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Finding peace in heart wrenching turmoil

Finding peace in heart wrenching turmoil

Date: 2022-07-28

"We lost Spencer to suicide at age 25 in 2019. I've written about it in Waterboy: Making Sense of My Son's Suicide, in the hope of helping others battling with devastating loss. It's been published by Bookstorm and is in bookshops and online, my royalties going to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG)."


There truly is nothing more painful than loosing a child. It is every mother's worst nightmare. For local award winning journalist and author, Glynis Horning it was the start of a search to find out why her beautiful, intelligent and so unconditionally loved son would take his own life.

Filled with such pain and loss, Glynis wrote a heart-wrenching book about her son's suicide and her journey through the pain, loss, anguish and confusion.

The phrase 'No parent should ever outlive their children.' so often uttered by people, Glynis opens up to that unbearable pain.

Glynis who is a health journalist asks the questions, should she not have seen the signs? Could she somehow have prevented it?

As she struggles with her son, Spencer's decision to end his life, she has to learn to understand what the depths of depression entail. Glynis' pain, is a poignant expression of human sorrow.

Waterboy is a powerful testimony about the loss of her son, Spencer, "Most important thing that got me through it was sharing my grief with my best friends and practical things like swimming laps in cold water," says Glynis.

"If this book can help one person avoid suicide, or bring new understanding to those who have lost someone, it will have achieved its goal." Glynis Horning on why she wrote 'Waterboy'. Horning is the recipient of the Discovery Health Journalism Award for Best Health Consumer Reporting and Feature Writing, the Pfizer Mental Health Journalism Award, and a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She was the Galliova Health Writer ofthe Year in20l7, 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Glynis will be at the Durban International Book Fair 2022 , at Sibaya in conversation with psychiatrist Dr Hemant Nowbath and writer Alicia Sewdass (Orphaned by Suicide), in the Imbidzo Conference Centre on Wednesday, August 3, from2 -3pm.