Now is Not the Time for Flowers What No One Tells You About Life, Love and Loss

by Heale, Stacey

• ISBN13: 9781785120299
• ISBN10: 1785120298
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2026-01-06
• Publisher: Blink Publishing

Summary

"The authentically inspiring hope Stacey's beautiful writing offers, is mined at the coalface of grief and survival. She shines much-needed light into dark spaces." —Donna Ashworth, bestselling author of Loss

When Stacey Heale's husband, Greg, was diagnosed with incurable cancer on their daughter's first birthday, it felt like her life as she knew it was drawn to a halt.

Confronted with the end of her relationship and her family as she knew it, Stacey started contemplating the realities of life and death - and the fundamental differences between our expectation and reality. Now is Not the Time for Flowers is Stacey's unflinchingly beautiful and honest memoir that addresses the big conversations that imminent death dictates, boldly taking the reader on a journey through the full spectrum of our modern lives and its complexities. Told through the lens of her own life and the death of her husband, Stacey examines the messy and unexpected realities of love, desire, motherhood, death, grief, identity, personal growth and the challenges and questions that our nuanced lives force upon us.

Now is Not the Time for Flowers is a powerful call to arms and a new way of looking at life, love and loss.

Author Biography

Stacey Heale is a writer, speaker, curator, fashion academic and campaigner who is inspiring radically honest discussions on the lived experience of women, focusing on the realities of difficult times and how to rebuild your life from the ground up. Her academic research centers around the use of creativity to process trauma and the concept of the teenage bedroom as a site for identity construction. Stacey's 2018 TED talk focused on post-traumatic growth and the power of social media during a personal crisis. In November 2016, her husband, Delays lead singer Greg Gilbert, was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer and died in 2021. Stacey lives on the south coast of England with her two daughters and their blind toy poodle Milk.