Lisa’s Story

Since the tragedy of losing my mother in my late 20's, my mental health has been fractured and fragile. Naturally, the perinatal and now the perimenopausal period have stirred the darkness, rattled me to my core.

I was 16 and she was 37 when a horrific car accident took her from us. It took every part of her except her body.

It remained, without a scratch.

The damage was all on the inside, this is the reality of traumatic brain injury.

I was 16 and she was 37 when we turned off her life support and watched as she fought for breath and life.

There are no words to allow a window into the reality of traumatic brain injury, there is no movie that even scratches the surface, nobody would watch that.

Our family broke not long after her car shattered, and we became carers in the blink of an eye.

It was only a few short years into the new life that none of us ever imagined when she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. It was cruel. It was unfathomable.

The breast cancer was so advanced that it had spread to many organs, however, something allowed her to stretch painfully over the following six years.

Needless to say, I survived, she didn’t.

In 2000, 11 years after the car accident, her tiny, frail, ravaged body left this earth.

Having all of this resurface during the peri periods is something that I know I am not alone in, it is something I believe we need to talk more about, trauma being stirred up.

It has been brutal!

It has also been beautiful at times though, to see how loved I am and how far I have come.

It has shown me the best of people, and sadly also the worst.

I am now mum to a teen, I have a career in the charity sector of which I am immensely proud, a result of all that I endured during those 11 years after her accident.

It was nothing compared to what she endured though.

I chose to rise, for her.

I chose to mother, for her.

I chose to heal, for her.

I chose to share, for her.

Resilience, compassion, vulnerability, kindness, fierce optimism, relentless hope... all of these things have grown within me to allow my survival.

Post traumatic growth has sat alongside my PTSD all this time, I like to believe that she is a part of that.

I might not have survived let alone thrived otherwise.

It is a privilege to be able to share my story now, as I know how many times it finds its way to someone who needs to hear that they are not alone.

Living without our beloved mums is not for the fainthearted.

It is a loss that is only really understood by those who have lived it.

I hope that the more we share, and the more we speak up about mother loss, the more we can collectively wrap our arms around each other.