From high-flying banker to kangaroo parenting, Justin Caffrey takes us through a searingly honest account of his experience when his second son Joshua was born fifteen weeks early and life as they knew it stopped for the rest of the family.

Forced to live in the south of Spain near the NICU unit where their son battled for survival, their son’s ongoing dance between life and death would change Justin’s perspective on almost everything in his life. After Joshua’s death, just short of his first birthday, Justin’s suppressed grief would eventually scream to be addressed, forcing Justin into a whole new way of being in the world.

He generously shares with listeners what this journey was like for him, the abyss of grief that he faced, along with suicidal ideation and eventual acceptance of his grief and the rebuilding of family and career after trauma.

Justin describes being surrounded by friends and family at a barbecue yet feeling totally alone and desolate. It is a poignant reminder to all of us to not forget our grieving loved ones, even though the outside can appear ‘normal’.

In the following episode of Shapes Of Grief, we shall talk to Beatrice Caffrey, mother of Joshua and married to Justin, for her maternal perspective of multiple miscarriage and the death of her beloved baby Joshua.