Word Medicine for Grieving Hearts: An Interview with Author and Celebrant Veronika Sophia Robinson on her latest title, Under The Starflower: A Book of Blessings © 2026 [Veronika Sophia Robinson]. All rights reserved.
Interview by Joe McLean
The Birth of Under The Starflower
Veronika, after writing over 30 books, what was the specific moment or encounter that told you Under The Starflower: A Book of Blessings needed to be born into the world now?
Almost all of my book titles or book ideas come to me in an instant. I listen to the whispers to see where they lead. This book was no different. In some ways, it was a natural marriage of two ideas. The first idea: I sometimes write short, personalised rhymes to include as closing words after the committal. The second influence was based on all the times I’ve searched for a reading or a poem for a family, and nothing was quite right. There are some truly beautiful ones available, of course, and I love being able to suggest them to the bereaved. There are also many readings I’ve heard countless times in my years as a funeral celebrant. These are the ones families see first when they do an Internet search. There are some I remember hearing when I was 19 (and that was almost 40 years ago!)
I wanted to bring something fresh and beautiful; something from my heart. You could say that the moment of deciding to offer this book of blessings for funeral celebrants and grieving hearts rested on my desire to bring ‘a softening’ to this world.
You describe this book as “Word Medicine”. What does that phrase mean to you personally when working with a grieving family?
Words can wound, as we know, and they can heal. If we consider medicine an aid to the healing path, then “word medicine” is a way of supporting those in grief; a balm, if you like. One of the things I have learned as a funeral celebrant is to let those who are grieving speak without interruption. So, my practice is to refrain from sharing relatable stories. I imagine it to be like this: they have passed me a ball to hold (their grief is the ball). My job is to hold the ball. Not talk about my experience of a ball. So the word medicine I seek, and that comes to the page when writing a funeral script, actually begins in the client meeting. They then receive this balm through my spoken voice on the day of the ceremony.
The book features beautiful illustrations by Philippa Mulvany. How did your words and her visual art come together to create a sanctuary for those reading and listening to the words?
From the first time I saw Pippa’s art, I was enchanted. I have a few pieces in my home of her black and white line drawings (which I truly treasure). I am blessed to collaborate with some wonderful artists. Although I’d never collaborated with Pippa before (and nor had she previously illustrated a book), I kept seeing her sketches in my mind as I thought about the blessings. So, I asked, and she said yes! Definitely a collaboration made in heaven. Pippa read my verses and chose which ones to illustrate (she’d have happily illustrated every page!). Rather than direct her, as such, she created images based on how the verses ‘spoke’ to her. A bonus for this book is that Pippa is also a funeral celebrant, so she was able to draw on that experience and infuse it into her art.
Why did you choose the structure of “blessings” for this text, rather than a standard guide to officiating?
Because it’s not about officiating a complete ceremony. Under The Starflower is specifically about bringing moments of deep reflection through ‘distilling the essence of a feeling, thought or topic’ into a short verse/s. As I said earlier, I was so used to seeing the same poems and readings at funerals. I wanted to offer something different for celebrants and, of course, the grieving hearts who will hear these poems.
You wrote this book from your 300-year-old cottage close to the fells of Cumbria. How did the landscape of the Eden Valley hold you while you wrote about the heavy thresholds of loss?
The landscape of the Eden Valley holds me as a writer in the same way it has held me during my own sorrows: the deaths of my pre-term children, my father’s death in a car crash, the suicide of my best friend, and, more recently, my mother’s death.
Throughout my life, Nature has always been my first comforter. My earliest life memories include dancing underneath an electrical storm in my homeland of Australia, touching leaves, climbing trees, breathing the scent of petrichor, and eating dirt! Haha. I have a deep need to connect with Nature and Mother Earth every single day: from the moment the sunlight reaches through my bedroom window in the morning (or awakening to the sound of birdsong), walking barefoot on the grass within minutes of getting out of bed, caressing the apples on my trees, plucking blueberries off the bushes, walking in the woods, resting my cheek against the cool moss on old stone walls, and more. So much more. I can see the fells (Pennines) from my writing room. They are not only the backbone of England, they’re my touchstone. I often write while out under the porch, where I get a close-up view of bees, wasps, various butterflies, birds like the bullfinch, blackbird, great spotted woodpecker, song thrush, and ever-changing cloudscape.
Re-writing the Narrative of Grief
Your core philosophy is that no one truly knows what an individual is feeling because every relationship is entirely unique. Why is dismantling the phrase “I know how you feel” so vital for genuine healing and connection?
How can anyone ever know how we feel? Sure, we may have experienced grief. We may have experienced the death of a loved one in the same type of ending: car crash, dementia, etc., but our feelings are our own. No one else in the world has walked our life’s path, and the sum total of our experiences. They don’t have our wiring. And then, there’s the relationship we had with the person who died. That relationship is, like our feelings, experiences and wiring, ours and ours alone. For example, my experience of being mothered is going to be different to everyone else on this planet (including my seven siblings). I can’t know how someone else feels about their mother’s death. I can only know my own feelings.
For me, “I know how you feel” is right up there with other irritating expressions, such as: “I’m so sorry for your loss”. The person who died isn’t lost. They’re dead. Yes, of course there is a loss (a missing loved one) in their life. I understand that. I just think it is a cliché (an easy way out, with little thought, and not really an empathic way of connecting). Why don’t we slow down and think of another way of validating their life-changing pain?
I believe we need to dismantle the phrase of “I know how you feel” (and toss it away) because it short-circuits and completely invalidates how the mourner is feeling. The way I see it is that as soon as someone says that phrase they are putting the attention onto themselves, and their experience, rather than leaving it with the person who has just been bereaved. I appreciate that people think the phrase creates connection. I don’t believe it does.
I remember the day my mother died (on the other side of the world to me), I could barely think and function. I had to go to the supermarket that day as I was, ironically, hosting a retreat for funeral celebrants that afternoon on the topic: Creating Beautiful Bereavement Ceremonies. I bumped into someone I know (and who had been told a few days before, by my husband, that my mother was dying). When they asked how my mother was, I replied that she’d died that morning. “I know how you feel!” they said, and spent the next twenty minutes going through their old grief story with not another word to acknowledge my feelings.
Many mourners have similar experiences.
The best support we can give to the bereaved is to listen. That is, do not try to fix them (as much as we want to wave a wand!) or change the subject. Very few people know how to just ‘be’. To hold ‘the ball’. One of the kindest things you can offer to someone who is grieving is to ask them to tell you about their loved one.
You advocate for gentleness with grieving hearts. What does real, practical gentleness look like in a society that often rushes people through loss?
We live in a society that rushes through everything, so of course, culturally, we’re not going to make allowances for heart-wrenching pain. We would, however, give people time off to heal a broken leg! A grieving heart, though? Not likely.
For me, it is about being aware EVERY SINGLE DAY that anyone I may encounter could be carrying a grieving heart: the person by the till at the service station, the lady in front of me in a supermarket, the old man sitting on a park bench, the young woman avoiding eye contact as she walks down the street, call-centre woman, the person next to you on the train, the person you think is driving too slowly or hasn’t moved when the lights turned green.
Grieving hearts
are
everywhere.
When we start to see the world full of ‘the walking wounded’, our words become softer, our time becomes a gift, and our kindness is a given.
There was a time when those in mourning wore black. And, of course, many of us do at funerals (and just as many don’t, if they want a non-traditional vibe). Black is worn as an everyday item, so we don’t have the same instant visual identifier as we had in the past. There’s a lot of attention in the lead-up to the funeral and the day of the service, but then everyone else goes back to their busy lives. Suddenly, the bereaved are living in an uncharted liminal space.
Here, but not here.
Their heart has been shredded, and the world is just carrying on as if nothing’s happened. Somehow, that makes the pain even worse.
My experience of grief was that I soon learned people are fundamentally focused on self. I’ve learned, the hard way, that when I face a bereavement, the kindest thing I can do for myself is to go into isolation. This saves people from saying the usual stupid things, and means I don’t have to deal with any more upset than I’m already going through. I can count on five fingers the people who were genuinely there for me (even if not near me physically) when my mother died.
When working with the bereaved, I always check to see what support they’ve got around them. Not everyone has a strong circle of family or friendships. There may be family members around, but they are constantly trying to ‘shut down’ the chief mourner with comments like “it is what it is” or “she’s in a better place” or “we have to get on with things”. I’ve heard people, whose spouse of sixty years has died, say “I really miss her” and their next of kin replying with: “Don’t be silly Dad!” How is it silly to feel the ache of emptiness?
The book covers cremations, traditional and woodland burials, and interments. How does the physical setting change the texture of the words needed?
It changes everything. A chapel, no matter how beautiful, is an indoor space. It disconnects us from the outside world (unless it is beautifully designed, like the one at Roucan Loch, near Dumfries, Scotland where you’re comforted by views of the loch).
It is a legal requirement to ‘dispose’ of a body. We are disconnected from that at a crematorium. We use curtains (in some places and cases) to mark the final goodbye. Increasingly, people are shunning the shutting of a curtain.
When we are in Nature for a burial, an interment or a scattering, we can draw on the beauty of the world around us. We are also connected to the physicality of the final goodbye. This helps the brain to connect with the reality of the ending. As much as it is confronting, it enables the slow path of healing to begin.
For me, as a woman and as a celebrant, I’m most at home in Nature. Standing under a canopy of trees in Summer or frosty grass in the depths of Winter, brings a level of healing that’s easier to tap into than when you’re indoors. There are many verses in Under The Starflower which draw on Nature and anchor mourners to the setting. There are also verses suited to the crematorium.
Grief isn’t just about the immediate shock of death; it is, in your own words, “a long, quiet road”. How does Under The Starflower support a heart six months or a year after the funeral is over?
There is permission in the book for celebrants and families to publish their chosen verse within an Order of Service booklet (provided copyright and credits are included). I know that families hold onto these booklets for the rest of their lives. They are keepsakes. Those words will take them back to the day of the ceremony, and will act as a balm in the same way that my funeral scripts bring comfort years and years after the ceremony.
Relationships are rarely perfect. How can a blessing honour a loss where the relationship was complicated, strained, or painful?
Honesty is an important aspect of healing. In the blessing about an estranged child, titled, The Unbroken Thread, it acknowledges the “unsaid words and burned bridges” while declaring that it “doesn’t match the love which remains”. The reading gives permission, if you like, to release “the heavy stones we used to hold”, and claims “the tenderness which remains”.
A blessing can also remind us of the strengths or qualities of the person who has died, and this, too, may bring healing.
(Under The Starflower is available in paperback and Kindle from 25th August 2026 via Starflower Press, Amazon, Kindle, good bookshops, libraries and online retailers.)
