
Mehreen Arshi is a Pakistani-born, Australia-raised writer, researcher, and reader based in Canberra. After fifteen years in scientific research and writing, she turned to fiction to explore family, identity, belonging, cultural expectation, and the private desires that shape a life.

She is the author of *I carry your heart*, a family romance set between Pakistan, Australia, and London. Her second novel, currently in progress, follows the long shadow of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan.


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Pakistani-born, Australia-raised writer based in Canberra.

Mehreen Arshi


**Trigger warning: This piece discusses suicide and the death of children. Please take care while reading.**

Two years ago I attended a workshop with Charlotte Wood at the Canberra Writers Festival. Her work *Stone Yard Devotional* had just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (side note: it was my personal favourite and I was very sad to see it not take out the prize). Wood shared extremely useful gems on writing. The one that stayed with me the most was: find what captures your attention. If something is seeking heat, it needs to be written. This brings me to my point.

I read a book over the weekend, *Things in Nature Merrily Grow* by Yiyun Li. Words from Li’s book lit a furnace in the back of my mind. This piece had to be written. Li’s book is a memoir about the suicide of both her sons: Vincent, who took his life at the age of sixteen, and James, who ended his life when he was nineteen.

In her memoir, she bravely touches on the lives of her sons, and the experience of living with losing them both. The book is a set of essays that talk briefly about Vincent and James, how they lived, and questions motherhood in the absence of children, the nature of living with loss and how it appears to others.

‘Children die, and parents go on living,’ says Li in her book. But what do parents become when they have had children who no longer exist? This made me think about what it means to be a parent. When children decide to stop living and take their own lives, do they also take parenthood with them? It really made me think about what happens when all you have left is the story of a child’s life that is left incomplete. Partway through the book, you turn a page and suddenly there is just a blank page. But this doesn’t mean you are no longer a parent. You hold onto the part of the book which will always exist, and just like you will always be its reader, you will continue to be the parent of the child who wrote half a book.

Next is the question that lingers for the parents who go on living when the children die: how do they go on? Friends, relatives, acquaintances try to empathise in the ways they feel best. But what is best for them may not necessarily be what the grieving parent needs. For Li, there were those who viewed her loss through their own lens and attempted to help her through acts of consolation they saw fit. This also meant that they tried to give shape to her grief and experience to fit their personal mould. However, Li speaks about something other than grief: an abyss, a feeling of emptiness. That whatever she was going through, she might live with it, and unlike how others felt grief, she felt it differently, and experienced it as a feeling that did not have an expiration date. It was not something she could magically recover from, as if it were a sickness with a cure. She will not one day be okay with the thought of her children no longer being alive. People were also uncomfortable with Li’s experience of her loss and her insistence on calling a death what it was: a death. Does naming it something other than death make the loss more bearable or acceptable? Or does avoiding the word ‘death’ make the grave reality easier for others?

There is a social reluctance to the idea of processing loss in a way that is far from everyone’s expectation of what one should look like when a tragedy strikes them (tragedy is not a word that even comes close to what Li and her husband went through), and how one should talk about it in a way more palatable to others. The point is: what are the social norms around loss? What is grief? What are its parameters and who decides them? I think that the process of going through a loss cannot be a performance and cannot be questioned if it doesn’t fit someone’s ideas of what is socially acceptable. A person experiencing loss is not obliged to eventually say that they are healing or recovering. After all, who would they be saying it to and for whose comfort? They do not owe anyone a narrative that conforms to their expectations or reassures others.

There are losses that one does not recover from. Some things cannot be fixed and death remains death. You carve a life around a hollow and learn to live with it. That unlike the unfinished book of children who no longer exist, an abyss may never end.

*This essay was first published on [Substack](https://mehreenarshi.substack.com/p/the-shape-of-loss) on 12 August 2026.*


A reflection on Yiyun Li’s memoir, parenthood after loss, and the pressure to make grief more palatable.

The Shape of Loss


I was rather proudly mentioning that I had written a blog about storytelling during an afternoon tea when a friend suggested I put together a recommended reading list for children. What a brilliant idea. Not only had she handed me my next blog topic while my review of Animal Farm was still brewing, but she also transported me back to long summer afternoons spent with my nose buried in a book.

Popular with children today are titles like Captain Underpants, Dog Man, The Bad Guys, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Most of us are familiar with these, often smiling bravely as we suppress our inner literary purist and applaud our children’s efforts to “read.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these books. In fact, they are highly effective at drawing children into reading, especially in an age dominated by technology and shrinking attention spans. But if you would like to gently guide your child toward classics with a little more depth, perhaps it’s time for a trip to the riverbank.

Join the shy Mole and the clever, warm-hearted Water Rat. Climb into a boat and set off to rescue the ever-pompous Mr. Toad from yet another self-inflicted catastrophe in The Wind in the Willows. Follow Alice down the rabbit hole into the wonderfully bewildering world of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My absolute all-time favourite is Anne of Green Gables, a coming-of-age story about an orphaned girl navigating the unfamiliar terrain of her newly adopted home. Anne’s spirited personality, daily adventures, and boundless imagination make her one of the most captivating heroines in children’s literature.

One of my accidental discoveries at a local library was a charming children’s book by J.R.R. Tolkien titled Mr. Bliss. It’s a delightfully quirky tale of mishaps that unfold when Mr. Bliss ventures out to buy a motor car.

Other timeless classics include Treasure Island, Where the Wild Things Are, The Little Prince, Heidi, The Secret Garden, A Wrinkle in Time, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Where the Sidewalk Ends, to name just a few.

You might also dip your toes into beloved series such as The 13-Storey Treehouse, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the Harry Potter collection, another personal favourite. Enid Blyton, a stalwart of children’s literature, gifted us treasures like The Magic Faraway Tree, The Enchanted Wood, The Famous Five series, and Naughty Amelia Jane, among many others.

Reading with your children is a magical journey, and a reminder that you are never too old to enjoy a children’s book yourself.

Rediscover the joy of children's literature alongside your kids.

On Children's Books


We all read for different reasons. Entertainment is an obvious one. Knowledge and personal growth are others. But what makes a book truly click?

When I read, I look for a story that will linger with me long after I’ve closed the cover. I want to be absorbed by it, lost in the language, immersed in the setting shaped by carefully chosen words. Words can make or break a story. The same plot, told in two different styles, can leave entirely different impressions on a reader. Half the magic lies in the story itself; the other half lies in the storytelling.

How did the author arrive at that particular line? How striking is that metaphor? How did they transform ink on paper into something I can feel in my chest? If the language of a narrative fails to captivate deeply, something is missing. The power of storytelling lies not only in what is told, but in how it is told.

That said, words are not the sole pillars upon which a story stands. Attention to detail and character development are just as crucial. We need to understand the characters, not merely their physical appearance, but their essence. Without a backstory, it becomes difficult to form an emotional connection with a protagonist. One of the most effective ways to build this connection is through observing how a character acts and reacts in ordinary situations. Their thoughts, their small opinions about everyday matters. These often reveal more than dramatic events ever could.

Understanding a character also deepens when we see them through the eyes of others. What do other characters think of them? Fear them? Admire? Resent? Without grasping who they are and why they behave as they do, it is difficult to empathise with them, or even to dislike them meaningfully.

Another essential element is emotional maturity within both the characters and the narrative. This is not about age, but about depth. When we read, we embark on a journey, not merely through time, but through transformation. That journey may chart the rise and fall of relationships, a coming-of-age evolution, or the consequences of a single pivotal event. Whether the arc leads toward growth or destruction, there must be movement. Stagnation weakens a story; development strengthens it.

These are just some of the elements I will be exploring in my reflections on each book I read, what made it resonate with me and what fell short. They are, of course, my personal impressions. You are welcome to disagree.


Intricate character development and attention to detail are crucial for readers to connect emotionally with the story.

Blog Posts.

The Shape of Loss

On Children's Books

Exploring the art of story telling