Now is Not the Time for Flowers: What No One Told Me About Grief

Stacey Heale ... has such a muscular take on grief, and her ideas around how we live with profound loss are truly original.' Clover StroudWhen Stacey Heale's husband, Greg, was diagnosed with incurable cancer on their daughter's first birthday, it felt like her life as she knew it was drawn to a halt.

Confronted with the end of her relationship and her family as she knew it, Stacey started contemplating the realities of life and death - and the fundamental differences between our expectation and reality. Now is Not the Time for Flowers is Stacey's unflinchingly beautiful and honest memoir that addresses the big conversations that imminent death dictates, boldly taking the reader on a journey through the full spectrum of our modern lives and its complexities.

Told through the lens of her own life and the death of her husband, Stacey examines the messy and unexpected realities of love, desire, motherhood, death, grief, identity, personal growth and the challenges and questions that our nuanced lives force upon us. Now is Not the Time for Flowers is a powerful call to arms and a new way of looking at life, love and loss. 'To tell the explicit truths of lives is critical; to refrain from doing so keeps us lonely and isolated.

Women are shamed for their emotional natures and their desire to talk so much, so we've shut down these avenues between us. ... To be honest is to show care, for ourselves and others.

There is integrity in truth; it is freeing even when it's painful and hard.

Sometimes it can land like a blow to the head, but its ripples are in no way as far-reaching as