• Julia Samuel is a renowned grief counsellor, therapist, and author

  • Her latest book This Too Shall Pass, which deals with themes of change and uncertainty, was released just before the Covid-19 lockdown

  • She speaks with welldoing.org founder Louise Chunn about how we can build resilience and better mental health in times of change


Julia Samuel is a grief counsellor, Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK, Vice President of the BACP, and an author. Her books Grief Works and her more recent release This Too Shall Pass have both been best-sellers. 

The book launch for This Too Shall Pass was held just before the UK's lockdown, and its themes of change and uncertainty – which it illustrates using client case studies – are therefore all the more relevant, highlighted by our shared experiences in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. "In my 30 years as a therapist," Samuel explains, "whatever the presenting issue clients have come through my door with, the thing that connects them is their uneasy relationship with change. That they find change very difficult to deal with, and then they think that they are doing it wrong. The thing that we will all connect on during the pandemic, is that we've all been thrown by the change."

Here Samuel speaks to Louise Chunn about how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected people in the UK, and how – though we cannot ultimately control our lives in the ways we might want to – we can support ourselves through time of change: