NEW RELEASE
GET UP, DRESS UP, SHOW UP: LESSONS IN LOVE AND SURMOUNTING GRIEF
Following a vibrant career encompassing the glamour, global travel and trials and tribulations of a life on the stage, Petal Ashmole Winstanley has written a book—about surviving deep sadness, loss and also about exceptional love.
Speaking with searing honesty about the brutality of losing three husbands, her story is sometimes shocking but frequently funny, peppered with optimism as she recounts how – even at the gates of hell – she found the strength to get up, dress up and show up, sporting a dash of red lipstick.
As a child of the ‘60s captured by the dawn of feminism, I am passionate about women's rights, their resourcefulness and speaking their truth. Due to raw experience I am an advocate for early AIDS and cancer detection, a fierce believer in Dignity in Dying and the important pivotal position carers hold. Caring for a terminally ill human being is living in a state of alertness with the looming threat of emergency never far away. Often it is the carer who pacifies the night terrors and holds steadfast again and again during the very worst life has to offer. Grief must have a voice—be heard and honoured not silenced. It is the unspoken that shatters the grief stricken who run for cover and recoil into aloneness.
– Petal Ashmole Winstanley
“it is my hope that what I have written will allow you to reach a deeper understanding of loss, its complex aftermath, and the need to find a way forward”