We are privileged to provide bereavement support to children and young people coping with loss due to cancer, giving them a space where they can share and feel safe in their experience.

During our recent Staff Conference at the Slieve Donard Hotel, Newcastle, three wonderful members of our team shared their own impactful stories with colleagues, stories of connection, love and hope. Our Communications Executive, Nora, usually captures the stories of the families we support, but on this occasion is sharing her own. A story speaking to childhood grief at its heart.

The sun was barely up, a soft golden glow over the driveway, I was four years old, serious-faced and determined, clutching a Barney backpack filled with Barbies, a completely mismatched crew with debatable haircuts.

Off down to Sligo for the week. No adventure was complete without the barbies. They weren’t just toys, they were my storytellers, my co-pilots in the world I had built when the real one felt too quiet. The car boot was open, swimming gear and snacks already packed. Carefully, I nestled the backpack into the passenger seat back pocket, so I could keep an eye on them on the journey.

Both parents with travel mugs in hand, they knew this ritual of getting the Barbies safely settled mattered. I climbed into the back seat, glancing at the barbies. A quiet sense of pride that they were coming with us. They were part of our story.

As the car pulled away and we drove through winding roads and sang along to the radio, the feeling of being surrounded by love and imagination hung in the air, joy shimmered in the sunlight, even the wind seemed to smile.

Grief hadn’t arrived yet, not fully. It was waiting in the wings, silent and patient. Sometimes, the most formative moments in our lives are the ones we don’t understand until much later. That fun-loving four-year-old, the wind in her hair as she ran along the beach, the thrill of building sandcastles with her dad. She felt safe. Loved. Whole.

A week after this trip, my dad died.

This loss would become the foundation of how I connect with others.

I lost the version of myself that would have grown beside him, the person I might have become with his presence, with his guidance.

I learned very early that grief makes people uncomfortable.

Grief is something we often associate with sadness. But grief is also love. Love that doesn’t have a place to land in the way it used to.

Any early loss is a space shaped by longing, by questions, by what ifs. But with time, you find yourself speaking their name again, not in grief, but in love. When we let others into that space, we offer them the chance to know someone who shaped us before their time. We share memories, stories, and in those moments, the person we lost becomes real again, not just to us, but to the people who love us now.

They’re someone others get to meet through your kindness, your resilience, your laughter. That love simply finds new ways to be known.

As I grew up, I realised grief doesn’t disappear, it just changes shape. I learned to be the cheerful one, the strong one, the one who never made things awkward.

Grief can be described as a solitary journey, but in truth, it is deeply shaped by the connections we allow ourselves to make. It’s something we carry in our own way, at our own pace. The loss of a parent is not the loss of a person, but a part of our foundation. A voice that shaped us, a presence that anchored us. There’s a quiet courage in that. And there’s a beautiful reciprocity too. When we open up, we create a space where vulnerability is met with empathy, where silence is filled with understanding, and where sadness is softened.

In the way I speak, in the values I hold, in the empathy I try to bring to every interaction.

The day my dad died, my world shifted. The familiar rhythm of life interrupted by silence, by questions too big for my understanding, and by a longing that words can’t quite reach. It’s a moment that fractured my sense of safety, identity, and belonging.

Friendship became the structure that held me upright while I learned how to live with loss. It was never grand or dramatic, just quiet, steady and human. Friendship is a living form of connection.

I was an adult the first time someone asked me about my dad. For most of my life, nobody ever brought it up. Maybe they didn’t know what to say, maybe they thought silence was better than saying the wrong thing. Because of this, I grew up learning to keep that part of my life quiet. Tidy. Untouched.

I was sitting with a friend, one of those long, unguarded conversations. She asked, “What was your dad like?” It was such a simple question. But it stopped me cold. No one had ever asked me that before. I had a choice; stay on the surface, or step into that space.

She didn’t rush in to change the subject. She just listened. And that changed something in me.

In that moment, I realised that connection doesn’t come from having the right words, it comes from presence. From curiosity. From being willing to ask the hard questions. Connection begins when we choose courage over caution.

Connection doesn’t erase grief. But it transforms it. It turns isolation into community. It turns pain into meaning. When you’ve known deep loss, you learn to love with depth.

My friendships are a space of repair. Having experienced loss so early on in life, there were parts of me that felt unfinished, like chapters that had started but never got to end. Trust became something fragile, something I wasn’t even aware I was guarding. To sit across from friends, no speeches, no solutions, just presence. For years, I had built walls around my grief, convinced that vulnerability was weakness, that loss made me too complicated.

Connection doesn’t just happen, connection isn’t luck, it’s built, choice by choice, moment by moment. Connection is what happens when people show up, consistently, imperfectly. The connections we nurture in times of joy become the safety nets that catch us. The friendships we invest in during our brightest seasons scaffold us when the lights dim. Connection is not about never feeling lost, it’s about knowing that when you do, someone will find you.

Losing my dad taught me that connection isn’t guaranteed, it’s something we choose to nurture. It made me value people fiercely, love deeply, and hold space for others in ways I might not have, had I not known loss so early.

Dad’s absence became my teacher.

The power of connection lies in its ability to transform pain into shared humanity, allowing others into the sacred space of our loss.

Speak the name of someone you loved with those who came in the chapters after loss. In time, you’ll find that you haven’t just carried your loved one forward, you’ve introduced them to the world, through every person who’s come to love you for who you are.

Giving space to those we’ve lost ensures they are woven into our everyday lives. To carry them as ‘pebbles from a beach’, soft, shaped by time, and tucked in our pockets.

You don’t need the perfect words. All you need is the courage to show up, to ask, to remember, to hold that space. By celebrating someone you never met, you encourage us to keep loving them out loud.

Childhood grief doesn’t disappear in adulthood. You learn to carry it with grace, to develop empathy, emotional depth, and a quiet determination. Pain turns to perspective.

I used to think talking about my dad would make people uncomfortable. Now I know it makes me whole. Grief isn’t weakness. It’s proof that love existed.

The Barbies were my first friends. My first confidants. My first shot at making sense of the world. Through them, I learned how to create stories, how to care for others, how to build connection, even in silence.

As I’ve grown older, my friendships have taken on new forms. But the essence remains. I am someone who nurtures connection, who listens deeply. Because sometimes, the things we carry in childhood aren’t just toys. They’re tools. They’re teachers. They’re the beginning of how we learn to love.

We can’t stop time, illness or loss. But we can build connections strong enough to outlast them.

My dad taught me the first lesson in connection, even if he didn’t know it. My friends taught me the second, friendship is a scaffold. It steadies us when the waves rise and builds the quiet kind of strength that keeps us moving forward.

Cancer took my dad far too early. Cancer, the very thing that shattered our family, years later became the source of my purpose and my greatest sense of privilege.

It’s a strange truth, but one I hold close: cancer both broke me and built me.

My dad’s story didn’t end with his illness, it continues through the work I do, through my beautiful friends who know all about a Sligo man with a love for musical theatre, and through the impact we create together, every day.

Even the hardest parts of our stories can lead us to exactly where we’re meant to be.

Love your people out loud. Make it heard, make it seen, make it felt.

Because even on the darkest of days, connection can be the most powerful force of all.

For more information this Children’s Grief Awareness Week, find out more about our bereavement support here!