Lia Shimada is a conflict mediator, community practitioner, and researcher, using her skills in a range of organisations, faith-based and secular. She’s fascinated by how migration shapes the lives of communities, last year editing a book called ‘Mapping Faith’; pulling together stories and experiences from writers, poets and artists - very much a book for our times.

And she’s a mother of 3, though her first child Rowan lived for just 39 minutes. We can be a bit scared to ask about something clearly so agonising, not sure how someone might react; but in fact Lia loves talking about him. She and her husband are so proud of Rowan - that he navigated a traumatic birth and came into the world with a heartbeat. He’s buried at Brompton Cemetery in London where Lia facilitates what’s called the Death Café… a space for people to meet and talk about death in a way that she says, far from being gloomy, can be an amazingly liberating thing to do.

I found it liberating to talk with her - I hope listening does the same for you.