Lauren Clarke

“Mum will not be coming home from the hospital.”

I was twelve years old, sitting at the foot of my brother’s bed when my father spoke those words. I felt the call to be brave, but I misunderstood—I thought he meant Mum now lived at the hospital. She never came home. She died the next day.

More heartbreaking than that conversation were the ones that never happened. After her death, confusion and guilt filled the silence—spaces where truth and comfort could have lived. The adults in my life did their best, and I honour them for that. They simply didn’t have the tools to talk about death.

As I grew, I realised the silence around death wasn’t just in my family—it was everywhere. It wasn’t just children left with unspoken questions; adults, too, carried grief they had never been able to name. As a facilitator, I encouraged these conversations, listening as people shared stories of funerals they weren’t allowed to attend, names that were rarely spoken, and sorrow made heavier by the absence of discussion. Again and again, I saw that avoiding death didn’t protect us—it only deepened our confusion and isolation.

But it wasn’t until I was pregnant with my second child and my first asked, “Mum, do babies die?” that I realised just how early this silence begins. Talking with other parents, I saw I wasn’t alone—one told me about their child asking, “Do we only live once?” in the middle of preschool drop-off, while another shared how they’d been caught off guard by, “Are our eyes open or closed when we die?”—right as they realised the potatoes were burning.

After years of talking about death with hundreds of adults, I recognised a pattern. Story after story revealed how being excluded from a funeral as a child, or having a question about death dismissed, had left lasting scars. We were taught—without words—that death was a no-go topic, something that made adults squirm, something children shouldn’t ask about. But it wasn’t death itself that caused the most enduring pain. It was the silence that followed.

I realised the silence I had experienced wasn’t unique—my child wasn’t the only one asking big questions, and other parents weren’t sure how to respond.

This is why Big Questions Little Hearts exists.

To help parents find the words. To answer children’s big questions with honesty and care. To break the silence, so the next generation grows up knowing that death is not just a natural ending, but a part of life we don’t have to face alone.

Big Questions Little Hearts is built from both personal experience and professional insight. It comes from the child who lost her mother and was left to wonder. From the mother who has faced those same big questions, feeling the weight of bringing such a tender topic into a child’s world. It is shaped by my background in psychology and communications, and, most of all, by the stories of those who have bravely shared their experiences—reminding me that this is a conversation worth having, one that has the power to change how we live and how we die, together.

This is a movement. One honest conversation at a time, we can create a world where children grow up with the courage to face life’s hardest truths—not without fear, but with the strength to meet it head-on.

If you're ready to start, you can explore my resources, join a workshop, or take my upcoming course.

You don’t have to have all the answers—just the willingness to begin. And I’ll be here to guide you.