Leigh Cunningham

In March 1979, Leigh Cunningham's 17-year-old brother, Paul, was killed in a motorbike accident. Afterward, her family imploded, and Leigh's other brother, John, driven by the pain of his loss and guilt, embarked on a course of self-destruction. He succeeded a decade later at a point in his life when he had finally found peace and happiness. Leigh has written the book, The Glass Table, to help others who lose a sibling. Leigh is a lawyer by profession, but the majority of her career has been as a senior executive for various public companies in Australia. For five years while living in Melbourne, she was the CEO for the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia, holding a concurrent position as the Secretary-General of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration. After leaving Melbourne for Sydney, she was the Executive Director for the Australian Institute of Project Management. For a short time after she arrived in Singapore in 2004, she was Director, Operations & Finance, Asia, for a business unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Her earlier years were with a law firm in her hometown of Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. Married for 26 years, she lives in Singapore with her husband, Steve.

Articles:

Children’s book deals with sibling loss

My first book, The Glass Table, for children 8-12 years, has just launched today on Amazon.com. In The Glass Table, fourteen-year-old Jack Irwin-Hunter hikes to Lake Como after running away from home. Since his younger brother was killed in a tragic accident, Jack has suffered alone while his parents mourned their loss. He believes his parents no longer care about him—his mother is always crying and clutching a photo of Colby, and his father wanders their garden aimlessly. As a child, when a sibling dies, there is no way to understand your parent’s grieving, but as an adult, one can […]

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A Survivor’s Story: Aftermath of a Brother’s Death

Two a.m., Wednesday, March 17, 1979: a deathly knock on our front door disturbed the sleeping, and divided lives into two parts. Before Paul and after Paul. I was sixteen. Paul was two months past his seventeenth birthday. His driver’s license was two months old, as was his motorbike. My mother had bought it for him for his birthday, with justified reluctance. But he was persistent, and who could resist his charms. Two policemen delivered the news. My mother responded by rocking back and forth frenetically like an autistic child. My younger brother and I watched on, in horror and disbelief, feeling heavy […]

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