Emily Parker spoke with Zoe Clark-Coates, about the loss of her five babies and her desire to help others grieving the loss of a child; through to her book Saying Goodbye, and the launch of the Mariposa Trust.

Zoe: This book is the exact book I needed that wasn't available. So when I was asked to write a book I was very specific. It's got to be the exact thing I needed and what I needed was to read someone else's story, so it didn't make me feel alone. I needed something that brought me hope, in the fact that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. So that's why the first half of the book is very much that. Whether they've got faith or no faith, it's a totally secular book, even though I do say about my own personal faith, so that was really important as well, the fact that this is a book that is now going to be used in the NHS; people are going to be handed it in hospitals etc. So it's for anybody and everybody.

Those days of support needed to reach every heart. It needed to reach them whether the loss was recent or historic, because we support, as an organisation, as many people who have lost recently, as 60, or 70 years ago. The 90 days of support needed to be like that as well. It could be day one and you've just lost your baby; or someone might be picking this up 30 years after losing their baby.

The 90 days are a journey through grief, through processing pain at whatever stage loss was. It has one section where it's talking about how someone might be feeling at that point; talking about my experience, and how I felt. Then it has a practical task for each day where you can maybe write a letter to your child that you lost and say all the things that you were robbed from being able to say. Then it has a quote for the day, which is something that we do through our social media platforms where I write the majority of them. I think there's probably a good 85% in there that I've written and ones from different people, but the quotes are made to really hit home with people - from my heart to their heart, to make them feel they are not alone. One of the things that bereaved people will tell you is the fact that you feel isolated, you feel alone, you feel like you're the only person in the world going through loss, when actually that is very far from the case. So I wanted to take away that anguish, the grieving process for people and make them feel that they are supported, and they aren't alone.

Emily: Isn't there also the saying 30 days help to make or break a habit, was that in mind? Did you think 90 days was enough, not too long, but not too short either?

Zoe: Not really, because grief isn't like that. Grief is a life long journey. The 90 days is just to do with the size of the book; to do with the fact that we didn't want to make it daunting to people. To be handed an encyclopaedia size book would definitely have been too much, so it's down to size really and the fact that for three months it can guide you through it. But people can start again if they want and go through it from start to finish again, so it becomes two lots of 90 days. They might do one lot of 90 days and take a month off and then start again and do another 90 days. Each time they do it they'll see completely different things in it, in each day, because they will be in a different place themselves emotionally and will see things from a different angle. Some people might do it three times, four times and obviously there are going to be subsequent books, which bring more sections and more days for people.

For now, people can read it once or twice, or however many times they want to. As I wrote it, I thought people would do it on a day by day basis, but most people have gone and read it cover to cover and are now saying they are doing it day by day. Some people have said they are going to go through and see how they're feeling on that day and then go to a day that particularly addresses that. Whether it is struggling with seeing pregnant people, for instance, one day covers that. So if they're having a lot of those feelings on that day, they'll go and find that day out of the 90 days and by reading that, really know that they're not alone.

Emily: Tell me more about the Mariposa Trust and how, after your baby losses, you came to set this up. And how the Saying Goodbye services held nationally came about.

Zoe: The Mariposa Trust was founded as a not for profit division of the company we owned. We decided we needed to give something back. We looked at what we needed and saw there was something missing in the UK and worldwide actually. So we said let's start by just doing one Saying Goodbye service where people get a chance to come and honour their brief lives cut short. That quickly developed into well, if you're doing one, why not do more? So before the first one had happened we'd got seven planned, always at cathedrals. We felt that this was really important, because the services are for people of any faith or no faith, but we wanted to use a building that was historic, that was beautiful, and that was used for royal events, both secular and religious events and cathedrals and minsters definitely fit that bill.

Before we even held the first ever service, a big national broadsheet ran a piece that we were crossing over from the business sector into the charity sector and that article exploded, they sold it around the world, so it was in the New York newspapers and everywhere and within weeks we'd become one of the leading support organisations in the UK. We were getting up to 600,000 hits a month within a few months of launching and we discovered it was absolutely needed. It wasn't just something that we needed, it was something thousands and thousands of people needed each week.

We expanded very quickly, within a matter of weeks, saying we can't just offer services, we need to offer support too. We always knew that eventually it would probably become something bigger; we just didn't expect the speed of it. So soon we decided it needed to be a registered charity. The company we owned had to let go of all of its clients to service the charity full time, which is not something we were expecting to need to do, but it was the only way the charity could function. The company became a service provider to the charity, where it had started as a not for profit division of the company. We could have never planned that or predicted it. I hadn't been asked by God to do that. Initially I'd have been really? You're asking us to give up absolutely everything, even financially? But we are so glad we did it.

It grew and grew and became the Mariposa Trust, rather than just Saying Goodbye, which is what it had become known as. Saying Goodbye remains the leading division of the Mariposa Trust. Mariposa means butterfly in Spanish, which is the symbolism of new life, of new beginning, of finding hope. So it is really apt. We've now got many different divisions. We've got a division called So Cherished, which supports people when they're told that their baby has either got a terminal illness or a genetic condition. We've got Growing You, which supports people through pregnancy post loss, where they might be scared because of losing a child before. That supports people through all follow on pregnancies, if they're blessed enough to get pregnant. We then have Waiting for You, which supports people through the path of trying to expand their family or it might be the first choice to have a family via adoption. Then we've got Holding Hope, which supports people through fertility treatment. We've got many different arms today and we grow more and more each day. We've got a team of about 250 people, made up from services teams, fundraisers, befrienders, PR and marketing team. We're a global organisation, for example Mariposa Trust UK, Mariposa International throughout the whole of North America and mainland Europe. It's grown dramatically. We always think it can't get any bigger and then it does get bigger because the need is huge.

700 babies are lost every day just in the UK. Over a million babies are lost every year just in America. It's a global issue with 38 million babies lost every year. Our charity will grow as it needs to grow and we're very glad that we've launched it, but nothing could have prepared us for the journey we had to walk on, to be able to turn our pain into purpose.

Emily: The great thing as well, is that it's an amazing legacy that you guys are building and leaving. And it's also a way of remembering your babies as well.

Zoe: Absolutely. We do it for every baby. People often say that to us: have you done it all just to remember your children? And I say no, actually, that wasn't our driving force. Our driving force was to help people, to help that broken person who is sobbing on the bathroom floor, which is the person we were. Me and Andy, we were sobbing, we were broken, and we couldn't see a light at the end of the tunnel. So, did I do it as a legacy for my children? No, I did it to help other people. Has it become a beautiful legacy for my children? Absolutely.

Emily: Zoe, it's been great chatting to you. If anybody wants to find out more about Mariposa, and the book, how can they do so?

Zoe: Head to our website which is mariposatrust.org. If you want specific information on Saying Goodbye, head straight to the sayinggoodbye.org website; you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. The book is available from all good bookshops including Waterstones, Amazon and all good Christian bookshops too. It's called Saying Goodbye, by Zoe Clark-Coates. We've also got a charity single that's out right now on iTunes and that's called Saying Goodbye, written by the amazing songwriter Chris Eaton who has penned number ones around the world and that's available right now. It's a beautiful anthem for the charity; it's a song of hope and celebrating every person that's been lost.