To ask the hardest thing you have ever been through

I’m so sorry. Have you looked at adopting a child? How is it that you have no family at all. Sorry I sound insensitive asking thag

My son's funeral and the years since. The pain and grief is awful.

Some things on here bring me to tears. This is one of them. Possibly because I have a sister that this really struck me.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Watching my little sister die. She was 34. She had BPD and had been struggling for so long. She tried to take her own life but ended up in ICU on life support. She was halfway across the world when it happened. My mum and I flew to be with her but she was in a coma and we never got to say goodbye. When we arrived the doctors told us she had zero chance of survival. She was in multiple organ failure with significant brain damage. After 3 days they said we really needed to turn off her machines and let her go because she was suffering. It’s not like you see in the movies. They kept her on the ventilator but turned off the adrenaline that was keeping her blood pressure up and her heart beating. When they turned it off she had multiple violent seizures. She was bleeding internally and on the brain and had gauze everywhere to stop it coming out of her. She was gone within minutes. I have PTSD. I will never forget the way my parents screamed. How I screamed. My knees collapsed and the kindest nurse I’ve ever met held me up and sobbed with me. It was two years ago and I don’t know how to ever be ok again. She was not just my sister but my best friend. The only person who could get me through this is gone.

I share both your pain. DD, 15, was diagnosed 2 years ago - I felt like I was somehow in the middle of a movie and not our own lives - the lack of control, the feeling of guilt that I should have done something earlier, the fear of watching her diminish daily and thinking she would never recover.

But she has. She regained a healthy amount of weight and whilst still quite cautious about food, she is in great health. Eats and exercises appropriately, has done well at school, has a very sweet boyfriend and at the weekend had a roomful of school friends over, laughing and whispering till late into the night.

I wasn't sure we would ever get there - but hang on, don't lose hope

If this is a journalist I’m never using MN again.

Multiple miscarriages, TFMR and being told my baby had no heart beat. But the worst part is having a mum who doesn’t love, hasnt support me through any it. Saying things like focus on the child you have while actively miscarrying and grieving. I don’t think I will ever get over how cruel she is, when all I’ve wanted is my mum to come hug me.

💗 I’m sorry.

Finding my beautiful 8 year old little girl dead one morning after she passed suddenly in the night.

I've got 3. Being left with a 6 month old with no resources or money after I had supported him. We weren't his responsibility apparently.

My DF dying. The bottom fell out of my world.

This last summer were I wasn't sure I'd still have a job and my decades old friend non support. It felt the same as being left decades earlier but this time I was much older and less resilient.

4 miscarriages in 18 months - followed by a total loss of my fertility (due to repeat ectopics) and IVF treatment. Seeing the still screen after there had been a heartbeat days before is a feeling I’ll never forget. I have my lovely little boy now but often still cry in the shower when I think about it all.

So many things.
Recently, I was my dad's carer for three years. He died at home. I did everything but there is no way to do enough.

Mine sounds insignificant amongst all these but it was when I lost my horse of 15 years.
I bought part of him with my first pay packet and paid the rest in installments. He was an escape from my awful, verbally abusive mother.
After 10 years, he and I moved up North and again he was my saviour as I forged a new life.
Having the vet out on Friday and then coming back Monday as there has been no change emotionally exhausted me.
My mother came up a week or so later and I had a beautiful bunch of flowers on my sill. She asked who they were off and when I said my stable friends, she said "it was only a horse" 😭
It will be 21 years this year and I still shed a tear for him.
My mother on the other hand has been widowed and is currently a hot potato between my two sisters as neither want to care for her in her latter years. Thankfully distance means I am out of the equation.

Losing one of my best friends in a really tragic accident when we were teenagers.

My sister delivering her baby stillborn. Seeing the girl I love most in the world have to deal with something so horrific and the emotional toll it has taken on her over the last few years. Wishing I could fix it for her but there being nothing I could do. But - she safely delivered her second baby yesterday 🥹

Losing my baby son in 1994.
My second son born with disabilities in 1996 and nearly losing him two weeks later.
Losing my husband in 2001.
Losing my partner in 2018...
💔 💔 💔 💔

there are so many heartbreaking stories here - Im sending my love to all of you. Life can be so, so cruel and unfair.

I think, for me, the very worst was being with my sister after she got diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. It was already in her spine, and seeing that X-ray with all the tumors rocked me to the core. Then, she ended up in the hospital the day after her first chemo treatment. She kept going downhill, and then I would enter the floor where she was, and she would be screaming for me, screaming how bad it hurt, ripping off her nightie over and over. Then having to make hospice arrangements, all the while dealing with her neighbors, that did some of the most horrible/hateful stuff to me and my sister's memory. A real friend of my sister's sent me back to my sister's house to sleep, as they were staying the night. She died early the next morning, with me not there. I felt bad, but yet, after being there when my Grandmother, Father and Mother died and by myself when my Mom died, far from home, I was also relieved.
The hell and cruelty some of her neighbors pulled and having to settle an estate that was hours away from me, took its toll. I trust people even less than before and avoid people as much as I can.
I'm crying just typing this out.

Losing my Mum to cancer. She was my world and seeing her suffer was unbearable.

Being stuck in a ME country because the abusive asshole ex wouldn't sign the form for me to leave with my daughter.

Even when walking through the airport when he eventually did, I was worried I'd get arrested if he changed his mind.

One of the reasons I'll never visit any of those shithole countries ever again.

these sounds really insignificant but when my cats died, it was like losing part of me. They had been through so much with me (my marriage breakdown, new house, new job, new man etc). They were the constant in my life, the two things I could rely on. The pain of losing them was like nothing I've experienced. I'll never get over one of them 'screaming' as she had a heart attack in front of me, her sister died last year and I still see her scared face as I took her to the vet.

Also my cat going missing. It's so surreal, you don't know whether to mourn, whether to look for a new cat. If you stop looking you feel guilty, if you look you feel helpless.

My marriage breakdown whilst hard, I look back and think it was the best decision I made.

Having gone through emotional neglect as a child and never feeling loved finally finding love with someone who, after a period of time, spiked my drink and raped me. Felt so alone in Newcastle for a couple of years with no one to really turn to. Didn't want to be here anymore. But slowly things got better I moved away and eventually met my husband and had our children. It was touch and go for a while and I still deal with feelings or unworthiness from time to time.

I’m sure that was an accident. I’ve accidentally hit the wrong one before 🥲