16 tcf.org.uk a mother, and should have been able to protect my child. I absolutely blamed myself for years. I don’t really remember too much of those first weeks and months. Christmas 2004 came and went in a haze. I was just existing for many months and years. In the first four years I kept myself as busy as possible…throwing myself into doing two degree courses at once – an Open University degree and a PGCE, following by 18 months teaching in a primary school. For a while I had a burning need to be around nine year old children; I suppose I felt that if I could be with other nine year olds it would keep me close to Rosie – literally I did anything to keep myself busy. I did sudoku puzzles constantly and only read books written by bereaved parents or about child loss. I was an avid reader of fiction before Rosie died, and it’s a sadness that even now I read less. The only time I really read a whole novel through quickly now is on holiday. It can take me as much as four to six 6 months to read a book now. Around the four year mark, I felt I could….stop. And that’s what I did. I stopped all the busyness and stayed at home with my thoughts – it was only at that point that I felt I could. A mum at the school gates had told me about the peer support charity, The Compassionate Friends (TCF) just a few weeks after Rosie died. I joined the wonderful SW London support group – it made such a difference to be able to talk with other bereaved parents and know that my feelings were normal in such an abnormal situation. It didn’t take the pain of Rosie’s loss away, but as I sat and listened to others, I knew I wasn’t alone. In the early months and first couple of years, I could see others in the group – further along – who were somehow surviving. It gave me hope that I too could survive this and that the grief would not always be this raw. It was around the four to four and a half year mark that I decided to offer to volunteer for TCF, joining the Helpline volunteer team, answering calls usually from more newly bereaved parents. I think this really helped me as I could see by being there for others that I was no longer in that very raw grief (although could nosedive back into it at times) and that my experience could help me be alongside others as they shared their child and their pain with me. I am not really sure how we have got through this last 20 years…it’s been a bumpy ride at times. I think for me it was about the four or five year mark – when I felt that I could start to volunteer for TCF - that I started to feel a little lighter at times. The pain was still there - but I started to think more about Rosie’s life and what she had brought me and our family, than her death. Rosie was my first-born child, and I started to feel that she had come into my life for a purpose - she taught me how to be a mum. Until then I was a fairly selfish young woman mainly thinking of myself. When Rosie came into my life, here was somebody for whom I would literally lay down my life. I started to feel, and still do now, that she made me a better mum to Natalie and gave me a true understanding of the important things in life. It sounds like a cliché when I write it, but I truly had a kind of ‘epiphany’ where I really felt that Rosie was in my heart and thus the physical yearning to be with her, hold her physically close, was not so acute. I started to see hope that I might be able to have a meaningful life again, carrying Rosie with me. And now we are here on 21 May 2025, at Rosie’s 30th birthday. We gathered together with a few close friends who came to mark her birthday with us. It is a sad day of course, and we would do anything to have her back in our lives and COMPASSION | FEATURE - 20 YEARS AND A 30TH BIRTHDAY I started to see hope that I might be able to have a meaningful life again, carrying Rosie with me.
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