To Love….

July 30^th, it’s Sophia’s birthday.

Thirteen years have now passed since Sophia turned 22 in hospital, her sweet face captured forever in the photographs—so precious to me, so expressive of Sophie—that my sister, Kaye, took that day.

Sophie, propped up on pillows, her long hair tumbling across her shoulders, was glad to have reached the milestone, joyously glad—against all odds—to be alive.

How grateful I am for that day, and for the days we had after it, the bitter-sweet days of the rest of her life.

We’ve reached another milestone this year, Soph. It is ten years since this website was put online (thank you, Katie, for translating my ideas into lovely reality in the building of the site—and thank you, Kris, for keeping the techno stuff ticking over so faithfully year after year).

Ten years! Yes, that is a milestone.

Perhaps this is the moment to express, for the unseen future, the “why” of it all.

What is this website, and Sophie’s Notebook, about? What is it all for?

The most obvious answer is also the most inaccurate.

It is not, in other words, about loss.

John Donne (most likely in 1617, after the death of his wife, Anne, and their stillborn daughter) wrote a powerful evocation of his grief in the poem, A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day. “I am re-begot,” he says, “Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.”

Go to the splashdown page of this website (here: https://sophianugentsiegal.com) and come back again. Is this what you see: “absence, darkness, death, things which are not”?

No, you do not.

Of course there is grief, of course there is loss, and it is catastrophic. Lear’s howl echoes through history, torn out of souls.

But this is not all there is. Out of that terrible crucible comes truth; out of the anguish, clarity; out of the sorrow, a piercing beauty.

What you see on Sophie’s splashdown page, what you see in her lovely face, what you see on every page of this website, what you see in every image, every word, is a light.

What you see is the light.

Love is the light.

And love, as Sophie would tell us—as Sophie did tell us—is eternal.

This is not the “love” of cartoon hearts and cute kittens on greeting cards. It is the Love made real to us in the Crucifixion.

No darkness can stand against it and death is defeated by it.

So, what is this website and Sophia’s Notebook “for”?

It is a window for the light to enter in.

As was Sophie herself—and the light did, shining then with radiant truthfulness out of her, to those with eyes to see.

It’s your birthday, Soph. Shine bright, darling girl.
With love, eternally.

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The poet who will contribute a poem to Sophia’s Notebook for 2026 is notable English poet, Malcolm Guite (to read details about the Notebook and Malcolm Guite go here: https://sophianugentsiegal.com/poetry-prize/).