A FREELANCE writer, specialising in crime reporting, has found a blog she began writing, charting the death from cancer of her step-father, is proving a solace for “thousands” of others going through a similar experience.
Jane Hamilton is a former crime reporter at the Edinburgh Evening News and a former senior reporter at the Sunday Mail and The Scottish Sun.
She told allmediascotland.com: “When my step-dad was dying, I had to learn very quickly about palliative care, cancer and dying. And all around us we heard people in hospital and the hospice saying, ‘I don’t understand’, ‘I can’t cope with grief’, ‘I’m scared’, and I started the blog as a means of reaching out from a relative’s point of view, watching a loved one die.
“I’ve since had thousands of messages from people saying they’ve read it, can identify with it and it’s helped them in a little way. I guess I started it as a form of therapy for myself but it’s evolved beyond that now and I’m hoping to get involved in the Scottish Government’s ‘Detect Cancer Early’ initiative. [My step-dad] Eddie’s story is not unique and that is the tragedy of it all.”
The blog is called From a Jack to a King, a favourite song of her step-father’s.
She writes of herself in the blog’s intro: “An investigative reporter with over a decade’s experience at the cutting edge of tabloid news. But my years of reporting on other people’s tragedies could not prepare me for my own.”
Pic: Alan Simpson
