In this four part series, you will hear from people like Vanessa, who tragically lost her brother. Vanessa shares about how she didn’t lose sight of the hope and courage she needed for herself and her family. She knew God was her source of hope.
I grew up all of my life, as a young kid going to rugby games. Watching all the all blacks the blues players, that kind of stuff. And I really wanted to be like that. I was probably playing on the side of the field.
I grew up in a family with four children and mum and dad. We were a blended family and always never really noticed any difference. We just all grew up together and had great relationship really.
My early years were very good, loving family. I guess in my teenage years I was very up and down. In primary school I was a little red head kid with an english accent and straight away I was the target.
Hi my name's Sheryl, my story is one of grief and loss and I hope by sharing it that it might help someone else. We were involved in helping out at our church and youth ministry and we were the youth leaders for quite some time.
So our story is a story of losing our second child Summer. And really the journey of trauma and grief following that. I was 39 weeks pregnant so I was fairly massive and really hot. She was due in Summer.
Well I was in middle management working for a multi national company, corporate life on a career path I guess. I had started back into the workforce at that time in a completely new career as a designer.
Life for me was going really well. We'd set up our own business with my husband, we had two lovely children. A 5 year old boy and a little baby girl and we were exercising and healthy and everything was going to plan.
Growing up I was abused for several years by someone who really should have been there looking after me. It was obviously a pretty difficult time, nobody knew what was happening to me.