I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This

‘Truly the best and most insightful book about grief I have ever read’ Joanna Cannon

‘Beautiful, heart-breaking and yet overwhelmingly hopeful’ Mike Gayle

Grief is universal, but it’s also as unique to each of us as the person we’ve lost. It can be overwhelming, exhausting, lonely, unreasonable, there when we least expect it and seemingly never-ending. Wherever you are with your grief and whoever you’re grieving for, I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This is here to support you. To tell you, until you believe it, that things will get easier.

When bestselling writer Clare Mackintosh lost her five-week-old son, she searched for help in books. All of them wanted to tell her what she should be feeling and when she should be feeling it, but the truth – as she soon found out – is that there are no neat, labelled stages for grief, or crash grief-diets to relieve us of our pain. What we need when we’re grieving is time and understanding. With 18 short assurances that are full of compassion – drawn from Clare’s experiences of losing her son and her father – I Promise it Won’t Always Hurt Like This is the book she needed then.

PRAISE FOR I PROMISE IT WON’T ALWAYS HURT LIKE THIS

‘That Clare has used her own devastating experience to help others who are going through something similar is a brave and hugely laudable thing to do. A book that is both heart-breaking in its honesty and uplifting in its compassionate approach, it is beautifully written and offers – implicit in the title – hope’ Alan Titchmarsh

‘Wherever you are with your grief, and whoever you’re grieving for, this incredibly honest book was written to support you… full of compassion and comfort‘ Adele Parks, Platinum

‘A book dripping with a compassion that can only truly be laid out on the page by a Survivor of the Trenches of Grief . We need now, perhaps more than ever, beacon-makers like Clare to help guide us through our darkness‘ Greg Wise

‘A true lifeline if you think no one else can possibly understand how you feel’ Jill Mansell

‘Written with honesty, realism, deep personal insight and hope‘ Child Bereavement UK

‘A salve for broken hearts. Readers who’ve been touched by loss will find comfort in these pages.’ Publishers Weekly