Turning Grief into Good: The Power of Giving Back

Last month, something extraordinary happened - a full-circle moment I didn’t see coming.

It’s strange, the way life sometimes folds back on itself - how a moment from the past can open again in the present, but this time filled with light rather than devastation.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak to the counsellors from Petals (including my own counsellor, who I hadn’t seen for eleven years) at their bi-annual conference about my novel This Wasn’t Meant to Happen, sharing how writing - and the support of Petals - had helped me transform loss into language, grief into purpose. I wrote about that wonderful experience here.

After my talk, Karen Burgess, Petals’ Chief Executive, sat me down and asked if I would consider becoming an ambassador for the charity. Of course, I cried and said absolutely, yes.

It would the honour of my life to continue the journey that started with having Poppy, lead me to write a novel, to work alongside them felt like exactly what I am meant to do next. What was meant to happen, if you like.

To be honest, I’m still processing it. Petals is stitched into my story - not just because they helped me heal, but because they gave me the tools to find my voice again. They made it possible for me to write, to connect, to advocate.

And now, to represent them feels like coming home.

After the conference in September, Karen and I got together to carve out what my ambassador role might look like. It’s a role I take deeply seriously. I want to contribute as much as I can, bringing my voice, my writing, and my experience to help amplify Petals’ work and reach. It’s such a pleasure to have been welcomed so warmly into the heart of this incredible charity - to have meetings at their office with the team, to be supported in my own work during the publication of This Wasn’t Meant to Happen, to have that novel shared with their extraordinary counsellors, and to be supported in my advocacy work with the Department of Health and Social Care on their Baby Loss Certificate roll-out.

Being part of Petals now - surrounded by a team of compassionate, dedicated people who are all driven by the same purpose: to ensure that as many parents as possible have access to the right bereavement counselling, and to shine a light on baby loss in all its complexity - feels profoundly meaningful.

As part of my first work as ambassador, I’ll be supporting The Missing 20 campaign, which aims to raise vital funds for the twenty families Petals currently has to turn away each week due to lack of resources. Every “no” is a family in crisis. Together, we want to turn those “no’s” into “yes’s.”

This new chapter has highlighted how the things that once broke us can one day become the foundation of what we build for others.

Since losing Poppy, I’ve learned that purpose doesn’t arrive fully formed. It grows slowly, quietly, in the cracks where the light starts to get in.

It can look like a single act of courage - saying the words you’ve been too afraid to say; that you’re in pain. That you need help. That you don’t know how go on. Or it can feel like a decision to reach out to someone else who’s hurting, simply because you remember what it felt like to sit in that darkness. It can look like advocacy, using your experience and skills to amplify the voices of others. It can be using your hobbies and interests to raise awareness.

If you’re reading this and wondering how to find meaning in your own experiences - whatever they are - here are a few things that helped me:

1. Follow the pull, not the plan. Healing rarely follows a straight line. Listen to what feels honest and necessary, even if it’s small.

2. Create something from it. Write, draw, build, nurture, volunteer - turn your experience into something that exists outside of you. That’s where transformation begins.

3. Stay connected. Healing is relational. Let others in - not to fix you, but to walk beside you.

4. Give back when you can. Whether that’s time, words, or compassion, giving back keeps your story alive in the best way possible.

Becoming an ambassador feels like the continuation of something that began with Poppy - a promise, perhaps, that her brief life would lead to something that meant something more than love and loss, but that rippled out to have an impact on and to help others.

I’ll always be her mum. I’ll always be a baby-loss mother. And I’ll always be grateful that her presence in my life continues to guide me toward purpose - through writing, through connection, and now, through this new chapter with Petals. That’s her little legacy. And I’m so inordinately proud of her.

There’s a song from Wicked - my all-time favourite musical - that is also the title of the new movie (I am SO excited about Wicked: For Good being released this month) It has always been Poppy’s song for so many reasons. The lyrics, “Because I knew you, I have been changed for good,” capture exactly how I feel about her: that even in her short life, she changed everything. Her love continues to ripple outward - into my words, my work, and now, this new way of giving back. And in many ways, I could say the same about Petals. Because I was introduced to them; because they were there to hold me in the darkest days I have been changed for good. Their support helped me find my voice, my purpose, and now I have been give the honour to help pass that hope forward.

If you take one thing from this post, let it be this: nothing you’ve lived through is wasted.

Or, as Elphaba sings in Defying Gravity: ‘Some things I cannot change - but till I try, I’ll never know.’

Because even in the moments that break us, there’s something being built - compassion, strength, empathy, kinship, community - all things that one day, might become someone else’s lifeline.

Here’s to carrying hope, help and healing over the rainbow, together.

Proud Petals Ambassador | Author of This Wasn’t Meant to Happen.

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