This is for my Fred, for Mum, and for anyone currently living through a chapter they cannot imagine surviving and getting through!!
I had every intention of writing this on Sunday. Then I was going to write it on Monday. And here we are on Tuesday evening. 😂 But actually, perhaps that is quite fitting, because I did not forget and I did not miss the moment. I was simply too busy living it.
Sunday 23rd August 2026 was my miracle baby’s sixteenth birthday. It was also fifteen years since I lost my mum. Same date. Same time. To the exact minute.
Every year, that date brings with it the strangest mixture of emotions. It is joyful, heartbreaking, comforting and incredibly bittersweet. Somehow, even after fifteen years, it still manages to stop me in my tracks. This year, though, something happened that made it feel even more poignant.
On Sunday morning, before my newly sixteen-year-old had even opened his eyes, I sneaked out of the house and drove to Canterbury. Kiri and I were setting up The Bridal Boutique of Jules for a wedding fair at Kent County Cricket Ground, and my mission was to get there, get everything set up and race back before the birthday boy woke up.
We finished setting up, I got back into my car and started driving home. Somewhere on that road out of Canterbury, it suddenly hit me.
I had done this drive before.
Exactly fifteen years earlier. On the exact same date. Racing home for the exact same little boy’s birthday.
Except the last time I made that journey, I had just watched my mum take her final breath.
Suddenly fifteen years seemed to collapse into a moment.
If the last sixteen years have taught me anything, it is this:
You have absolutely no idea what might still be waiting for you.
23rd August 2010
At 4:28am on 23rd August 2010, after more than 24 pretty horrific hours, Fred finally made his appearance in the world.
I had been told I would never conceive naturally. I had experienced miscarriages throughout my twenties and had spent much of my pregnancy never quite daring to believe that I would actually reach the end of it with a baby in my arms. We did not know whether we were having a boy or a girl, and then suddenly there he was.
A boy. My boy. My Fredster. My miracle baby. ❤️
Except almost at the exact moment his life began, mine very nearly ended.
I suffered a catastrophic haemorrhage. I lost almost my entire blood volume, spent six and a half hours in theatre and eventually woke up in intensive care. I was incredibly lucky to be alive.
Becoming a mum was therefore not quite the beautiful newborn bubble I had imagined. I could not get myself out of bed. I could not feed my own baby or change his nappy. Other people had to do the things I had waited years to be able to do. I spent just under two weeks in hospital before I was finally allowed home, and then, less than a week later, I haemorrhaged again.
Blue lights. Back into hospital. Another week away from my tiny baby because I was simply too weak to care for him.
Eventually, slowly, I began putting myself back together. We were living in Scotland at the time and winter arrived with us practically boobs deep in snow. Fred also had a dairy intolerance that we did not know about at the time, which made those early months more difficult because we did not understand why certain things were upsetting him or making him unwell. Like most new parents, we were simply trying to figure it all out as we went along.
And just as I was beginning to feel as though perhaps I could finally breathe, Mum was diagnosed with skin cancer.
The year that changed me
There are periods of your life where one thing happens and you think, surely that is enough now? And then life says, nope, not quite finished with you yet!!!
The following year was, without question, the most character-building year of my life. And I use the words character building because the alternatives probably contain considerably more swearing.
I was still recovering from everything my body had been through while learning how to be a mum to this tiny little person who depended on me for absolutely everything. At the same time, Mum was becoming increasingly poorly and so Fred and I located back to Kent to look after her, for what we thought would be a few weeks. It timed out that we spent the final six months of her life helping to care for her.
Looking back, I genuinely do not know how I did it. I think I just did. There was no grand plan and no extraordinary strength that I was somehow aware of having. There were simply people I loved who needed me, so I kept going.
Just months before losing Mum, I also had to say goodbye to my beloved horse that my mum surprised me with when I was nine years old!! She had saved a £1 a week since the day I was born to buy her as an u unbroken yearling!! We grew up together!!! I had grown up without a dad, brothers or sisters, and my grandad (Fred) was the only real male role model in my childhood. Mum was not simply my mum. She was my family, my person and my home.
We were incredibly close. We could also drive each other absolutely bloody mad because we were so similar. But it was always us. Julie and Jeska.. 💞And suddenly I knew I was going to lose her, all while learning how to be somebody else’s mum myself.
23rd August 2011
Then came Fred’s first birthday.
Mum was at Pilgrims Hospice in Canterbury, and at 4:28am on 23rd August 2011, my mum took her final breath.
Exactly one year after Fred had taken his first.
To the minute.
4:28am. 23rd August. One year apart.
Even after fifteen years, I cannot quite comprehend that. The moment that had given me one of the people I loved most in the world became, exactly one year later, the moment I lost the other.
I remember being devastated by what that meant. How was I supposed to do this every year? How could I celebrate my child’s birthday while knowing that it was also the anniversary of my mum’s death? Would every birthday forever be tinged with sadness?
And then one of my dearest friends, who has been my saving grace through so many of the difficult bits of my life, said something that completely changed the way I saw it.
“Maybe she did it on purpose.”
Mum was very spiritual. She loved nature and was fascinated by dreams and their meanings, spirits, mediums, signs and the possibility that there might be far more going on around us than we understand.
My friend said, “Maybe she knew that was the one day you could never be completely sad. She knew you would always have something wonderful to celebrate.”
The birthday of the baby I thought I would never have.
Maybe Mum knew.
I know everyone believes different things. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was timing. Maybe there is an explanation for all of it.
But I choose to believe my version.
Because it brings me comfort. And sometimes I think we are allowed to hold on to the things that bring us comfort.
7:00am
There is another part of that morning that I never want to forget.
After Mum died there were things that needed doing. Paperwork, conversations and final goodbyes. Eventually, I walked out through the doors of Pilgrims Hospice and looked at my watch.
And that mattered because baby Fred woke at exactly 7am every single morning without fail.
It felt almost like somebody had flicked a switch. I had spent the night being a daughter. At 7am, it was time to be Mum.
My own mum had just died. My baby was waking up on his first birthday. And I needed to go and see him and pick him up from my ‘saving grace friend’.
It had been absolutely chucking it down with rain, yet when I reached the car, sitting on the corner of my windscreen was a tiny, completely bone-dry white feather. I have always associated white feathers with angels.
I got into the car, exhausted, heartbroken and probably still completely numb. I turned on the radio.
Holiday by Madonna started playing.
Mine and Mum’s song.
Of all the songs. At that exact moment.
I was so completely flabbergasted that I actually went around the roundabout outside the hospice twice. 😂
I can still remember that drive home. The rain, the feather, the song, the disbelief and the knowledge that I had just said goodbye to my mum and was now driving to collect my baby and celebrate his very first birthday.
It was heartbreaking, but strangely, amongst all of it, it was magical too.
It felt like Mum.
A little nudge saying, “Go on. Off you go. You have a birthday to celebrate.”
And I have carried that moment with me ever since.
And then life changed again
After Mum died, life changed again.
I discovered my husband of nearly 11 years (back in Scotland) had been having an affair back in Scotland!! With my friend and his assistant!!! How cliche eh!!! 🤦🏼♀️🙄My marriage ended and the future I thought I was going to have disappeared with it. That was when I relocated permanently back to Kent with Fred.
So within an extraordinarily short space of time, I had nearly lost my own life, become a mum, tried to recover, cared for and lost my mum, lost my beloved horse, discovered my marriage was not what I thought it was and found myself starting again with a one-year-old, in the cottage where is grown up with mum. Only this time I was in mums room as the mum and Fred as in my room as the child!! (Head fuuuuuuuck!!)
When I write it all down now, even I look at it and think…
Wow- that was aloooooottt!!! 🤣
But at the time there was no opportunity to stand back and process the enormity of it. There was a baby to look after, a life to rebuild, things that needed sorting and another day that kept arriving every morning whether I felt ready for it or not.
So I kept going.
Looking back now, I think that period fundamentally rewired me. I have probably spent far too much of the fifteen years since in some version of fight or flight. Keep moving. Keep fixing. Keep working. Keep going. Turning negatives in to positives and using my pain as my drive!!!
And somewhere amongst all of that came the attitude that has probably defined a fairly large portion of my adult life:
Fuck it!!
Not in a careless way. Quite the opposite.
In a we get one go at this, so we had better bloody use it kind of way.
Fifteen years later
Fast forward exactly fifteen years.
23rd August 2026. Fred’s sixteenth birthday.
And somehow, without planning any of it, I found myself back in Canterbury.
Before Fred woke up, I sneaked out of the house, down to the high street boutique and over to Kent County Cricket Ground to set up, with Kiri, for a wedding fair.
We finished setting up and I got back into the car, desperate to get home before my sixteen-year-old woke up so I could get into birthday mode.
And then it hit me.
I was doing the drive again.
Canterbury to home. On 23rd August. Racing back for Fred’s birthday.
Fifteen years earlier I had driven it after leaving the hospice where my mum had just died. This time I was driving it after setting up a wedding fair for a successful business carrying her name.
And once again, I was trying to get home before Fred woke up.
I genuinely could not have written that circle if I had tried.
Before heading home, I stopped at what we call Nanny’s church, in the little village where I grew up with Mum. Just a little moment. Me and her. Then back to the birthday boy.
I found the whole thing incredibly comforting- weirdly.. Just a little reminder and nudge to how far I have come!! We have come as mum and son.
A little while ago somebody said something to me that I have thought about a lot since.
She said, “It is amazing what you have done.”
My immediate response was, “But it just happened.”
She looked at me and said:
“No. It did not just happen.”
I genuinely did not know what to say because I still do not really understand it.
I do not know how the girl who was lying in intensive care sixteen years ago became me. I do not know how the woman who lost her mum, her marriage, her horse and the life she thought she was going to have somehow built another one.
I do not know how I started a business and grew it. I do not quite believe that I now have two boutiques. I do not quite believe what we have achieved.
And I certainly do not quite believe that my tiny miracle baby is sixteen, heading off to King’s Canterbury to study his A levels on a rugby scholarship and following a rugby pathway he has worked incredibly hard for.
I am living it, and sometimes I still do not believe it.
I have terrible imposter syndrome. Half the time I feel as though I am winging absolutely everything. 😂
But perhaps when you are the person living a life, you do not see yourself building it. You are just getting through each day!!
You make one decision and then another. You take a chance. Something goes wrong. You change direction. You find one tiny positive amongst an enormous pile of negatives. You get knocked down. You get back up. You start again. You keep putting one foot in front of the other.
And somewhere along the way…
You build an entire life.
For anyone feeling like they are stuck in the impossible- remember it is only temporary!!
Perhaps that is the reason I finally wanted to write this story down.
Obviously this is about Fred. It is about Mum. It is about 23rd August and 4:28am.
But maybe it is also for somebody who happens to read this while they are right in the middle of their own impossible bit. The bit where everything has gone wrong. The bit where the future you thought you were going to have has disappeared. The bit where you are exhausted from being strong. The bit where you cannot see beyond next week, never mind the next sixteen years.
If that is you, there is something I wish I could tell the version of me from 2011:
You have absolutely no idea what is still waiting for you.
There are people you have not met yet, places you have not seen, things you have not built, love you have not experienced, friendships you have not made, adventures you have not had, songs you have not danced to, seas you have not swum in, sunsets you have not watched and versions of yourself you have not even met yet.
There are moments ahead of you that will make you laugh until you cannot breathe and days that will make you look around and think, how the bloody hell is this my life?
Not everything will magically become easy. Mine certainly has not. There will be other hard chapters. There will be things you cannot control and there will be losses.
But there can also be an extraordinary amount of life after the bit you thought would break you.
You do not need to know exactly how you are going to get there.
Sometimes you simply need to keep going long enough to find out.
I think nearly dying and losing Mum at only 59 changed my relationship with time forever.
I know how quickly everything can change.
Perhaps that is why I cram too much into my days. Why I work hard and play hard. Why I book the trip, get in the sea, take the risk, chase the sunset and say yes to ridiculous adventures. Why I want to see everything. Why I make things. Why I start things before I am entirely sure how I am going to finish them. Why I probably exhaust myself trying to fit several lifetimes into one. 😂
Because time is precious.
And none of us know how much of it we have.
Whenever my time comes, I want to look back and know that I absolutely rinsed every last drop out of this life. I want to know that I loved enormously, told people I loved them, laughed, tried, failed sometimes, got back up, took chances, created things, made memories and saw as much of this beautiful world as I possibly could.
I do not want to spend my whole life waiting for the perfect time to live it. And most importantly, I want to know that I was happy.
Use the nice glasses. Wear the dress. Book the trip. Get in the sea. Take the photograph. Tell them you love them. Take the chance. Do the thing that scares you a little. Make the memory.
There will never be a perfect time.
And finally, to Fred…
If you ever read this years from now, I hope you know what you gave me simply by arriving.
You were wanted beyond words. You were fought for before you even existed. And you were loved from the second I knew you were there.
We have been quite the little team, you and me.
We have grown up together in many ways. We have battled our way through some things. We have travelled, laughed, argued and annoyed the living daylights out of each other. 😂 We have had adventures I will remember for the rest of my life.
Watching you become the young man you are today has been one of the greatest privileges of mine.
I am so incredibly proud of what you achieve.
But please know this:
I am infinitely more proud of who you are than anything you will ever achieve.
Rugby, scholarships, schools, exams, careers, trophies and successes are wonderful, but they are not you.
Be kind. Be brave. Be curious. Love enormously. Find your people. See the world. Take the opportunities. Make mistakes. Change your mind. Start again when you need to. Never be frightened of taking a different road simply because everybody else is travelling the other one.
And please, please…
Live and remember what I have drummed into you.. Manners do not cost a penny and ALWAYS treat others as you wish to be treated yourself.
Build a life that feels like yours.
Your nanny would have absolutely adored watching you grow up. It breaks my heart that you never got the chance to really know her. Fifteen years without her feels impossible. She has missed so much.
And yet, because of all those strange little moments over the years, I am not entirely convinced she has missed it at all.
Maybe she has been there. Maybe she has not. Nobody really knows.
But I like to think she has. I like to imagine she saw that sixteen-year-old boy on his birthday and somewhere, somehow, she was saying:
“Look at him.”
Because she would be so unbelievably proud of you.
And I hope one day, when you are much older, you read this and understand why your mum was always slightly obsessed with making memories. Why she dragged you on adventures. Why she wanted to see everything and take photos of Everything!! Why she sometimes worked too much, planned too much, dreamed too big and tried to fit far too much into every year. Why she kept getting back up. Why she built something carrying Nanny’s name.
And why 23rd August will forever be the strangest, most bittersweet and most precious day of my year.
It gave me you.
It took my Mum.
And somehow, every year since, it has reminded me of the same thing.
Life can be heartbreaking. Life can be completely bloody bonkers. Life can change in a single minute.
And life can also be more beautiful than you ever imagined it becoming when you were sitting in the middle of your darkest chapter.
So…
23rd August. 4:28am.
The minute you arrived.
The minute Nanny left.
The minute that changed everything.
Twice.
Happy Sweet Sixteen, Fredster. ❤️
My miracle baby. My greatest adventure. My absolute pain in the arse on occasions. 😂 And one of the very best things that ever happened to me.
And for anyone currently living through a chapter that you can not imagine surviving.. You can and you will.. Take baby steps of positivity each day and one day you will look back and it will all feel like a dream!!!
