Losing Mum Changed Everything
There are moments in life that divide your story into two parts.
Before.
And after.
Losing my mum was one of those moments.
No matter how old you are, no matter how much you try to prepare yourself, nothing truly prepares you for losing someone who has been part of your life from the very beginning.
My mum wasn't just my mother.
She was a constant.
A familiar voice.
A source of comfort.
Someone I thought would always be there.
When she passed away, it felt like the ground beneath me shifted.
Her passing was sudden and completely unexpected.
One moment, I was on my way to take her a coffee. The next, my world had changed forever.
I still remember that drive.
It was only ten minutes, but it felt like forever.
The kind of drive where your heart sinks, your mind races, and you desperately hope what you're hearing isn't true.
Nothing could have prepared me for that moment.
The world kept moving, but mine felt like it had stopped.
People often talk about grief as sadness, but grief is so much more than that.
It's the phone call you can no longer make.
The advice you can no longer ask for.
The milestones you can no longer share.
It's learning how to live in a world that suddenly feels different.
My mum was more than my mother.
She was my strength.
She was the person I called when life became overwhelming.
The person who believed in me when I struggled to believe in myself.
The person whose voice could calm me down, whose advice I trusted, and whose love never wavered.
She was my safe place even if things weren’t always perfect between us
Just like everyone else we had our fair share of disagreements and on that drive to her I replayed each one
When I lost her, I didn't just lose my mum.
I lost a piece of myself.
For a long time, I struggled to make sense of it all.
I found myself replaying memories, wishing for one more conversation, one more coffee together, one more hug, one more chance to tell her how much she meant to me.
The truth is, losing Mum changed me.
It changed how I looked at life.
It changed what I valued.
It changed the way I viewed time.
I realised how quickly everything can change.
How important it is to stop waiting.
How important it is to chase the things that matter.
And how important it is to tell the people you love that you love them while you still can.
Her passing came during a period when I was already facing some of the biggest challenges of my life.
How was this at all possible I was just sitting with her the day before laughing with her
At times, the weight of it all felt unbearable.
There were days I cried.
Days I felt angry.
Days I felt completely lost.
Days when I wondered how much more one person could take.
But grief has a way of teaching you things you never expected to learn.
It taught me that strength isn't about pretending you're okay.
It's about allowing yourself to feel.
It's about carrying on while still carrying the love and memories of the people you've lost.
It's about finding a way forward, even when a piece of your heart will always be missing.
Today, I still think about Mum often.
There are moments when I wish she could see what I'm building.
I wish she could see Unbroken Athletica.
I wish she could see that despite everything, I kept going.
I wish she could see the woman I am becoming.
I like to think she would be proud.
Not because of a business.
Not because of a brand.
But because I didn't give up.
Because when life knocked me down, I found a way to stand back up.
Losing Mum changed everything.
But it also reminded me of something important.
Life is precious.
Time is precious.
And the people we love leave a mark on us that never truly disappears.
Unbroken Athletica exists because of resilience.
Because of rebuilding.
Because of the decision to keep moving forward, even when life gives you every reason to stop.
And in many ways, that lesson came from Mum.
Her strength.
Her love.
Her belief in me.
Those things will always be part of who I am.
And they will always be part of this journey.
Always.
Unstoppable | Unapologetic | Unbroken