Have you been in a dark confusing place, and felt like the right words found you at the right time? As a person, we sometimes face some deeply hard trials daily. We are connection seeking creatures that cling to each other in more ways than we even realize. We then often carry the ghost of that person even when they are no longer present in our lives. I do a lot of late-night scrolling on social media, where i find a lot of comforting words that help me name my feelings. A while back a video short came up of Mr. Skelly, an animated skeleton, talking of loss. These videos were so well made and gentle, I continued watching and sharing the videos anytime they came up in my feed.
I recently was going through a hard time around the anniversary of leaving a very heartbreaking 10 year partnership. It brought up so many feelings I found myself trying to mentally run from. I was triggered with feelings of longing and regret and sorrow. The book How Lucky Am I came to me and named it grief. I immediately recognized the little skeleton with no mouth sitting on an old truck on the cover. It was Mr. Skelly. I ate this book up in one night.
Addressing loss, not just death but growing apart from others as well.
The book starts by addressing loss, not just through death, but through growing, changing, leaving. Each page is a step through the journey of facing the pain, stepping into it, and sitting on the other side. It really keeps drawing to the present feeling of ‘How Lucky Am I’ in the ways life takes from us, just to give us what we really deserve. Though we deal with so much pain in losing what we wanted, it really is so lucky we are no longer stuck. With each thought we can navigate through our pain. He also used almost like a kintsugi effect on the speech bubbles with soft gold edging. Kintsugi is the art of piecing broken things back together with gold fill. Things can be broken and still be put back together.
The way this book is put together and illustrated is just pure love and tenderness on every page. The author really knows how to tell the story of being human. Mr. Skelly holds space for each difficult thought. This book is truly a treasure to own and to read again. I think it could go on a coffee table, or really anywhere, being read in small doses or swallowed whole. I applaud how far Mr. Skelly and Christian Watson has come.
Pick up your copy as soon as possible, and start seeing how lucky you are too.
