A book by Tine Buytaers-de Bie
A warm and human book for anyone who misses someone, lives on with loss, or is searching for words for what keeps moving inside.
Receive the gentle guide“Where are you today in your grief?”
Sometimes you think you are moving forward, and suddenly a scent, a song, a date or an empty chair pulls you all the way back.
Maybe someone once asked you to find a place for it. Maybe you heard that you had to let go. Maybe you tried to be strong, while everything inside you was simply crying out: I miss you.
This book begins from a different view.
Grief is not a staircase you climb neatly. Not a mountain you eventually stand on top of. Not a series of phases you have to work through.
Grief moves like seasons. Sometimes it storms. Sometimes everything freezes solid. Sometimes light breaks through gently. Sometimes something new grows in a place you thought would stay bare forever.
The 7 Seasons of Grief gives words to what often stays silent. It helps you recognise where you are today, without judgement and without a fixed route.
This book wants you to feel that you are not alone on this path. That what you experience is not strange. That you are not falling behind. And that your sorrow, however erratic or intense, is a deeply human response to loss and love.
Your grief has its own rhythm.
In this book you discover 7 seasons that many people recognise after loss, absence or a fracture in their life. Not as a fixed system, but as a gentle bedding. You may move back and forth. You may return. You may lose your way. You may breathe.
This book does not want to tell you how to grieve.
It wants to come and sit beside you.
And perhaps also for you, if you do not yet know whether you are ready for this. Then this book may simply wait. Grief has its own sense of time.
And perhaps this book is not for you today if your loss is so fresh that words are too much. Then it may wait. You do not have to force anything.
Grief is in no hurry. Neither is this book.
I wrote this book from my own life. From everything that broke me open, changed me and made me search for words again. Not from a distance, not from a place where everything was clear, and certainly not from the idea that writing would neatly process my grief. That word grates on me. As if sorrow were a file you eventually close.
It never felt that way.
After Tosh died I began to write because I had to leave something behind. Small crumbs. Words. Traces of myself. As if I were throwing pebbles into a dark well just to hear an echo somewhere. To say to life: look, I am still here. See me.
My story began with a loss that no one saw. My twin brother Tanguy died in my mother's womb. Before I even had language, there was already a silent absence beside me.
Years later I lost Bert, my first husband, the love of my life. Just become a dad. On 7 September 2004 he had a heart attack. I found him in our bathroom. I was left with Tosh and Bram, two young children, and a future that suddenly lay completely differently before me.
On 6 February 2022 I lost Tosh, my eldest son. He was 22. Together with Bram I found him in his student room in Leuven. There are experiences so vast that they do not fit into a person all at once. This was one of them.
Three weeks later, in our small family circle, we also said goodbye to my dad, through euthanasia, acute pancreatic cancer. We were with him as he breathed his last. A different kind of farewell. Gentler perhaps. More conscious. And yet just as irreversible.
A few months later Bram, then just 19, left for New Zealand. I granted him that movement. And at the same time I felt how the last piece of my core family quietly came loose. The love that wants the other to fly, and the mother's heart that feels something pull away again.
In those years I wrote so as not to disappear. First letters. Later texts. Later still, this book slowly grew out of them. Writing became a way to stay visible.
Gradually I noticed that my words did not only keep me standing. People wrote that they recognised themselves. That they felt less alone. And that is exactly where this book began to grow. Not as a manual. Not as a step-by-step plan.
I wrote this book to bear witness. To leave behind a little light for anyone who walks through dark seasons themselves.
The classic 5 stages of grief have helped many people, but for me they did not quite fit. Grief did not feel like a straight road.
In a single day I could feel hope, and an hour later break again. I could laugh and then be flooded by loss. I could take steps and at the same time long for someone who would never come through the door again.
That is how the 7 Seasons of Grief came to be. They make room for movement. For return. For confusion. For love. For life that presents itself again, even when the loss remains.
Not as a model you have to follow, not as a new measuring stick, not as a scheme that determines where you should be. But as words for a living landscape, in which you sometimes suddenly recognise yourself. Four seasons carry you inward, a quiet turning point reverses the movement, and three seasons carry you back toward the light.
The season in which the world suddenly begins to speak a different language. Shock and denial run high. Your mind may know what has happened, but your body cannot yet grasp it.
When the first numbness begins to tear and everything pours in at once. Sounds hit harder, small things suddenly touch great wounds. Sorrow, guilt, panic and unrest all mixed together.
The season in which the tension seeks a way out: anger, impatience, powerlessness. Beneath that fire there is often love with nowhere to go and pain that was held too long.
When the silence grows deeper and you truly feel what is missing. Not only the other is gone, but also the version of yourself that was connected to them.
Not a full season, but the hinge moment between them. Something begins to shift in you, without great insight or a clear breakthrough. A sober whisper inside: it cannot stay like this. It is the quiet turning where grief slowly changes direction.
The season in which something very small returns. Coffee that suddenly tastes like coffee again, a laugh that slips out. You learn that being touched again takes nothing away from your love.
Connection comes closer again, and your body hesitates at the same time. Opening here asks not for certainty, but for courage. A small gap is sometimes enough to let a house breathe again.
Direction appears not as a great answer, but as a tough, faithful light that keeps burning. The mist is not gone, nor is the loss. But within you a quiet core grows: I am still here.
You do not have to move through these seasons neatly one after another. You may move the way you move.
“Your writing feels like a warm bath of vulnerability and recognition.”
“You give words to what I cannot say myself.”
“As if you come and sit beside me, without wanting to fix me.”
“You write raw and gentle at the same time.”
“This touches because it is real.”
“Where are you today in your grief?”
Would you first like to gently discover where you are today in your grief? Leave your email address and you will receive the free guide. This is not a test that pushes you into a box. It is a gentle mirror.
You discover the 7 seasons of grief and feel which season is closest to you today. You get no hard sales pitch. Just words you may hold on to for a while.
Your details are only used to send you the guide.
Be among the first. Preorder The 7 Seasons of Grief now.
The book will be released soon. Order your copy now and we will send it to you right at the launch. That way you are the first to hold the very first words. Payment is secure through Mollie (Bancontact, iDEAL or card).
Preorder only You also receive a special package you will find nowhere else: What you sow in memory blossoms in love.
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With this book I want not only to give words to grief, but also to contribute to more openness around suicide, loss and the bereaved. That is why part of the proceeds goes to 1813, the Flemish Suicide Prevention Line.
Because no one should be left alone with thoughts that become too heavy.
Around the launch of The 7 Seasons of Grief there will be book presentations and warm moments of meeting. Not a classic lecture where you have to listen quietly from a distance, but evenings with words, stories, recognition and room to feel what touches you.
Keep me postedThe book also lends itself to lectures, book talks and meetings in places where loss, parting and humanity may be given a place. Think of libraries, cultural centres, funeral directors, schools, care organisations, companies, grief groups and municipalities.
Get in touch