Hollie’s Journey is an Infant Loss Awareness Month resource helping children understand grief

Hollie’s Journey is an Infant Loss Awareness Month resource helping children understand grief. Aine Healy Collins with Marie and Jacinta of Féileacáin. Picture: Richard Lynch/ilovelimerick

Áine Collins’ book ‘Hollie’s Journey’ offers a heartfelt guide for anyone who needs extra support in Infant Loss Awareness Month helping bereaved siblings

To anyone who needs some extra support this month to help guide their kids/ bereaved siblings or help in navigating or starting the conversation with them around their sibling who has passed, here’s a book to help as support called ‘Hollie’s Journey’.

Áine tells her story, On Christmas Day 2022, I gave birth to our daughter Hollie. She passed away in neonatal maternity 15 hours later. I had a three-year-old at home at the time, he’s five now. He loves books. As a parent, I suppose I was worried about relating this to him because he was part of our journey.

Kai knew he had a baby sister. Then, he knew she was gone. One night, as Kai was sound asleep on my shoulder, I wondered what he was thinking. An hour and forty-five minutes later, I had written the first draft of ‘Hollie’s Journey’, a book that aims to be a guide to help open up the conversation about loss with children and help them understand the emotions they are going through.”

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Áine explains that kids always have questions to ask and show a wide range of emotions, she said, “Children always have questions. All the emotions come over Kai. Anger, happiness, sadness. But it’s okay to have them. There’s a page of him and his friends comforting each other. And then, there’s the rainbow at the end. The hope maybe, after the storm.

“My hope is that Kai will always remember that love trumps everything. If something hard happens, if you have the right support and if you have love in your life, you can overcome anything.”

The author says she believes “love trumps everything” and that the love put into the book can be seen by people.

She added, “The message for him is to ride the storm, but surround yourself with love, and there’ll be light at the tunnel. That’s the important thing, if you don’t have family and love, you don’t really have anything in life.”

The book speaks about an unbreakable bond between a boy named Kai and his sister, a girl named Hollie that are separated by loss but forever joined by love.

This is a story that explains the heartbreaking journey that began with Kai’s excitement and hope at finding out he was going to be a big brother, and the awful realisation then that his sister had died.

Kai embarks on a new journey in life and acquires new coping skills where he is continually learning to adjust to his loss. He learns to understand and to truly believe that his sister Hollie will always be with him throughout life.

A true guide to help open up the conversation with your child about loss and to aid your child’s curious mind to process this, as they start their unknown journey into a space of understanding in the realm of grief. This book is accessible whether the loss occurred yesterday or years ago, and also reminds us that our relationships with the little ones gone before us will carry on after death.

You can purchase the book from O’Mahony’s Bookstore in store or online and 100 per cent of the €10 goes straight to Féileacáin and Children’s Gried Centre Limerick.

You can also follow our journey with the book on Instagram at hollies.journey