who couldn't attend, it was quite nice to be quite a little, you know, celebration
03:53 with the main family and friends. But I definitely feel like the second year became so much harder
04:00 because life was suddenly getting back to normal and everyone was starting to get back
04:05 on with their lives. And actually, I felt like mine was still in pieces.
04:08 Yeah. And so, is this your first book?
04:11 Yeah, first book. And to be honest, it was a total accident.
04:17 How can you write a book by accident?
04:19 Well, the end of last year, I was just in a place where I just, I was just struggling
04:26 a little bit. I moved to Worthington a couple of years ago with my other half. So, I don't
04:32 have any, you know, I don't have much family or friends here. And I just felt like I was
04:38 a bit lost and I started doing a bit of counselling. And writing just kind of became a way that
04:44 wrote stuff down. My dad used to write little poems and little rhymes all the time. He used
04:50 to write little love letters, but not very romantic ones, in my mum's birthday cards
04:56 and her Valentine's cards. And so, just kind of playing on words was something that I grew
05:00 up with, really.
05:01 So, just by writing this, you've put it out there to an extent, taken it away from you?
05:08 Yeah, I think just, I think if you could just make one person feel a little bit less alone,
05:15 then, you know, because it feels like quite a niche thing to talk about grief with children,
05:20 but actually, it's happening all the time, you know.
05:23 Absolutely.
05:24 You lose, you know, all sorts of things, whether it be a pet or whether it be, you know, friends,
05:31 family. And yeah, I think it's an important message to just try. And even if it's, you
05:37 know, outside of grief, just the idea that, you know, you can be sad, and you can have
05:43 situations out of your control, then actually, that's totally fine. You just have to sit
05:48 with it.
05:49 Have you started to get a reaction to the book?
05:51 Yeah, so at the minute, it's only been out a couple of days. So, I'm getting lots of
05:57 nice messages from friends and family. And I'm working with the brain tumour research
06:04 on it. So, the idea of the book is that a pound from the sale of every book is going
06:08 to go to brain tumour research. So, I'm working with some of their fundraisers to pick up
06:13 a little bit of attention from their side as well.
06:17 Oh, that's fantastic. And has this given you a taste for being an author? Are there other
06:20 books to come?
06:21 I mean, Lilo gives me a lot of stories. So, we'll see what happens.
06:26 Where's she gone? Where's she gone then?
06:28 She has gone to get a toy. Lilo? What's this? Are you going to come up here? Are you going
06:38 to say hello? No?
06:41 Don't worry. But she's an inspiration. So, there could be more stories.
06:48 Yeah, I think she's a very lovable little dog. Well, not so little dog. And maybe even
06:59 the chinchilla will feature. But I think it's just important to make it mean something.
07:05 It's lovely to just write a story. Reading was really, really important to me growing
07:09 up. But if it can have that kind of extra message for kids, then I think that's a really
07:17 nice thing to be able to put out in the world.
07:20 Congratulations on writing a book in such difficult circumstances. And it sounds like
07:24 a fantastic thing to do. Really lovely to speak to you. And good luck with that. And
07:29 let me know about the next one. There's got to be a next one.
07:31 Will do.
07:32 Thank you.