I didn’t come to write, I believe, in the same fashion other authors did. I’ve never attended literature school – although I love languages and have always enjoyed reading.

When I started therapy, the first in-depth discussion point between myself and my therapist was the relationship between my sister, who committed suicide, and me. My therapist wanted me to imagine myself going to heaven and fighting out all my issues with her. “Get rid of the anger,” he said.

I couldn’t do it. And it didn’t help either that my knee-jerk question in response to his assignment was: “But what if I don’t believe that she went to heaven?”

I could simply not allow myself to visualise the scenario sufficiently to reach that pit of emotion that needed emptying.  Consequently, my therapist assigned me this visualisation as a journalling assignment.

In the days following this first therapy session, the assigned task remained in the back of my mind – brewing… By that Friday evening I could not contain it anymore. It felt like my mind was a pressure cooker about to explode. I needed to get out what was brewing, and the only way I knew how was to write. I was up till the early hours of that Saturday morning churning out a lengthy letter to my sister.

And that was how I started writing…

When the time came to write my book I decided to include this letter – in all its cringeworthy rawness and clumsily written mess. Only someone who has been in my shoes might understand.

Towards the end of my book, I wrote a second letter titled: “What I’d Like To Tell My Sister Now”. There is power in the growth between the two letters.