Maddie’s story

By the age of 21, I’d lost both of my parents. My dad when I was 5, to a heart attack and my mum when I was 21 to sepsis, through ovarian cancer. Such different forms of grief and having to navigate them both from a young age.

After growing up without my dad, my mum and brother were my world. I remember being asked as a teen what my biggest fear was, and replying, ‘losing my mum’, which only a few years later, came true. In some crazy way, the fact that my biggest fear became a reality, gave me a new kind of strength.

So much of grief can be dealing with awkwardness, whether that’s someone new asking about my family or wondering what my tattoo means. There have been countless situations in which I have been made uncomfortable in order to ease someone else’s discomfort.

I remember being told by a friend of my mum’s, that they were coping by imagining that my mum was simply on holiday. This felt almost offensive to hear, as of course, this was not at all something that could help me cope but a smile and a chuckle got me back to where I needed to be, before returning to my car and bawling my eyes out. If only it were that simple.

Grief is such a difficult road that no one wants to travel but we all do, and of course, some of us more intensely than others. Talking about the nitty gritty parts of grief is what can bring us all together. We can do hard things!!!