Lotte Bowser, BITTER SWEET: A True Story of Love and Loss

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[0:42]Lottie Bowser is the author of bittersweet, a true story of love and loss.

[0:47]Lottie is a British author, podcaster, and grief educator.

[0:50]Since losing her fiance and father to cancer, she has dedicated her life's work to lighting the way for thousands of people in the midst of their own loss and heartache.

[0:58]Her words have been featured in Harper's Bazaar, Women's Health, ITV's Woo, and Refinery29.

[1:04]Welcome, Lottie. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to read books and discuss your amazing memoir, bittersweet.

[1:10]Oh my gosh, so good. Welcome. Zibi, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

[1:16]First of all, I just have to say I'm so sorry for your loss.

[1:20]I like had nightmares after reading it. You're not in a bad way. Like in a, I was so incredibly moved by your story and the way you wrote it and how the immediacy of Ben's illness and what you had to go through.

[1:36]I literally felt like I was there, like you were sending me an email about it and I wanted to just call you and be like, oh my gosh, I'm here. I'm here to listen.

[1:43]So anyway, I'll say it today. I'm here to listen literally right now. But thank you for sharing your story with everybody.

[1:50]Tell everyone what your book is about and basically what happened if you don't mind.

[1:55]Of course. Well, thank you so much for your kind words. Yeah, it's wild Zibi to think about what some fold is over the last.

[2:05]I would say five years now. So my book, bittersweet, a true story of love and loss is exactly that.

[2:13]It's a very intimate and if I may say so myself, candid account of meeting this magical man called Ben when I was 24 years old and falling in love with him and building a life together and then losing him to cancer during the COVID-19.

[2:33]pandemic and learning to pick up the pieces of my life that was obliterated by his death and learning to find a way forward.

[2:47]Yeah, it's almost like you started as it's almost like you're reading a romcom or something like a romance novel because the way the two of you fall in love and, you know, matching on the apps and then meeting him and like you could just tell how

[3:02]into him. You were like, how cute he was at everything and then as a reader, you're like, oh, yeah, and they're actually getting together. And it's so early in the book.

[3:12]This is great. I mean, obviously I knew what was coming, but it's like I didn't want to believe as a reader that I was like, well, maybe if I pretend I don't know that then the story will go a different way.

[3:23]And then how, you know, maybe just share how, you know, from finding this first lump down to your time in Mexico, how you were there services main person right in the throes of that fresh falling in love feeling and then your life gets completely derailed and having to hold him up at the same time.

[3:47]And so you talk about what that was like and even looking back. It wasn't even that long ago. How you see all of that now.

[3:55]Do you know what's really interesting zippy and you know, people might find this wild to comprehend, but in the very early days of minor bends relationship, he always had this ephemeral like quality to him.

[4:11]I'd often feel as though he was slipping through my fingers in the sense that I couldn't get enough right we loved each other with such an intensity and ferocity that even if we were together 24 seven it never felt like enough.

[4:25]And you know, I appetite for one another was insatiable. And so when that diagnosis came about in July 2019, it was almost as if, you know, I remember throwing my hands up and thinking, I just knew that it was too good to be true.

[4:43]Right, that was the feeling that I has and I don't think I'd ever experienced a depth of love that I shared with Ben before. So, you know, perhaps this is common when we when we find something we can't ever conceive living without right.

[4:57]But that nightmare did come true for us and it took the shape of a lump between his shoulder blade and his spine. I found it was I was giving him a massage one evening.

[5:07]And he was fast tracked through the diagnostic process within the NHS our health system in the UK and it was stage three soft tissue sarcoma and I'd never heard of this cancer before.

[5:19]I'd assumed that because Ben had done all of the right things growing up and as a young adult that you know cancer wasn't on the cards.

[5:27]So it was absolutely shocking. It completely turned our world upside down, but I refused to entertain the notion that Ben wasn't going to survive.

[5:38]It was only until the terminal diagnosis was delivered the following spring at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was actually two weeks into the national lockdown in the UK that suddenly, you know, we were staring down the barrel of the gun so to speak and we were confronted by by mortality.

[6:01]I didn't think of it as you all know from having read the book we were determined not to give up the fight. We had so much to live for right we were young and in love he was on the threshold of some of the biggest accomplishments in his music career as an agent.

[6:17]We were planning on starting a family we wanted to get married and so we weren't prepared to lay down and accept the diagnosis and what made his case particularly challenging is that we were also dealing with the fallout of COVID.

[6:38]So him and I were suddenly forced into lockdown overnight and we had to take that very seriously because the cancer metastasized to his lungs and he was considered incredibly vulnerable.

[6:53]So even though the UK came out of lockdown several times over the course of that summer in 2020, Ben and I were still very much stuck within the four walls of our home and because of his case because of the necessity to isolate I was his primary and only caregiver during that time.

[7:14]He underwent surgery, he went through a really aggressive chemotherapy regimen for two cycles over the course two months and nothing worked nothing helped him and so when the NHS advisors to begin taking the necessary steps to arrange end of life care.

[7:37]We decided to travel overseas we flew to Mexico to explore alternative treatment and it was actually at that center six months in that the things were beginning to turn around for Ben miraculously the treatment was actually working.

[7:54]And we were in our own little bubble there, you know, we felt very safe within the confines of this cancer center and frankly, COVID was at the bottom of our concerns list right we were dealing we were dealing with more pressing matters.

[8:08]But it all just spiraled one afternoon at the center he began feeling really unwell five weeks into treatment and I stayed overnight with him at the center and his condition just continued to decline.

[8:22]And the following morning he was rushed to A&E because he was experiencing really severe breathing difficulties and he was ventilated straight away so yeah it's it's really hazy looking back and you know for the purposes of writing the story I had to really dig into into those memories which as you can imagine was really difficult very cathartic but very difficult.

[8:50]But even now recounting it Zibi it's still it's still a bit blurry to me but yeah he he was ventilated immediately I actually take comfort from that there was no struggle at the end of his life he was asleep he wasn't aware of what's going on.

[9:07]But after 24 days of swinging from stable to unstable and all the while I'm also in quarantine in a hotel on the other side of the city alone he died from from acute liver failure and another complications that had arisen from from the virus and his his cancer diagnosis.

[9:26]Yeah I am so sorry you had to go through that this whole thing I'm sorry for him that he didn't get to see play out I'm sorry for you and everything I mean that is I mean I know you wrote about it but it's.

[9:40]It's just so moving and so horrible and not be able to be close to him and at the end at all of the the added labor of covid my gosh you've more thing I just wanted like to be a big hug and I'm just so sorry I'm so so sorry.

[9:56]Thank you Zibi we'll look some some time has passed now.

[10:00]And I've assimilated it, I've metabolized it,

[10:05]but it is always a strange experience telling the story again.

[10:12]And it's also strange witnessing people's reactions,

[10:19]because here I am sat in my flat in Lisbon thinking,

[10:23]shit, I did go through that.

[10:24]That is crazy that that happened.

[10:27]And it's crazy that he's not here anymore.

[10:29]You know, it's very hard to reconcile,

[10:32]it's hard to get your head around even all these years later.

[10:37]And so what has happened since Ben's death?

[10:41]What has happened with you?

[10:43]How have you taken, how have you gotten through,

[10:46]and where are you today?

[10:48]And what's happened since the end of the book?

[10:50]Oh, a lot has happened.

[10:52]So I think the nature of Ben's demise

[10:57]having gone through so many months of pain and suffering

[11:01]and horror, I was able to reach the conclusion quite early

[11:07]on in my grief that I didn't want to stay in that darkness.

[11:14]Life had felt so small and so insufferable for so long

[11:17]that I wanted to reach for the little blimmers of hope and joy

[11:24]that the chinks of light.

[11:26]So quite early on, I made the decision

[11:29]to play an active role in my recovery and in my healing.

[11:35]And this is the thing about death, Sibi.

[11:37]You know, there's nothing that can be done to make it right.

[11:42]And I think the sooner we are able to reach a place of acceptance

[11:48]and that definitely isn't easy, that comes with a caveat,

[11:52]I don't mean peace, I don't mean acceptance in the sense

[11:55]that we're okay with what has happened.

[11:58]It's more that we accept the facts for what they are, right?

[12:03]The better, I think, the sooner we're able to get to that place,

[12:07]the better.

[12:08]So I spent the first four months in lockdown at my mum and step

[12:13]dad's and I was able to process a lot of my pain, my grief,

[12:18]my trauma, my questions, my bargaining during that time.

[12:23]As you can imagine, you know, there were no distractions

[12:26]to reach for.

[12:27]So in a way, I'm grateful for having had that time.

[12:30]You know, the world had stopped at the same time my life stopped.

[12:35]So I was very sort of gently able to find my way back

[12:40]to sort of some semblance of normality again.

[12:43]But that summer I made a decision to leave England.

[12:49]I went on holiday with a close friend of mine and it felt good.

[12:54]And at that time so much of my life had fallen away.

[12:59]You know, I was planning a future with this person who, you know,

[13:02]within a split second had just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

[13:05]So I wanted to reach for what felt good, you know, and positive.

[13:11]So I made the decision to leave.

[13:13]I packed up my things.

[13:15]I sold mine and Ben's flat in New London.

[13:18]And I booked a one way to get to Lisbon Portugal.

[13:21]And here I had a blank canvas.

[13:23]I had anonymity.

[13:25]I was free from the day-to-day triggers like, you know,

[13:30]our local coffee shop, our supermarket, his favorite brand of crisps and cheese.

[13:36]And, you know, all of the little things that we associate

[13:39]with our loved ones, I was able to remove myself from all of that.

[13:46]So I moved countries and I'll just circle back slightly during that time.

[13:53]I had been sharing my experiences of loss and grief online.

[13:57]And I think because so many people had gone through something similar,

[14:04]it struck a chord and I built a little community on Instagram.

[14:11]And that caught the attention of my agent and some commissioning editors

[14:19]at various publications who asked me to dive a little bit deeper into my experiences

[14:25]and write articles for their publications.

[14:30]And it all just kind of came to be really organically.

[14:34]And that's what landed me my publishing to you and led me to write our story.

[14:40]But very early on in the immediate aftermath of Ben's death,

[14:44]I was absolutely adamant that it wouldn't be for nothing.

[14:49]I really wanted to find a sense of meaning and purpose in his death.

[14:56]And I felt that if I could transmute the pain and use it to help others,

[15:03]then, you know, somehow it would make my life worth living again.

[15:08]And here we are.

[15:09]And I mean, I hope I've done it in some small way.

[15:12]And my intention is to continue doing that, you know,

[15:16]to continue using Ben's experience as a means to help people.

[15:21]And in that sense he lives on, you know, his afterglow burns bright.

[15:25]And that feels really good.

[15:28]Feels really special.

[15:29]Well, you absolutely did that and it's amazing.

[15:34]The book itself is, the story is so powerful,

[15:38]but you're a beautiful writer as you are a beautiful sort of speaker,

[15:43]such an amazing accent and all that.

[15:45]And you're so articulate.

[15:47]And all of that is in this book, right?

[15:50]You're so self-aware and introspective and articulate.

[15:56]And it all just, it all just spills out.

[15:59]So it's really beautiful.

[16:01]And by the way, I think, and my books are published from Little A as well.

[16:05]Oh, and I'm way.

[16:06]Oh, my goodness.

[16:07]Fantastic.

[16:09]Third book.

[16:09]So Carmen Johnson's my editor.

[16:11]Is she yours or no way?

[16:12]No, I walk with fake haslam.

[16:14]Big story haslam.

[16:16]Yeah.

[16:17]OK, I'm going to mention you to my editor.

[16:19]I bet she'll know who you are.

[16:22]And you see her wonderful, lovely synchronicity.

[16:27]Yes, amazing.

[16:29]So what now you have this book here out, you know,

[16:32]talking about it and, you know, what's the best thing that can happen?

[16:36]What where do you want things to go?

[16:38]Or is it just one foot after another?

[16:42]It certainly was in the early days.

[16:45]Very much just living breath by breath moment by moment,

[16:48]one foot in front of the other.

[16:50]I'm beginning to feel that there's clarity now as to what,

[16:56]you know, my, my direction looks like.

[16:58]I'd love to write another book.

[17:00]I think it will probably probably be nonfiction.

[17:03]Again, I don't know if I've got a novel in me yet.

[17:06]But I, I'm actually in the process of building a support

[17:11]platform for Grievous.

[17:14]And it encompasses all of the different strands of support

[17:19]that I felt I desperately needed when I was in the throes

[17:23]of really raw early grief.

[17:26]But also beyond that point, you know, I, I hope to alleviate

[17:31]people's pain no matter where they are in their journey

[17:34]through this platform.

[17:35]So watch this space.

[17:36]That's that's the next big project that I'm

[17:38]thinking my, my teeth into at the moment.

[17:42]Yeah.

[17:43]Well, if you need any help with anything or

[17:46]support people to shout from the rooftops or any of it,

[17:49]just let me know.

[17:50]I'm, I'm a fan firmly in your camp.

[17:52]So thank you.

[17:54]I really appreciate that.

[17:56]Well, it's just, it's crazy to me, you know, that there's this

[17:59]grief connects all of us, right?

[18:01]And it's, it's a universal experience that will all go through

[18:04]at some point in our lives, whether we, whether we haven't

[18:08]yet, we haven't already.

[18:11]And yet bereavement support falls woefully short of what we

[18:15]need.

[18:15]And I just think that's kind of bonkers when you think about it.

[18:20]You know, so I really hope to do, do just a little bit in, in

[18:26]filling, filling the gaps.

[18:28]Yeah.

[18:30]Tell me just a little more about the act of writing the book

[18:34]and structuring the book.

[18:35]And what that process was like, and like, did you outline?

[18:39]Did you just start going for it?

[18:41]Did you, like, what was that whole process like for you?

[18:45]So my process was quite interesting.

[18:48]And I'm sure, you know, every, that, that the same could be

[18:51]said for for everybody's writing process.

[18:53]But the book that I'd originally pitched was an entirely

[18:57]different book altogether.

[18:59]So I worked on this proposal for about a year and a half with

[19:02]of my agent countless iterations back and forth between us.

[19:06]Yes, you're, you're very familiar with that process.

[19:09]And initially we proposed a practical guide to grief.

[19:15]Right.

[19:15]So there would be elements of my own experience tied in.

[19:19]But it was very much a guide of sorts.

[19:23]The publisher that I went with, little lay, they felt that my

[19:27]story would have more impact if I was to tell it in the format of a

[19:31]memoir.

[19:32]So they sent me away with a publishing deal and with a 12-week

[19:36]turnaround for the first year.

[19:38]What?

[19:39]Mm-hmm.

[19:40]Yeah, 12 weeks.

[19:42]Why so fast?

[19:43]I mean, I, I'd have to know.

[19:46]I'd have to know Zibi.

[19:48]I mean, I'm sure I've aged about 20 years.

[19:51]My sort of internal body clock as a result.

[19:54]It was, it was very stressful.

[19:56]But yeah, the turnaround time was super quick.

[20:00]And I didn't even have a skeleton to go off of,

[20:02]because as I said, the proposal was

[20:05]for an entirely different idea altogether.

[20:08]So it was very much a case of just every day

[20:11]sitting down at the laptop and trying to get down

[20:14]as many words as I possibly could

[20:17]into my word document until I reached the 60,000, 70,000 mark.

[20:22]And then I had to wait for feedback obviously.

[20:25]And then over the course of the summer last year,

[20:28]I think again, I had around three to four months

[20:32]to get that first draft to the final draft ready for submission.

[20:37]The original format was very bitty.

[20:40]It was structured in themes, actually,

[20:43]as opposed to in chronological order.

[20:45]So the whole process was really messy, basically,

[20:49]because then that needed completely splicing apart

[20:52]and reiterating countless times.

[20:55]But we eventually got there.

[20:58]I think I would have liked to have had a tiny bit more time.

[21:00]But having had that kind of fire under my arse,

[21:06]having had the pressure of a deadline,

[21:08]it was probably a good thing in the end,

[21:10]because I think, and maybe you can relate to this.

[21:13]I don't think you'll ever quite feel as though it's done.

[21:17]There's, if I'd have had another two, three, five years,

[21:21]it would have been a completely different,

[21:23]it'd be completely different book.

[21:25]We can continue to edit and re-ed it and splice apart

[21:30]and rewrite until the end of time.

[21:32]But you have to get to a point where you just surrender.

[21:38]Handed over, I did what I could in the time

[21:43]that I was given, and I'm happy with the result.

[21:46]I think I set out to tell Ben's story

[21:50]and to honor his life and his legacy.

[21:52]And I feel I achieved that.

[21:54]So I'm happy.

[21:56]Was it always called bittersweet?

[21:58]It was always called bittersweet.

[22:00]Yeah, and it was just, it was a word

[22:02]that just landed in my head that one morning.

[22:05]Yeah, I was racking my brains for weeks and weeks and weeks.

[22:09]I'd actually got to those final weeks before submission.

[22:13]I still didn't have a name for it,

[22:14]but I feel it encapsulates the experience of loss

[22:19]and all that comes afterwards perfectly.

[22:23]Absolutely. Oh, my gosh.

[22:25]Well, having gone through this writing experience,

[22:28]do you have advice for aspiring authors who are trying to tell

[22:31]their hard stories?

[22:32]Mm.

[22:34]Well, I think, you know, like with anything,

[22:37]writing is like a muscle, right?

[22:40]It needs to be flex, it needs to be trained.

[22:43]So, right, simply, you know, simply just, just right.

[22:48]The blank page can feel incredibly intimidating,

[22:51]but the most important thing

[22:53]I think is to just get the words down on paper

[22:57]and to speak your truth as well, you know,

[23:01]there is real power in storytelling,

[23:07]in revealing not just the savory parts of your experience,

[23:13]but also, you know, the dark and the difficult parts.

[23:16]That's where I feel we can really find connection

[23:19]and relatability as readers, you know, to the author.

[23:23]So, yeah, be radically honest in what you share.

[23:27]Is there anything else?

[23:29]Show and don't tell, show, show us, you know.

[23:33]Imagine that we are a fly on the wall,

[23:37]living, living your experience in real time.

[23:41]And that's, yeah, that's more of a kind of technical piece

[23:46]of advice, but a quick Google search

[23:48]will give any listeners more information on that technique.

[23:51]But, yeah, I'd say that sums it up.

[23:55]Lottie, thank you.

[23:56]Thank you so much.

[23:57]I'm, you know, blown away.

[24:00]The whole thing was so great.

[24:01]So, thank you.

[24:02]Thank you for all.

[24:03]Thank you.

[24:04]It's been a really lovely to chat to you.

[24:06]Thank you.

[24:07]Okay.

[24:08]All right.

[24:09]Bye-bye.

[24:10]Thank you.

[24:11]Thank you.

[24:12]Thank you.

[24:13]You too.

[24:16]Thanks for listening.

[24:16]Two moms don't have time to read books.

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