Introducing fragments
A new platform centred on losing a sibling (biological or chosen)
SH: Hello! Welcome to the first edition of fragments—a new Substack newsletter exploring sibling loss and grief in all its forms. I’m
, and I’m a freelance journalist (amongst a few other things I’m still working out) based in London.JB: hiya! I’m
- a freelance writer and facilitator currently based in Naarm (Melbourne).SH: We’ve decided to write our first post on fragments as a conversation between ourselves, as we currently have 11(!) timezones between us. The way we communicate with each other is often through voice notes—which I honestly love, and I guess in a way is fragmented in itself. This metaphor truly just keeps on giving.
To start with, I thought we could share a bit about our friendship and how fragments came about. I had, of course, deeply admired your writing, work and general iconic-ness for ages, and then I think we first met IRL at the gal-dem (RIP) offices in spring 2022.
I had read your beautiful writing about James before, and I think our grief was a real point of connection that we bonded over quite quickly. Perhaps part of that is the fact that sibling loss, in my experience, maybe doesn’t receive a lot of attention or representation—so that connection feels quite rare and special. Does that resonate with you?
JB: eeeekkkk thank you for these sweet words! have such a love/hate relationship with validation and compliments but I’LL TAKE IT!
i can’t exactly pinpoint the moment when we started following each other on instagram but i remember always noticing the acute care that you put in all the work you did, something that has become only more and more obvious whilst getting closer to you. your approach to journalism and navigating social justice has always been one driven by a deep sense of integrity and i rly rly rly rly rly admire that.
and that integrity is what’s always made me comfortable opening up about my grief with you! i feel like sometimes sibling loss is slightly ignored and i think even personally i have a tendency of invalidating my feelings surrounding it. james died almost a decade ago. realistically, my day to day life isn’t actively impacted by his death. but emotionally the weight of it is still incredibly heavy. but maybe i don’t feel like i can claim that? and feel like there’s an expectation from others that i wouldn’t be this impacted?
what i’ve loved about our conversations has been the agency to be open and honest about whatever feelings emerge at any point. which is why i’m so excited to work on fragments together! grief feels messy. especially when it comes to losing a sibling, it truly feels like there’s no guidance. having a space for us, and others, to share those messy thoughts and feelings i think could be really transformative.
what made you excited about the prospect of fragments?
SH: Oh stop!! Reading this is making me so emotional—and we are only at the beginning!!
I’ve been so excited about fragments for a while for a few reasons. Firstly, working with you, obviously! I feel such deep admiration for you and I think that we have a really beautiful kind of synergy in the way we communicate and work together.
As we were brainstorming the visual identity for fragments (which was created by the very talented artist and tattooist Wing Kei Hoang), we both had in mind a ribbon, rope or thread tying the letters of the word together. It was only through the design process that we learnt about an ancient Chinese proverb, which says “an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance”. I truly feel this collaboration with you was meant to be.
You’re right, grief is incredibly messy and complicated. Jonny died 24 years ago—his anniversary is next month actually—when I was five years old. I feel that it’s only really been since the start of the pandemic that I’ve properly allowed myself to feel my grief. The way in which he died was so incomprehensible and senseless, and I’ve felt that has always been a barrier for me in making sense of his life and who he was.
fragments, then, is a way of overcoming that. It’s a way of saying, look, I will never have a totally rounded, multidimensional understanding of who my brother was. Part of grieving is yearning for what we can never know. But by looking at what our loved ones have left behind, these snippets, these moments, we can create our own interpretations of how their lives were—and what they could have been. I’m so excited for us to explore this together, and with other people too.
We’ve talked about James and Jonny as our siblings, which is central to fragments. What does the word sibling, and the relationship it signifies, mean to you?
JB: i think it’s interesting that you point out how pivotal the pandemic was in making you process your grief, and i can definitely relate to that.
it was the first time i started seeking support to navigate my grief - i started attending bereavement peer support groups and, eventually, founded one, specifically by and for bereaved queer people. a big push into launching that was to challenge an unspoken hierarchy i often sensed in the other groups, whereby familial and romantic bonds seemed to be held at a bit of a higher regard than ones based on friendship. that’s not necessarily those groups’ fault, but more indicative of the society that we live in, whereby that prioritisation is relentlessly pushed down our throat, in our bureaucratic processes and media representations.
that hierarchy never really rang through to me.
my friends are my biggest love stories. navigating the world with them is my life’s greatest blessing. they make my life worth living. to not correlate that bond with one of a sibling on the basis of not sharing a bloodline is, frankly, ludicrous. i love them like a sibling. they annoy me like a sibling. i hope to to grow old with my friends, just as i’m growing old with my sister, and just as i was hoping to do with my brother.
the legitimacy to defy expectations is my most treasured aspect of leading a queer life and, whilst fragments isn’t a queer platform per se, it was necessary for me to apply a queer lens to its mission whereby chosen family matters just as much as biological family, and chosen siblings matter just as much as biological ones.
my hope is that the writing we will share on fragments will resonate with those who have lost a brother, a sister, a best friend, a flatmate, a cousin, a childhood friend, a neighbour, a raving friend, a customer service job colleague, or whoever has ever made you feel like you were in the company of a trusted loving sibling, whether you’d known them for a week or two decades.
my hope is that the writing we will share on fragments will trigger some kind of rebirth for those we have lost, honouring them and shining a new light on them. which is why we are launching fragments today! on the first day of spring! what’s the significance of spring for you?
SH: Ahh I love all of your reflections here so, so much. I think especially in the time we’re living right now too, we have to, at the very least, acknowledge the fact that grief is political—who we grieve, how we grieve, and who is actually afforded the time and ability to grieve all carry their own complexities. And so your thoughts on expanding what we mean by sibling are a crucial part of this, particularly when it comes to the intertwining of our identity / identities and our grief.
God, I love spring so much! Although I know you’re well into summer over in Naarm, the days are just starting to get a little longer here in London. The sky is still light at 6pm, which felt like an unattainable state just two weeks ago. There is something about the irrepressibility and the possibility of spring that I love. Walking around, you can feel the determination of the magnolia and blossom petals to bloom from the constraints of their buds. You mentioned rebirth, and I think that feeling—of regeneration, renewal, re-energising—is so emblematic of spring. It’s the perfect time of year to bring fragments into the world.
On a final note, would you like to share a bit more about fragments moving forward, and how we hope people might engage with it?
JB: wow you described spring so beautifully and it’s made me so excited about the birth of fragments and all the re-births that’ll trickle from it.
embracing grief is a powerful act of reclamation. we live in a society that actively pushes us to suppress it: the least we cry, the more we function. it feels like an honour to (hopefully!) challenge that mindset and allow people to tap into a part of themselves they normally need to censor - starting with us, but eventually bringing in others.
for now, please make sure to subscribe here for our monthly written pieces and follow us on instagram, where we will (ir)regularly share words, resources, quotes, poetry and memes (?) about grief and the way it manifests.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read our first post on fragments.
We encourage any and all feedback and suggestions, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here on Substack, on Instagram, or via email at fragmentsofgrief@gmail.com. And if our project resonates with you, we would love it if you shared it with someone else who may also find some comfort in it.
Our next edition of fragments will be published in April. Until then, thank you again for reading,
June and Suyin x