“Two weeks ago was my niece’s 16th birthday. She was getting ready to go out with her friends for dinner, I was helping with her makeup, and I just broke down in tears. It’s not like me, really, but I couldn’t help thinking about how much my sister would have loved it. She would have loved seeing her daughter growing up and becoming a woman.”
When Nash’s sister was diagnosed with bowel and liver cancer in January 2024, her family’s world was thrown off its axis. Nash, now 47, was a married mother-of-four with her two youngest still living at home in Chelmsford – but when she got that call, she immediately invited her sister and her three children to move in, too. They were incredibly close, and she wanted to share the load of school runs and emotional support while her sibling underwent intensive treatment, including chemotherapy.
“We were taking each day as it comes, but we did have some conversations about what her wishes were if the worst were to happen,” Nash says. “My sister was a single parent and she made it clear that she wanted her children to stay together, no matter what. It was a no-brainer for me: they would stay with us. I didn’t want them to end up being fostered, adopted or far away from their family.”
Kika Mitchell
Her sister died in May 2024 at the age of 44, and though the heartbreak was palpable, there was so much to do. Nash and her husband now found themselves alone with five children under their roof, three of whom were grieving the inconceivable loss of their mother. “I barely had a moment to think, I was just trying to hold it all together. We bought bunk beds and sofa beds; our children now had to share rooms with their cousins. We needed to get rid of our car and finance a new seven-seater. We had to settle the kids into new schools and new routines. And through it all, we were regularly attending the family courts to fight for official custody of my nieces and nephew, which was a really stressful process,” she says. It would be March 2025 by the time their Special Guardianship Order was awarded.
As a midwife of 16 years, caring for others runs through Nash’s veins, but the job she loved was stretching her thin. “I could feel myself getting overwhelmed and anxious. I was trying to be there for these children who I had come to love as unconditionally as my own; to advocate for them, make them feel safe and help them navigate their grief. But my work on top of all that was getting to be too much, mentally and emotionally,” she says. “When you’re caring for pregnant women and delivering babies, you have to be totally plugged in. I am a person who gives things my all, but suddenly I just didn’t have the capacity.”