Lily's Story : Threads of Healing

At some level, we all know we'll lose our parents someday.

​

But when it happened — my father first, then my mother eighteen months later — the knowing dissolved.

She'd always seemed… immortal.

​

Her voice in every room. Her steadiness. Her routines. The shape of my world.

With both of them gone, I felt flung into an alien landscape: probate, funerals, care homes, emptied drawers.

​

And then, the silence.

​

It wasn't just that they'd died.

​

It was that everything that tethered me seemed to vanish overnight — my direction, my confidence, even the way I held myself.

​

Therapy became a quiet anchor.

​

Week by week, I spoke about them — about our kitchen, our holidays, the way Mum squeezed my hand during difficult news. We didn't rush to fix anything. Instead, we began to soften the memories that hurt the most.

​

I learned the difference between alarmed grief and regulated grief.

​

I stopped seeing sorrow as something to fight.

​

Grief, I came to realise, was the mirror of love — and I could hold it gently.

​

The past didn't change.

​

But I began to understand it differently.

​

Not by rewriting memories, but by gradually discovering that I could feel safe again — and still whole.

As our work continued, I began to recognise a growing sense of steadiness within myself. The memories were still there, but they no longer overwhelmed me in quite the same way. I could breathe a little more freely, feel my shoulders soften, and imagine taking small steps forward.

And somewhere inside, a new phrase emerged:

​

“Maybe I can give it a go.”

​

That's how it started.

​

One evening, as the sky turned amber and the birds fell quiet, I felt… okay. Not perfect. But connected.

To the past. To myself. To something bigger.

​

I still return to that moment when the grief stirs. A quiet reminder that I can carry my love for them, alongside the life that is still mine to live.