About

One of the common suggestions to grieving people is to do something in honor of the person they have lost. After my son Adam died suddenly in 2021, I decided Grief Collection would be that project for me. Here on this blog I'll be collecting research, and my writing, on grief, in hopes that what I find might help others.

My name is Hilda Bastian (@hildabast@mastodon.online on Mastodon). I'm a writer and meta-scientist. My scientific specialty is in analyzing bodies of clinical research, and my PhD related to methods for doing that. Up to 2018, I had spent a few decades developing evidence-based patient information services.

I was shattered when Adam died, and went looking for the kind of research summary and science-based advice I was used to for other forms of suffering. I didn't find it. Instead, the grief internet was full of competing theories and advice, often claiming scientific foundation based on arbitrary selections of studies.

Trying to get to grips with the evidence about this experience, I decided, was something that could help me, and might help others. As I wrote at The Atlantic, the joy of Adam's birth "had set me on the path to childbirth activism and epidemiology. It seemed fitting that I'd work on the science of grieving because of his death."

The rose motif for this blog is one Adam drew on a note to me when he was a teenager. Now, to me, it represents the sustaining power of love that doesn't die. Soon after he died, I misheard "son" for "sun" in the lyrics of one of my favorite songs on the radio. That misinterpretation of The Rose helped me move towards a future that no longer held my boy: 

Just remember
In the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed
That with the son's love
In the spring becomes the rose.