To ask the hardest thing you have ever been through

@oneweecraw wishing you a successful birth and much love with your baby boy x

@CrowsInMyGarden
About 2 years ago.
Following a catalogue (see my newest post) of bereavements and nearly losing my mum he fell apart. He was too anxious to go to school, cut himself off from all his friends and took to leaving the house at all hours of the night to walk in peace.
It was a terrifying time for us.
He's in a much better place now but still has to be handled with kid gloves. He has ADHD and doesn’t deal with his emotions very well. He gets low every November (his friend took his own life) and we have to keep a close eye on him then.
I’m glad to hear your son’s doing better 😊

My dad had died at 54 and then years later my mum was killed in a car accident at 69. Her new partner was driving and at fault. He also killed another woman.

I've a few. My dad having two heart attacks at 50 and 61 and almost dieing with the second. Going through a divorce. But I think the worst was my then 6 year old son having a brain tumour 3 months after I had remarried. Thankfully he's an adult now and doing well. But I'm a complete hypochondriac ever since.

We had a shocking few years.
Dec 19 MIL admitted to hospital with abdominal pain, diagnosed with cancer, died 4 days later.
March 20 DF diagnosed with cancer.
Dec 20 nearly lost DM to sepsis (she also has leukaemia.)
Feb 21 (4 years tomorrow) DF passed away
Nov 21 Oldest sons best friend took his own life
Nov 22 (a year to the day) youngest son’s friend took his own life.
Following this youngest son’s mental health plummeted to the point of suicide threats and desperate visits to CAMHS and A&E begging for help. I had to take him out of high school due to his extreme anxiety. He never went back.
The worst part of all of it was the fear of losing my son. All loss is devastating but I think the loss of a child must be the worst thing that can happen to anyone.

My daughter being stillborn. It completely broke me.

@Newname71 Oh no. How long ago was this and how is your son now? Mine didn't actually try to take his life but I can remember him saying "I wish I had never been born" and wanting to not be here. My son does seem to be ok now.

Parenting my 17 yo DD through her mental illness for the past five years. First sectioned at 13, multiple suicide attempts(including vehicles, trains, bridges and OD’s), huge psychotic episodes where she is extremely violent towards everybody, multiple times where she refuses food and drink for days and has to have an NG forced under restraint. I think the worst time was when I lost my mum very suddenly to cancer, and four days later DD took a huge overdose. I thought I was going to lose both of them within a week.
She has been sectioned 8 times in 4 years, with her longest stay in hospital over 12 months. The furthest stay was over 300 miles from home. Life is extremely hard for her, and I’ve forgotten what my life looked like before this happened to her. She is currently still in a psychiatric ward, and hasn’t attended school since she left primary.

Watching the closest loved ones slowly dying and not being able to do anything. Every other trauma has faded into insignificance. Xx

My mum's battle with mental health issues. She's attempted suicide many times and I'm mostly the one that finds her. When I was younger I had my family around but over the years they all moved away and so now I deal with it mostly on my own. I feel quite lonely. When she's well she's great but when ill it's v hard. No-one else sees her ill side as much as I do as you don't in a short conversation etc. It's so sad to see someone become not themselves so often. Selfishly it.takes a lot of my life with it as she relies on me so much. But I couldn't not help etc.

Losing my beautiful brother to suicide. It’s something that I will never get over and although I’ve had pain and trauma in my life before it all pales in comparison to the absolute heartbreak I feel now. I function now and live my life but I will never be the same person I was before.

I'm sat here sobbing uncontrollably for you. I'm sorry this happened to you and the pain you feel every day. You are one amazing Mum to get up every day for your other child xx

This is mine too!
Receiving goodbye message while I was at work and being woken by the police at 3:30 am to be told our son was at the train station.
It was the hardest year ever, I hardly slept.

@mumto42005 your reply has bought tears to my eyes ❤️ most days i dont even know how ive gotten this far without him. thank you so much for replying x

these stories are heartbreaking prostate cancer and watching my dad lose his mind and dementia and watching my mum go through it for two years and at the end of the two years be unable to speak walk talk or eat was truly horrific
Though nothing for me is worst than my 4 year old daughter being seriously ill after a vaccination with encephalitis and being told she wouldn't recover fortunately she did but you are never the same person and those six months were the worst.
Time is a healer to a point this was24 years ago though
The things people go through is truly heartbreaking

Look

I just can't even imagine the pain... hearing of him being run over, cradling him as he became an angel and then having to get through every day without him. I don't know you but I'm sobbing for you... from one Mum to another 💔💔

Sorry your going through this .
Your feelings will ease in time , I lost my daughter just before her 5th birthday she had just gone through a kidney transplant and it failed due to a blood clot .
It happened 25 years ago but it has shaped my life my thoughts my feelings you at life through a different lens.

There are a couple of times that spring to mind.
One was where my partner left me, my 5 year old was diagnosed with autism and my grandmother that raised me died all within the space of weeks. I still don't know how I got through that time. It was a hundred hard emotions all condensed into a small time.

The other was going through a pregnancy where I thought I would die. Every moment of it was an ordeal and I have a lot of lasting health effects from it. Hyperemesis gravidarum with emetophobia. Every joint hurt, diabetes, carpal tunnel, heart issues, bleeding, honestly every symptom I pretty much had. I nearly lost the child in delivery too which was traumatic. I never want to go through anything like that again.

My amazing 12 year old boy was hit by a drug driver in June 2023 who drove through a red light whilst my son riding his bike across the road. We lived 2 minutes away so when his friends knocked the door shouting he had been hit by a car. I went running down the road. He passed away in the middle of the road whilst I was holding his hand. I was 35 weeks pregnant with my second son. Life hasn't been the same for me since and I just have no idea where I go from here

@creamsnugjumper - my daughter has been through this. Made me see healthcare with a very different perspective. The dismissive, patronising attitudes she had to deal with were breathtaking.

Hearing my 8 month old grandson being declared dead. The echos of mine and my daughters screams. SIDS took him from us.

I lost both of them that night, nearly 2 years later my daughter is a shadow of her former self and it scares me that one day she will decided life without him is no longer worth living.

We were preparing my 11 year old daughter for more freedom and introducing her to travelling by bus to her new school. She was going to a friends house after school. It was before mobile phones, so she parted company from her friends and came home to tell me her plans. She then started the short journey to her friends house alone. She was attacked and sexually assaulted by a stranger who had followed her from school. I still feel guilty about it to this day. But my daughter recovered and has a successful, independent life.

I had a fairly turbulent childhood, brought up by a single mum who was chronically depressed and looking back on things now I can see how neglected we were. Even basic things like teaching us personal hygiene did not happen so I went through years of bullying due to being dirty and smelly, having untreated head lice on top of being too poor to have nice clothes or keep up with trends.
At the age of 5, I met my father for the first time who tried to brainwash me against my mum. Over a period of four years, he groomed me until he eventually progressed to sexual assault which I testified against him in court for. He got off scot-free due to “poor mental health” which left me feeling pretty angry with the world. For a long time afterwards, my brothers hated me as they didn’t really understand why contact was stopped and thought I had “taken their dad away”. For a long time I thought that was the worst thing I’d ever go through. In fact, that is the thought process that stopped me from continuing down a path of self destruction in my teen years (drink, drugs and Self-harm). At a particularly low point, I levelled with myself that everyone has a big life event to get though and if just had mine early on. This, at the time, helped me to view the world more positively and with more hope than before.
Then, my first child was still-born at 34 weeks and it completely broke me. I quickly realised that there is no rhyme or reason to life and no end of challenges to get through. Losing my daughter is still the hardest thing I’ve gone through. Although life is difficult, and things happen which are outside of our control, I try my best to be positive. It doesn’t help to dwell on negative experiences, so I try and focus on all the good things in life instead.

So sorry to hear that, it must have been awful xx