My Bereavement Story

As it's National Grief Awareness Week I wanted to share my own experience of bereavement. This is the sad story of how in 2012, my youngest daughter Thea died suddenly of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome- SIDS, and how this terrible experience has led me to where I am now.

Thea

As the snow lay crisp outside, I put my 15 week old daughter Thea to bed. She was the happiest little girl, and although that evening she had been a bit grumpy as she'd recently had a cold, it was nothing to be concerned about. About an hour later, I went to check on her, but there was a coldness to the room, a feeling that made me gasp. I turned the light on and to my horror, I discovered that she had died. At that moment, my whole world changed. She was quickly taken away in an ambulance and we followed behind her in a police car. When I got to the hospital they wrapped me up in a blanket. I remember the staff, the other patients, everyone staring at me with sad faces. I felt numb, like I was watching it all from the outside, like a movie. In the days that followed, I was burdened with flashbacks and I could hear her cry. But in the weeks, months, and then years that passed, with the support of family, friends, and professionals I started to heal and began to move forward in my new life without her. I went back to university to study youth work and then mental health and wellbeing. I even eventually started to volunteer for the bereavement charity that had helped us following her death.

Losing Thea was the single most painful thing I have ever had to bear. It still is. Every milestone she should have reached breaks my heart, and all the grief comes rushing back. I will never get over losing my beautiful girl, her death has left me with a physical and mental scar, as I developed Functional Neurological Disorder- FND as a direct response to the trauma. But I have built my life around the loss and I can now say that life is good. I now make it my mission in life to build her legacy. All of this, my work, my life, is done in her name.....Thea Ann Douglas.

Paula Douglas (Director at KyAnn Wellbeing)