BOOK REVIEW: MY TEMPORARY DAUGHTER, BY IAN LEES

My Temporary Daughter: Searching for Life in Unpopular Grief, by Ian Lees, published by TellWell Talent, 13 June 2025

My Temporary Daughter is a father’s memoir on suddenly and unexpectedly losing his 34-year-old daughter in 2021. It had my eyes stinging right from the Prologue which describes how Ian Lees indicates to the ICU that Katie’s life support is to be switched off. Rarely can writing take you so swiftly right into such intense emotion.

I read this book in two days, marvelling at what a gift this father has to honour his daughter’s memory in such a way. It’s not just a book about Katie’s untimely and controversial death nor about the love of a father for his daughter, it is a commentary on what was happening in Australia throughout 2021, as well as the author’s existential journey as he breaks down all of his old beliefs and reluctantly continues with a life that he barely recognises.

Whilst I have spent much of the past four and a half years myself immersed in the world of the vaccine-injured, it has only been Ian’s writing that has truly illuminated the realities of losing someone to VITT. It wasn’t just the biological detail that hit me, but the reality of being a family member not allowed to accompany a loved one to hospital was hard to swallow. I found myself swearing out loud when he was only allowed to visit his daughter for one hour a day while she was in a coma. What happened to our sense of humanity during that time? 

I was full of admiration for his bravery in admitting his own vulnerabilities, many of which I could relate to. I too remember looking at “normal” people and wondering how they could go about their daily lives, the anger I felt when triggered by what I felt was a lack of sensitivity to my suffering, and that disconnection with society when it opened up again. It is the little details he shares that those inhabiting the world of the injured and bereaved will clearly remember, but few of us can imagine what it must be like to receive a sympathy card with a stamp saying, “Get Vaccinated” when a vaccine necessitated the sending of such a card. I feel that the true impact of this book will only be felt much, much later when future generations reflect on the context within which vaccine-related bereavement was experienced. 

But somehow Ian Lees manages for it not to be a depressing read. It is full of beautiful words of wisdom, pleading “when the ‘other’ speaks, open your heart and mind and listen,” and possibly my favourite part of the book, when he talks about how he now pauses when saying goodbye to the people he loves … “Just in case.” My Temporary Daughter is a book offering lessons in how to speak to someone after loss: “Nothing you can say will hurt any more than what I am hurting now. But what does hurt is saying nothing.” I feel like this book can provide guidance to anyone who feels helpless as they watch someone struggle through grief. And It can provide unexpected inspiration.

For it is also a book of celebration of Katie’s life and spirit. He speaks of his daughter’s “otherworldliness” as if she “didn’t fully belong in human existence.” By his account, Katie was an empath, like so many other people I have come across in the vaccine-injured and -bereaved community, which leads me yet again to wonder whether there is something about such highly sensitive people that puts us at higher risk of harm.

Ian’s book is about Katie’s death but it is about her life too, and I find his words have the potential to inspire us all to live a full life just like Katie did during her thirty four years. I thank him for sharing the life that she had, and hope that we may all become better people because of his bravery in writing so beautifully about his devastating loss.

My Temporary Daughter: Searching for Life in Unpopular Grief, by Ian Lees, published by TellWell Talent, 13 June 2025, ISBN 978-1998482658, is available on Amazon and at the author’s website at https://ianlees.com.au.

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Leaving a legacy in your will is one of the best ways of ensuring that we can continue our valuable work. UKCVFamily is run entirely by volunteers who are adversely affected by Covid-19 vaccination themselves, and nearly all of our work is paid for by donations. A gift in your will, however small or large, can help ensure we can always be here for the vaccine-injured and bereaved.

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What have we been doing since the Inquiry?

We’re a few weeks on from the end of Module 4 of the Covid-19 Inquiry, and things are starting to settle down to a normal pace.

During the Inquiry we ran daily zooms for our members, giving them a much needed place to be with the community and decompress at the end of each day. The feedback received was that many would miss this regular contact with others, so we made the decision to continue with regular zooms. Our wonderful volunteers are hosting sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with each session having a different topic or theme.

Fridays zoom topic was ‘how do you manage your anxiety?’ Our members experience anxiety in different ways including medical PTSD, health anxiety and social anxiety, so sharing coping techniques is hugely beneficial to enable others to perhaps benefit from tools they’ve not tried before. 

Many of the Trustees and volunteers saw a flare in their symptoms following the increased workload both during and after the Inquiry. Most of us have had to give ourselves some down time to allow our conditions the extra care and rest needed to continue our tasks. Every UKCVFamily volunteer is injured, bereaved or family of an injured person. We have to take extra care of ourselves to enable us to continue what we love: healing and supporting others. 

Despite any downtime taken, we’ve continued to provide and we’ve got many upcoming events for our members. We hold monthly EFT and sound bath sessions for members across all 3 groups, the first of which is being held next week. All of the mindfulness and wellbeing sessions we have for members are held by practitioners who are donating their time and expertise to our community. We are incredibly lucky to have their support and the feedback from these sessions is that they are very beneficial. Our Trustee, Brian, recorded a zoom conversation with Rebecca, who hosts the monthly EFT session. You can find the link to this conversation below to learn about the benefits of this practice. 

We are starting a series of interviews about taking control of your own health. Each interview will focus on a different member of our community and the questions, including those submitted by members, will aim to shed light on how that person has made improvements to their own health with the use of holistic practices and supplements. This isn’t about cures or treatment protocols, it’s about what we can do to make health more stable and manageable.  

This interview series will benefit our members greatly. We know from experience, research and from the Inquiry that treatment pathways for the vaccine injured are incredibly limited and virtually nonexistent. Finding tangible solutions outside of western medicine has seen many people take back the control and achieve huge improvements in many areas of their health. They discuss this within the support groups, but having dedicated interviews which will cover their journey will both inspire members and motivate them to seek their own improvements too.

Brian has been busy with a succession of positive follow-up meetings with MPs since the Inquiry. They have shown a willingness to engage with our concerns and take action, including supporting their individual constituents, asking questions on our behalf in Parliament and being willing to attend future UKCVFamily events. 

Following the Inquiry, some have seen a change in attitudes from people who have previously not supported or engaged with them over their vaccine injury or bereavement. One of our Trustees discussed how people who previously didn’t believe her experiences and didn’t want to talk about her health were now reaching out and sharing relevant articles from mainstream media. She hopes that this change will personally see her friendships improve and that our community will face less backlash and trolling in the future. That her online content was visible to those friends too is perhaps a sign that shadow-banning content related to vaccine injuries is also on the decline. 

We still have many in our community who are struggling following the events of the Inquiry and with the weight of managing their health. Hestia, an independent team providing trauma-informed support to core participants of the COVID Inquiry, are still supporting many of our members. Having them available, until the end of the Inquiry, to direct our members too has helped us a lot from a safeguarding standpoint, and we’re really encouraged by the feedback from members about the support they have provided. 

Tomorrow there is a social gathering in London, with volunteers and members coming together, and we look forward to hearing about their day and seeing the family photos. Much like the zooms, being with those who share your experience and truly understand your needs is a wonderful feeling. We hope to hold more in-person events in the future and we’ll be sure to share an update on this meet-up in due course. 

We look forward to sharing updates on all these events as they happen, along with updates on our own activities and progress. If you don’t already, you can follow our public Facebook page, or follow us on X, to keep up to date with all we are doing and any relevant articles and research from the vaccine injured and bereaved communities across the world. 

Here is the link to watch Brian and Rebecca talk about all things EFT:

https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/play/sPI44JG9M6kiWOSKb8gNACC5sVsWzXbgohdd_XEEXAa3laDI5xO63d_OieRpbg2OZDrnwKQVzQQHjae9.0bzeR7tRoCvsenpe?canPlayFromShare=true&from=my_recording&continueMode=true&componentName=rec-play&originRequestUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fus06web.zoom.us%2Frec%2Fshare%2FJ-NBEj9UajqVDR2VFl8zCAIpofbsfOqEHb1ARzFkvuxYM-c3nWG62PsKl93biZ0K.IOZRp84lYJy-e291&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2OkpxCJcb8na2Arrcgt9yYONHxO7XucKI7pKzuDJ9bbH7E2yEBKu74Tfo_aem_95CCs-w0BPncL_3rDQuGUg