Hey, I don’t really know what to write on here but I thought I’d give it a go. I’m 21 and autistic. I lost my dad just after turning 19 (right before Christmas too). I lost my mum not long after just before I turned 21 ( literally a week or so before my birthday). I miss them more than words can explain. I drown my pain a lot of the time in my addictions, but it doesn’t help. I need to start changing the way I’ve been going about my grief. I want to live and make my parents proud. I wanna be the man they knew I could be. But it’s hard. I’m one of three boys, my big brothers haven’t been the best of support since their passing, leaving me to figure everything out on my own. I’ve been struggling a lot. To the point of thoughts not one soul should think. But I’m proud I’m still here. I’m proud that after everything I’ve went through I still do know who I am. I may have lost him on the way but he’s definitely coming back. I can see it! I’ve been lost in my addiction for far too long (4/5yrs). I feel like I’ve got no escape sometimes. But then I come across things such as this community, and it gives me hope. Hope that I can get better. That I’m not alone. And people care. People really do care. I’ve felt so alone for so long but starting not to. Slowly but it’s starting. So yeah that’s me n that’s my grief. I’ll maybe try posting on here whenever I’m felling low from now on. Only time will tell.
Dear McLovin.
Well done for posting your message here. There are a lot of people who will read it and support you, plus there are other threads on here where you can post.
What a traumatic two years you have had. The passing away of your beloved mam and dad. It is so hard to cope and heartbreaking. You will feel lost and sometimes a bit angry at the unfairness of it all.
I know you say you have had difficulty with addiction, but I bet your mum and dad would be overjoyed to hear that you are coming through it. Well done!
Nothing, whatever our ages, can replace our beloved parents. However, just like your parents, our beautiful parents when they were alive always wanted the best for us and even if they didn’t say it, they would always be so proud.
Moving forward is an overwhelming experience. However, your mum and dad would want you to keep moving forward in the best way you can. Keep going. Keep doing what you are doing. Grieve as long as you want, months and years for your mam and dad. They are part of you. Apart from your lives together and all the memories you have, you have your parents DNA within you.
God bless and I send you my kindest thoughts and best wishes. Stephen. 
Hi Christopher, I am glad to hear you are trying to take control of your life and make your parents proud. Being an old man as I am I would suggest two things. The first is to find some form of exercise that you like or at least you are happy doing each day. It makes you take care of yourself and gives you a better view of your self worth. Secondly I would try and find someone to love. Love makes life much more worthwhile, not easier but the rewards of being loved is amazing a little bit of heaven on earth.
Wishing you all the best
Tom
I can’t thank yous enough for hearing your words. I’m starting to see a light at the end of my tunnel that I thought I’d never seen recently. I’ve struggled some much with thoughts that I would wish no one would think. I’ve found small comfort over my time of grief through making music to release my thoughts. And I’ve had my partner stick by my side through everything. We’ve been together since I was 13. Our anniversary is 10 days before my birthday. We started going out back in November 9th of 2018. And I can’t thank her enough for how much she’s helped me keep going. I felt lost so many times but she’s always there to help guide me. It was all tough on her too though, she carries it with her a lot of the time. She feels a lot of pressure trying to support me. But we are truly the best. I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful woman to come to life! She knows me! She understands me! We’re went through hell together and yet we’re still standing. Most people my age have no clue what’s it’s like to be this deep in love. But I do! I I’m grateful for every waking day! Also I like to cycle to clear my head and I’m gonna try getting into swimming as I enjoyed it when I was younger. I’m hoping with every new thing I start, that it just gives me more reasons to stay.
Thank you Tom, it means a lot.
Thank you Stephen, thank you for seeing me.
Dear McLovin
You are very welcome.
God bless and sending you all my kindest regards and best wishes Stephen
Hi!
I can relate to a lot of what you said.
my ma was my best friend and we were so close. We went through a lot growing up and my mum was often separated from my dad. I had 4 younger siblings and I was the eldest, so I spent most of my childhood helping my mum and being her sidekick. People used to joke that I was like her shadow. This adding to the fact that I’ve always been incredibly shy and introverted meant I would rather spend time with my mum than my peerS. She was my best friend, my confidant and most importantly ‘my person’ - which is one of the reasons I think I’m struggling so much now. I feel like I don’t have a person anymore. You know? Like that one person you could tell anything to and they wouldn’t judge you. That one person who knows you so well that before you even speak, they know what you’re going to say or if something is wrong. That one person who you can spend an unlimited amount of hiurs with in any mood or at any time and be completely and utterly at ease. That one person who makes you feel less alone in this huge world.
I remember the first time I went out with friends after losing my ma. It started getting late and it was that time where everyone start getting texts or calls from family to check on them and find out when they’re coming home. I forgot for a moment and looked at my phone, knowing how paranoid my ma could be (she was usually the first of the ‘mums’ to start checking in) and my phone was totally blank. I opened up my message box and saw her last message checking in and I pretended to myself that she just sent it to me. I left early and just sat in my car crying for the rest of the evening.
My ma died relatively young - 52. She was diagnosed with cancer and died only 5 months later. It all happened so fast that sometimes it feels like a haze, like none of it even happened. I had to keep it together while she was sick. She didn’t want to be in hospital, so they provided palliative treatment and I cared for her at home. I have 4 younger siblings one with Down Syndrome and 3 school aged kids. After my mum passed away, I became their main guardians. It’s hard becoming a ‘parent’ at 25 but even harder when you’re having to prioritise their grief over your own. My parents were separated and my dad was never capable of being a full time carer and I made a promise to my ma that I’d always make sure the younger ones were cared for properly. To make sure they never need or want anything and that I’d always be that person my mum was for me - a source of non-judgemental and unconditional love and support.
At first my dad offered some support, like doing the odd school run or doctors appointment. I even started to get closer to my dad, but only months after losing my mum he had a massive stroke.
Somewhere along the line I feel like I’ve lost myself, my identity and any desire to do anything really. I developed some really awful phases of Anxiety, which I can’t manage and just end up having to hide from the world. I’ve only been capable of keeping to work because of how desperately I need money to care for my family and the fact that reasonable adjustments suggested by my doctor meant that work allowed me to do so from home permanently.
but I’m not sure it’s helped. I stopped talking to my closest friends, I never leave my house, I feel so lonely and I can cry at any moment but just hold myself back. I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes and I have panic attacks that result in me feeling like I’m having a heart attack whenever I leave the house. I’ve lost interest in all my hobbies, desires and aspirations. I literally cannot even watch a movie without my brain losing focus. I can’t concentrate on anything from work to hobbies and I just feel like my life has frozen in time. I sleep as much as I can to pass away the time and I’ve even stopped eating (I’ve lost over 4 stone in the period of weeks). I don’t know how to break free from this prison I feel like I’m in. I just miss and need my ma so badly. I feel so angry at the universe for taking her away from us so young and with so much life left, just out of the blue like that. She was totally fine one minute and dying the next - how is that fair? And then there’s the fact that I have to shield my little siblings from and I feel so guilty - how dare I fall apart when they’re going through the same thing at such a younger age. At least I had my ma just long enough for me to graduate uni, they’re never going to have her there for any of that stuff.
before she died I had a plan. I had so many aspirations. I travelled the workd and I had friends I loved and interests and hobbies. I had a life. But now I have nothing, just stress of making sure my family are okay. I have no ‘person’ and I feel like I can’t really talk to anyone because in my head it’s screaming YOU ARE JUST DEPRESSING PEOPLE NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THIS - which is not something I ever felt when I would talk to my mum. She always cared, interested and supportive. But now; I’m totally alone in the world. G
Hello Fairy1, I am so truly sorry for the loss of your precious mom , and yes she was still very young. So sorry for what you are going through, I wish I was there with you to give you a big hug . The load you are carrying is a lot, and its probably too much for you. . To care for your siblings and to take care of yourself. I lost my husband 3 months ago. He was 57, and its been really hard living without my person. I just can’t imagine having to take care of someone else when im completely broken inside 
…I really truly feel for you ..I hope you can find resources that can help you ..i know im not being much help, but just know we’re here for you please continue to reach out and talk about whatever it is you’re feeling, we’re here to listen and hopefully offer some advice. Please take care of yourself, you and your siblings are in my prayers, God bless you 
Hi Mary,
Im so sorry to hear you lost ‘your person’. I know the feeling and that’s honestly the worst thing to experience. Especially at his young age too. Have you learnt of anything that’s helped with the grieving process? Do you sometimes dream of him and wake up thinking it was real but then slowly coming back to reality?
I know in comparison to a human, it sounds ridiculous. But we also lost our cat and dog in the month after our mums death. Horrible timing right? I know it’s not the same with a pet but I think the process was just such an awful reminder of everything we’d been through and it just set all of us back so much. Particularly my little sisters, who loved the cat and dog so thoroughly (we’d had them all their lives).
Thank you for your kind message. It was the first one I received on here and had me bawling - which I often do these days with even the slightest hint of kindness and care. It’s kind of weird, and I find it increasingly annoying and embarrassed. The other week my manager wanted a one to one with me because she’d noticed my declining health and increased anxiety. When she went on a lil speech about how she and the team are there for me and listing the resources from work, her kindness got to me. Before that point I’d managed to keep everything bottled and put on a pleasant not bothered I’m totally fine mask. But suddenly it just all burst and I began crying and couldn’t stop it no matter what. Since then, she put me on special leave for a few weeks to work on things whilst I’m not stressing about work. Which is what I’m trying to do on here actually - I figured it can’t hurt to try. I’ve been through copious amounts of different methods of support like medication to CBT and grief therapy. At the time, the grief therapy didn’t work or help and my counsellor suggested that sometimes things like therapy and counselling or CBT need to wait a bit until after you’ve had time to grieve naturally. But in not sure about that anymore because if I have to wait until I’m ‘finished’ grieving, then I’ll be waiting forever. Because I don’t thinks I’ll ever finish grieving for my ma.
I also feel like I’m grieving my identity. Im mixed race, but my mum was Irish born and bred. I always felt closer to my Irish side as she raised us predominantly. I spent some of my childhood there, my mum raised us with so many Irish rituals, phrases and customs (despite the fact that we live in England) and nothing felt more familiar than her Irish accent saying goodbye every night. Now, losing my ma also feels like I’ve lost a part of my identity. The tether to my identity that suddenly feels so distant. I know I should make more effort to stay in contact with family, like my aunt from my mums side. But the truth with that is she was very close to us and she stood by me at every stage of my mums illness. She was visiting and had just left the day my mum died. My sister messaged her when she heard the commotion downstairs when I realised my mum had stopped breathing and rushed back. She made it there just a moment before she stopped completely and I collapsed just as I made it the loo and began vomitting she held my hair back and rubbed my back. She was a backbone when I couldn’t keep mine straight, but as my depression and agoraphobia got worse so did my energy to reply to even my closest of friends and family. And it’s crazy but my aunt is the spitting image of my mum, they both are so unique in their Irish accents and unique phrases. From a side profile, it’s hard to distinguish between them. They’re both the same height, same features, sound the same and even share most of their life stories. So it hurts being with her especially if I see her without expecting it - for a moment I think it’s my mum. So I’ve distanced myself but found myself missing her nonetheless, because it has merely served to compound my loneliness and loss of identity and connection to my background tethered by my ma.
There’s so many feelings and emotions that is hard to explain. I also acknowledge that I’ve been self destructive, so I almost feel guilty complaining about some of the challenges I’ve faced. I’ve become a master at concealing stuff, for the benefit of my younger siblings. I also feel that my last remaining parent (my dad) I have a very complicated relationship with. There’s times when he is a good dad (at least when measured by his own benchmark), but I compare him to my only other reference point - my mum. Which I feel guilty for, because how can anyone ever live up to the wistfulness of a beloved dead parent? You’d think he’s bound to always lose, which he does. But even so when I try to be logical and reasonable I realise that he genuinely isn’t meeting the expectations of even a marginally caring parent. Sometimes I feel bitter, because I’ve given up so much and drained the energy to my very bones to keep up the charade of being totally unphased and strong like a blooming superhero for my little siblings - essentially the same thing my mum did for me growing up, particularly pertaining to my ma’s cover ups for my dad’s shortcomings (for example, he never gave us bday gifts but as a child my mum would always buy us expensive gifts and wrap them and sign them as if it was our dad and then my dad would take credit for it. My ma did this because she knew that we’d be heartbroken if we thought our dad had forgotten, so she’d rather give him credit for the money she spent and effort of buying the stuff than rightfully take credit herself. She did that for us and our childish desires.). Ive now found myself being the same enactor of protection for my younger siblings, filling the gaps my dad has left and continued to leave.
He makes it very clear that he comes first and foremost and anything I need from him will cost me. He’s never been there for me growing up, but now I really need him to fill the gap because it’s hard being so young and suddenly dealing with a whole bunch of kids. I expected him to at least try, but at first he didn’t and even though he began in a small capacity before his stroke it was all very much gaslighting and toxic.
Despite the fact that he’s not been the best dad, he can be extremely toxic (using my mums absence to now take pot shots when she can’t defend herself in a bid to rewrite versions of events that unfortunately for him I remember very clearly first hand which he does not like). Despite that dealing with him always feels like some form of a transaction, often with me paying the bigger bill either emotionally or socially. Despite the fact that I know he doesn’t care and her certainly doesn’t seem to want to be a parent, I hate the fact that he is my dad and I don’t have the heart to just cut that off. My mum was never able to either I suppose, because even though she deserved to be free of this level of toxicity and didn’t deserve to have to have learnt acrobats to hide his shortcomings from us - she continued to do so all our lives and made sure she gave us double the dose of love and support to make up the gap.
So he went and had a stroke and now is dealing with severe lack of mobility, speech restrictions and round the clock support. The irony that he never lifted a finger to help raise us and even in recent months when we’ve needed him so badly, never fulfilled the role as ‘dad’. Regardless, the irony being that now that he needs us we are well and truly his children. And me being the idiot I am cannot just leave him to deal, so I also became his full time carer as he went through rehab. I did everything for him from cleaning his bed to getting him to the shower. From cooking and feeding him to cutting his hair and shaving him. I was ran off my feet and tired to the bone.
Alas, now that he’s recovered to be functioning again he’s off and has essentially abandoned any idea of support - emotionally, physically or economically. I paid 11k to protect his house whilst he was recovering from the stroke, leaving me with no more savings. If I even slightly mention that, I get a reconstructed version of the story and a shady insinuation that he’ll sort it out in the future. On the contrary, I needed to buy my sister some school supplies for a project but realised I only had £5 cash change from some shopping my dad asked me to pick up. I used that fiver and realised when I got home that I didn’t have the change for my dad, so I told him what happened. The argument and threats I received from him at that point were too numerous and awful to repeat - I felt gutted because whilst my mum would never ever in a million years even take a penny from me, she’d literally give me her last penny if I even slightly insinuated money troubles.
Anyways, I vent on - but the reason I mention this is I can’t build the backbone to stop being the get out of jail card my dad seems to keep in his back pocket or get the right support to look after my siblings.
It’s so tiring but I need to get better and I need to get over this anxiety and depression and the development of an eating disorder (I go like 2/3 days without eating anuthing and then if I do force myself I just eat sick and can’t keep it down). Because I’m scared that if I don’t, then I’m going to end up not able to even look after myself forget being the person my mum was for my siblings.
Hello fairy, how long has it been since your mom passed?? The first days and weeks are the hardest, .is your aunt helping you with your siblings?? You can’t do it all yourself, you are grieving, you probably aren’t thinking straight…its a shame that your father hasn’t been a true father to you, shame on him…he needs to step up and help his children. And im glad you were able to get some time off from work, you need it. What has helped me a lot is being able to express my feelings here on this site, cause people here understand, no judgment, just caring people. And i also have a journal, i write letters to my husband, I just tell him about my day, how much I miss him, and what ever pops into my head. .. you seem like an amazing person to take on so much, your mom would be very proud of you. Please take care of yourself, try to eat, I know the food probably tastes bland. .but you need nourishment. I sound like a mom huh, I do have 2 children older than you. Keep in touch and may God bless you
Good morning. I am sorry to hear about the passing away of your beloved ma. Please accept my condolences.
I truly feel for you and your situation. Your messages are raw with grief. You are so young at 25 to be having to deal with so much. It must be overwhelming you.
You are doing exactly what your beloved ma knew what you would do by caring for your siblings. It is such a honourable and loving thing to do.
You will be completely lost and missing your ma. I can totally understand this.
Your ma, forgive me to presume, would want you to look after your health too. I know you said you have a few issues, but have you seen a doctor about it? It might help. I don’t like to think of you trying to deal with it yourself.
I know you are off work currently I think as you said. I am far from knowing a lot about bringing up younger siblings, but could you ask a GP or another organisation if there is anything they can do to support you? I know there isnt a magic wand, but see if you can find an organisation who if they cannot help, can signpost you to another organisation.
I am sending you kindest thoughts and best wishes. God bless. I know you might not think or believe this, put you are doing well. Look how you are helping your siblings, but please help yourself too. You are very important. Stephen
Hello fairy, just checking in on you, hope you are doing ok, I know none of us truly are, but checking in on you. Take care and God bless you
The way you described the passing of your dear mother is so similar to mine. It’s not fair! It’s really really not! But we’re doing them proud! At least I hope we are!