Grace's Story: 25 Lancashire Minds

Honouring Violet: Turning grief into support for families after baby loss

After the heartbreaking loss of her daughter Violet in 2017, Grace found strength through connection, advocacy and action. What began as a search for community evolved into a powerful mission. Supporting families through baby loss, fundraising for vital causes and helping to shape maternal mental health services across Lancashire. Now working for Lancashire Mind on their Together After Loss project, she shares her journey of grief and healing. Hoping that through sharing her story she can support parents to feel alone in their loss.

*Content subject notice: Baby loss and grief

My name is Grace,

Since 2017 I have been advocating for other families who have or are going through a similar experience to me. For me and my husband we experienced what no parent should go through, in 2017 our daughter Violet passed away whilst I was pregnant at 41 weeks. This is something we, and I as a mother, never expected to go through. From this, my passion and to keep my daughter’s name and legacy alive drove me to what I do today.

It all started shortly after she was born, I searched through social media to find other families who were going through similar and to my shock I found 100’s of families reaching out to me to share their story and that they to were going through a similar experience.

From this, I decided that I needed to support others in some way. I set up an Instagram account which started to gain lots of followers from families, I then completed lots of fundraising for Sepsis Uk, Group B Strep, SANDS our local hospital and we donated cameras and books to the bereavement suites for families to use. After this I wanted to do more and help services, this led me to help create our local NHS maternal mental health service for the whole of Lancashire!

All of this helped me with my grief, knowing I was helping another family in some way big or small. It helped me to grieve and know I am not alone. Having this knowledge and being able to work alongside perinatal and maternal mental health I knew more needed to be done to help support those who are grieving.

Last year in 2024, I got the amazing opportunity to work for Lancashire Mind on their brand-new project Together After Loss, supporting those who have experienced miscarriage or baby loss. I feel very privileged to be able to help create this service for others within the community and be able to offer peer support and help others feel less alone.

If you have been affected by baby loss or miscarriage and would like support, please know that you are not alone. Whether you’re looking for someone to talk with, a space to share your story or simply to feel understood, Together After Loss can help.

Our service offers compassionate, peer-led support for anyone navigating the grief of baby loss, no matter how recent or long ago it may have been.

Together after loss