Loss Upon Loss
Losing a loved one is hard, losing a partner is hard, saying goodbye to an old life and the place you lived for over 20 years is hard, adjusting to living in a small room in your mother’s house is hard. Little did I know that only three weeks later, my mother would suddenly die.
Strength and Shattered Safety Nets
People say I’m strong, brave, courageous. My close friend Paul Soden, who passed away in 2022, used to call me Boudicca. Back then, I used to feel strong and courageous, and maybe I still am, but sometimes life, in its wisdom, takes everything we hold dear and close to our hearts and removes them. It dismantles and breaks down everything we thought we were. It takes away all our safety nets and all our comfort zones.
This is when life enacts massive change, and at the time of that change we can’t see how things will get better or improve. In fact, it can be hard to even get out of bed because we are so full of grief and fear for our survival that we can’t imagine things improving.
Shock Upon Shock
As I wrote in The Shock of the New almost a year ago, moving to my mother’s house was a really hard adjustment. I hadn’t actually finished adjusting before the shocking event of her untimely death arrived at my door. None of us expected this to happen. I had an intuitive feeling she might not live much longer because of lung fibrosis, but I thought I had at least a year.
The same thing happened when my best friend and partner Michael died. We both felt he probably had a year, but life took him a year earlier than expected.
Free Falling
I felt like the rug had been pulled out from beneath me, but also the floor too. I was free falling through outer space, not in an exciting rollercoaster way, but in a screaming, anxiety-ridden way.
Asking for Change
I had been asking for change for a long time, freedom from feeling stuck, and I suppose life decided the best way was to remove absolutely all my comfort blankets and push me out of the nest like a baby bird.
The hardest part has been trying to figure out my place in this new world, because I have had no break from the density of grieving for three years. I was just coming out of my grief for Paul’s death when Michael was diagnosed, and then Michael died. That was followed by over a year of the most debilitating grief and pain you can humanly imagine.
Then came the shock of leaving my home, friends, and the place I had lived for 22 years. It felt cathartic at the time to let go of nearly all my belongings, but once I arrived in the North East on October 31st 2024, I felt grief for that letting go too.
Me and my mum were just getting used to each other. It wasn’t easy, she was struggling with health issues and I was realising she was much sicker than I thought and needed full-time care, which I had already decided to give her. I let go of my own ambitions for life. And then boom, she was taken to hospital with extreme leg pain, diagnosed with pneumonia, and as I left her that Saturday the 23rd, a vividly memorable snowy day, I said I would see her the next morning at 9am. She died in the early hours of 24th November.
A Medal for Grief
I joke with friends that I should have a medal for grief. It is so familiar I know it intimately, but with each loss it feels completely different. With my mother’s death I was in major shock and denial. I now realise how much I need to grieve, not just for my mother, but for the mother I never had.
When Michael died, I sank deep into grief, knowing he had gone as I held his hand and watched him leave. With my mother, it felt like she was just out for the day and coming home. I had no urge to rearrange furniture or clear the home. It was still hers, and in my confusion I could not accept she was not coming back.
Survival Mode
The added stress this time was financial. Without her, I could no longer receive carer’s allowance, so in the midst of grief I had to look for work, knowing the house would go on sale in January 2025. I faced homelessness while trying to hold it together.
After Michael passed, I had spent far too much time alone. That was one reason I moved in with my mother, for company as well as to support her. Little did I know I was meant to be alone again.
Toxic Housemates and Unexpected Lessons
After her death, I moved into a house share with a woman I barely knew online. It turned out to be a toxic environment with a narcissist who wanted me gone within a month. Those two weeks of being ghosted and tiptoeing around the house were awful. In the end, I had to drag my belongings out onto her garden by the roadside after a screaming row.
As awful as it was, I am grateful. It pushed me to walk away from a situation that could have turned very dark for me.
A Healing Home and More Change
I then moved into a beautiful home in the North East, clean, light, within walking distance of a country park that became deeply healing for me. I shared with a lovely tenant and a live-in landlady. But within a week, I lost my job at a local hyperbaric oxygen therapy company after asking safeguarding questions.
Soon after, my landlady said she could not accept me being on benefits or even self-employed. Again, I was pushed out, and again, I am grateful. These controlling landlords nudged me toward where I needed to be.
Meeting Paul
Then something unexpected happened. I met a man, not just any man, but the most amazing man I have met in a long time. This says a lot, because Michael was a beautiful soul too.
His name is Paul Tallentire, the same age as me, born in the North East. An interesting soul with a challenging past, late-diagnosed autistic, with multiple health issues, and someone who had never had a relationship until he met me. Paul is an astrologer, medium, self-love coach and also a budding writer.
We first connected on May 3rd 2025, after he added me on Facebook. Something about him stirred something in me. He suggested I attend a local spiritual group called Rainbow Oasis, and though he was not there that time, I met some wonderful people. Eventually, at an Egyptian sound bath and meditation event, our eyes locked and after the event he asked me to go for a coffee and a walk the following week.
We went for the coffee, walked, talked, held hands, hugged, and for the first time in my life, I leaned in for a kiss. Soon after, I asked if he wanted to be in a relationship. Nearly four months later, here we are.
Love as a Fresh Start
In this time we have become so close. He helped me create my new home, a fresh, blank page where I can ground, reconnect, and calm my nervous system.
Paul treats me in a way no man has before. He holds me tightly and makes me feel safe again. He loves me, and I love him. It feels like life has said, Kelly, you have had a really hard time. Here is a fresh start, founded in love and joy.
Paul helps me feel secure and he is really helping with my new life. I’ve never truly experienced passion and connection like I do with Paul and I am so grateful. Our relationship doesn’t come without challenges, but we are learning to sail through them together. In connecting with Paul I have learned I have disorganised attachment style when in relationships, initially I had believed it was just anxious attachment, but I have a more intense experience when connecting to love. I know from doing some introspective work that my core commitment in life is secure attachment and Paul is here to help me experience this too.
Healing Old Wounds
I have also started receiving spiritual counselling, to face deep-rooted childhood issues that made me hide my light. I am learning how I sometimes numb or dissociate when triggered. My hope is that this counselling will help me embrace the parts of myself that need even deeper love.
I am creating the new, in work, opportunities, connections. I am learning that freedom does not have to mean isolation, and connection does not have to mean losing myself.
Body and Spirit
Life keeps presenting challenges. My left knee was diagnosed with osteoarthritis just after I finished writing a new book, which I hope to release in November. My right knee was diagnosed after my mother died. My root chakra feels stuck in fight-or-flight, not yet trusting reality to be calmer. But I know, in time, with Paul and new friends, I will move through this too.
Closing Thoughts
Thank you for reading my journey. I will be back soon.
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Kelly Martin is a dedicated mental health writer and blogger who fearlessly explores life’s deepest questions. Faced with a decade of profound anxiety and grief following the loss of her father and her best friend Michael, Kelly embarked on a transformative journey guided by mindfulness, and she hasn’t looked back since. Through her insightful writing, engaging podcasts, and inspiring You Tube channel Kelly empowers others to unearth the hidden treasures within their pain, embracing the profound truth that they are ‘enough’ exactly as they are.
