This is going to be a short post today, with just one example. Gaia has so far been variously described as caring and maternal, good at building trust in people, warm and loving and not afraid to show it. There were several examples given of Gaia’s loyalty, to her sisters, other family members, her friends. […]
I’m conscious that we’re getting to a point where there is a lot of overlap between some of these aspects of Gaia’s personality that I’m sharing. I’m not going to apologise for that, I think it’s an inherent consequence of trying to describe someone based around individual aspects of their personality, when in reality we […]
Yesterday I focused on how Gaia had this inner core sense of self and was uninhibited in her approach to life, unsurprisingly this spilled across all areas of her life. Clara, her elder sister, described how loving Gaia was. She described a loved one being in a bad place and how Gaia responded: ‘The last […]
This is a hard one to capture, it was more of a composite sense that emerged from conversations, rather than something that anyone specifically named as a personality trait. It also overlaps with other characteristics highlighted on earlier and later days. On Day 1 we shared how Gaia was ‘unfiltered’ and I think this is […]
Laugh, laughter, contagious laughter, repeated themes in the conversations I had about Gaia. Clara’s voice lifts as she remembers the laughter. She recalls her sisters and Mum had visited her: ‘There was a lot of laughter, always, really infectious laughter… you know, when your sides hurt, you don’t really know what you’re laughing at half […]
Gaia and Maya were born in July 1998. Gaia arrived first, and Maya followed, which appears to have been their dynamic throughout childhood. Discussing them with their Mum (Kim) and Aunt (Talia) they described the following: ‘Gaia was always a big character, out of the twins too, she was the one up front and Maya […]
This is the first in a series of posts where I introduce what I’ve learned about Gaia to the world, based on conversations I’ve had with her mum, aunt, older sister and twin sister. You can read more about how this came about here. Everyone I spoke with made some mention of how expressive Gaia […]
Three years ago tomorrow, on 7 November 2017, Gaia Pope-Sutherland went missing from Swanage. Investigations into what happened at that time continue, and Gaia’s inquest has been delayed, partly due to coronavirus, and is due to take place in May 2021. In September I live-tweeted the second pre-inquest review hearing from Bournemouth Coroner’s Court. You […]
There is currently an inquiry into the Coroner Service being conducted by the Justice Committee of Parliament. A call for written evidence closed at the start of this month. I submitted a response sharing some of my thoughts as a result of my #OpenJustice work, my WCMT Fellowship and the impact I’ve seen the coronial […]
I spent most of yesterday crafting a blog post that I couldn’t bring myself to write. There have been too many words said, and too many promises broken, too many times. I woke today and knew I had to record something, to witness this. I’ve been trying to limit my time on twitter lately due […]