So, for those that haven’t seen my Instagram post, Amber Jeffery’s podcast ‘The Grief Gang’ was what inspired me to start this blog. It was the beginning of lock-down I was working from home and on the hunt for something new to listen to when i came across such a powerful podcast. Listening to how open she was about her story and her message to others really touched me and made me think, grief is not spoken about enough so if I can be another person to start talking, then the less of an awkward subject it will become.
So, Amber invites people onto her podcast and asks them 3 main questions about their loss, so I thought I would share my answers here:
Tell me about your life before your grief?
My life before losing my mum. I was a 15-year-old in my final few weeks of year 10 at school was always a happy person surrounded by lots of friends, very social able and outgoing. Growing up I was always very close with my mum, told her everything, all my friends knew and loved her. At the age of 12 my mum and dad split up and me and my sister always lived with my mum, saw both but lived with mum. 3 months if that prior to mum’s death we had just moved into our new house, mum and her boyfriend spent week decorating, I was super happy because they let me have the lime green bedroom wall I always wanted (don’t ask haha). Yeah so life was really pretty good and normal for a 15-year-old.
What’s your story?
Head to ‘My Story’ tab to read this I won’t bore anyone again by repeating myself 🙂
How has my grief changed me as a person today?
Well I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and I no that may sound weird like ‘mum was meant to die’ I don’t mean it like but this grief has made me who I am today. I was a very outspoken bitchy teenager if I’m honest but losing my mum really made me realise how short life is. Like you do not know what’s around the corner and kind of mellowed me. It also made me mature quickly (well I like to think so my family may disagree haha) It made me strong. For the first few years I like to say I dealt with it surprisingly well but looking back now I bottled a hell of a lot up because I just simply didn’t no what to do with them emotions. I had the mentality of ‘I have to be strong for my sister and auntie and cousins, I didn’t want to make it any harder for them’ at the end of the day their life changed just as much as mine that day.
Fast forward a few years and I’m off to Uni, I moved to Bristol where I didn’t know anyone, this excited me because no one knew me and the girl whose mum died. It was in my second year I feel like I really truly began to grieve, I’m not sure weather this was being away from family, stress of uni work or what but it was around November December time and I would just find myself crying all the time, I ended up talking to the boy I was seeing (if you wonna call it that) at the time, who was also not in a great place his suffered panic attacks. We both kind of grew closer by talking and crying. Anyway, it reached the point where It was affecting my Uni work so I reached out to the uni counsellor, wrote many emails and had phone calls because I was to scared to go in person, this went on for about 2 months and then I just stopped I thought I was better I thought that’s its I’ve grieved now time to move on and was pretty happy again. That concludes the help I ever got with dealing with grief.
But it carried on changing me as I got older, I was very concentrated on getting a degree, going traveling doing things that made me happy, proud and that mum would be proud off.
Anxiety lets talk about that, so 4 years ago my sister blessed us with my beautiful niece Lily. I think this is where my anxiety began, whenever I would feed lily, I was scared she was going to choke and die, if she was asleep, I would constantly check on her to see if she was still breathing. Was all very weird but then it started happening more, like if I was driving on the motor way, I was constantly worried I would crash my car and die. If my sister didn’t answer her phone, I would assume something bad had happened to her. Like honestly, I can’t really explain it but whenever something happened or someone got ill, I feared for the worst and I can only guess this is from losing my mum, I was constantly anxious I would lose someone else in my family and it started to get a lot, I didn’t want this to take over my life, I was normally a very chilled person. Anyway, over the last year and half this has calmed down a lot however I do think my grief will always give me slight anxiety.
Overall, I think it has taught me a lot and the things I have learnt from it I feel have made me a more appreciative person.
If your reading this and haven’t listened to ‘The Grief Gang’ Podcast by Amber Jeffery please take a listen, if not just aimed at people who have lost but friends and family that surround them and Amber all I can say is thank you, if it wasn’t for hearing your story, I wouldn’t have shared mine.
Lots of Love
The Girl with Grief x
The Girl with Grief 