We have all heard of Elizabeth Kubler Ross's Stages of Grief but I prefer to talk about layers of grief. As bereaved parents of babies, we quickly discover that our grief does not work in a straight line. Indeed in the early days, we can only describe our grief in terms of a roller coaster ride, a storm, and a cyclone.

I came across this book: They That Sow in Tears by Catherine Chappell and Charles Nolan Sandifer. Both shared the heartache of the loss of a child. Catherine's daughter and Charles' son were on the waiting list for organ transplant. But they did not make it to receive the transplants. In their grief, both found comfort working in their gardens. They found out that they were not alone. Planting a memory garden is a universal response to grief. I never thought of gardening in this way till I read their book.

A personal calamity would throw anyone upside down so that they feel in utter turmoil. Our comfort zone would be no longer available. The blow is harder to take if we had unwittingly assumed that whatever it was that we loved would always be there. We feel like shouting out 'It's not fair'. 'It's not the way things are supposed to be'. So what happens next?

A diagnosis of amputation can have a far reaching impact on your psychological state, much more in fact, than the actual physical loss itself. This might seem hard to imagine but because the operation to remove any limb could almost be considered routine these days, even the most difficult of amputations are invariably a success. Your emotional recovery takes much longer and this is because the stress of an amputation is inextricably entwined with your emotional state and this connection, can cause a myriad of emotions such as fear, grief, self-doubt and a lack of confidence afterwards.