Alice’s Story

Alice Cutler shares her journey through deep personal loss, the long road to rebuilding and how she found strength through advocacy and community.

Just a month after my 18th birthday, I lost my mum in a car accident on the way back from my aunt’s funeral. She was my last surviving parent. I was left with serious injuries including a broken spine and my brother, who was also in the car, ended up in a coma for three days with very serious internal injuries. In a single moment, everything changed for us.

This wasn’t my first experience of loss. My dad had passed away when I was nine after a short but intense battle with cancer. I also lost my nan, grandad and several aunts in the years that followed. At one point, going to funerals felt like a regular family occasion and grief became a constant presence in my life. But losing my mum was different. It took the one person who had been my constant and shattered any sense of safety I had left. We were left without a home, without parental support and without any form of structure. 

At the time, grief wasn’t something I talked about. I pushed through because I didn’t know what else to do. We moved in with our aunt and uncle, Julie and Steve, once we were discharged from hospital.

I returned to sixth form in a spinal brace to sit my A-levels a few months later, then went on to study law at the University of Southampton. At the end of my degree, I somehow managed to secure a training contract at Clifford Chance in London, one of the best law firms in the world. That was something I never imagined would be possible for me in my darkest moments.

In 2023, I had got to a point where I had put my life back together enough and dealt with the initial grief that I felt like I needed a hobby. I was now living in Southampton with my partner Harry and our Labrador Otis, had left the London life and was working as a solicitor in Real Estate. I stepped back into the world of pageantry, something I’d loved before the accident, and in July 2024 won the title of Miss London 2024 (much to my surprise on the night!) But more importantly, I found another purpose. 

I’ve learnt from my journey with grief that it doesn’t just disappear. It lingers in the background until you stop running from it. And when I finally stopped, I realised something important. I wasn’t alone.

I launched an Instagram series called Light After Loss to encourage more open conversations about grief. It started with one very nervous live and being unsure whether anyone would tune in to hear me and my guest speak about grief. But people showed up again and again, and more and more people wanted to take part. The series has now grown to over 30 episodes with more than 40,000 views and has become a space where people could share their grief and experiences without judgement. The episodes have also become a resource for people to watch back in their own time. I also began hosting monthly grief meet-ups through Let’s Talk About Loss in Southampton and have been doing so for almost two years now!

One thing I’m deeply passionate about is bereavement leave. During one live conversation, someone mentioned to me that they had an especially awful experience with their employer not letting them have time off when their loved one passed away. On digging into it (as a solicitor would), I was shocked to learn that in the UK there’s no legal right to time off unless a parent loses a child under 18. I decided that this needed to change, so started a petition asking the UK Government to introduce paid bereavement leave.

My petition expires on 4th June and currently has almost 1,500 signatures. Although we are short of the 10,000 we need, we are making good progress and I hope we will get as close as we can. I’m also currently waiting on a direct response from the relevant Government department after writing to them directly. 

What began as a way to make sense of my own grief has become something much bigger. It’s become a way to support others who feel just as lost as I once did. Through everything, I’ve learned that grief doesn’t define you, but it shapes the path you walk. For me, that path has led to advocacy, community and purpose.

If you’re reading this and you’re grieving, please know that you’re not alone. There’s no right way to do this. There’s no timeline. But you are allowed to talk about it! And in doing so, you might just help someone else feel a little less lost too.