A humbling compassion that will melt your heart
WE WANT you to nominate women for our Inspirational Women of the Year. The awards, in association with L.K. Bennett, will raise funds for the mental health charity YoungMinds. It is one of eight UK charities that Heads Together, a campaign co-ordinated by the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, has brought together. Today, TESSA CUNNINGHAM tells the story of one nominee . . .
StrUGGLInG for breath, the little girl had only one question on her mind. As her mum leaned in close to catch her words, the nine-yearold’s eyes were wide with fear and curiosity. ‘Mummy, when I die, will I see you in Heaven?’ she asked softly.
For any mother, the thought of her child dying is so devastating, the desperation to protect them so overwhelming, that answering such a question calmly would seem impossible.
But this mother had psychotherapist Julia Samuel sitting beside her. As a grief counsellor and founder of Child Bereavement UK, Julia, 57, has made it her life’s work to help families at the very worst moment anyone could have to endure — moments such as this.
‘Our every instinct is to protect our children,’ says Julia, who has four grown- up children. ‘ So when a child asks about death, we want to reassure them.
‘If we don’t tell children the truth, they will make up answers which are likely to be much more terrifying than the reality.
‘Of course, this poor mum was desperate to tell her daughter that everything was OK and that she wasn’t going to die.’
BUtinstead, in Julia’s calming presence, she was able to admit the truth. As Julia listened, mother and daughter created a vision of Heaven where the little girl would be reunited with her beloved granny and her pet hamster.
‘the little girl knew she was dying of cancer,’ says Julia. ‘Far from making things worse, talking about it honestly was immensely soothing. When she came to die a few weeks later, she was less scared.’
In a world where most of us shy away from discussing death — let alone the death of a child — it takes a very remarkable woman to devote her life to supporting families as they grieve.
For 23 years, Julia was the maternity and paediatric counsellor at St Mary’s Hospital, London, supporting families when a baby died. She also trained doctors, midwives and other medical professionals in how to break devastating news.
Convinced children’s voices were going unheard, in 1994, she helped launch and establish Child Bereavement UK as Founder Patron with founder Jenni thomas OBE, a former nurse. the pair had met on a training day and realised the overwhelming need to support families when a child dies or is bereaved.
‘ We are there at the most difficult time in people’s lives,’ Julia says.
With 90 staff and more than 250 volunteers, Child Bereavement UK has branches all round the country, offering counselling for adults and children.
the charity has also trained more than 80,000 medics, police officers and other professionals in how to understand the needs of distressed families.
‘the way that parents are told their child is dead or dying lives with them for ever, and getting that right is vital,’ says Julia.
Prince William is a patron — a role born not only from his own experience of being bereaved as a child, but because Julia and his late mother, Princess Diana, were friends.
After meeting at a dinner party in 1987, the pair became so close that Diana would collect Julia’s children from school.
And the friendship has crossed generations, with Julia being made godmother to William’s own son, Prince George.
‘ William is a wonderful, empathetic patron and is so like his mother — warm and very direct,’ says Julia.
‘ We had an event recently where he came and met other bereaved families. A woman whose husband had died was there with her child, and she said that after getting over her initial shock of meeting William, it was just like sitting down with anyone at Child Bereavement UK.
PrInCESSDiana was a great support to her friend Julia when Child Bereavement UK was being founded.
‘She came to our launch. She’d helped me with my speech the day before, sent me flowers and even picked out my outfit — a long, navy blue jacket and skirt, which I still have,’ Julia recalls.
‘All these years later, I feel extremely grateful because her support helped give us a huge publicity push. Just three years later, her beloved sons were bereaved — just like the children she had enabled us to help.’
Julia lives in Somerset with her businessman husband, Michael, 64, and her work is inspired by tragedies in her own family.
A scion of the fabulously wealthy Guinness family and the youngest of five children, Julia’s childhood was haunted by a series of devastating deaths. ‘By
the time they were in their early 20s, both my parents had suffered terrible losses,’ explains Julia.
‘My father had lost both his father and brother to heart attacks. My mother had lost not only both her parents but her brother and sister.
‘My mother’s brother, Tony, was killed fighting at Arnhem during World War II and her sister, Aline, died of an asthma attack. Anniversaries were never marked. I don’t even know how old they were when they died.
‘The house was full of black-andwhite photos of these shadowy dead people who were never discussed. They were absent, but terribly present.
‘Like most of their generation, my parents firmly believed they had to forget and move on.’
When Julia finally prompted her mother to talk about her brother, her pain was every bit as raw as if he had died the day before. Yet he had been gone for 50 years.
Convinced there had to be a better way of coping with death, after having her own children — Natasha, 36, Emily, 34, Sophie, 31, and Benjamin, 28 — Julia gave up her job in publishing to train and became a bereavement counsellor. Staggering up the stairs of a North London tower block to visit her first client — a woman whose daughter had died just before Christmas — Julia was beset by self-doubt. But rapidly, she knew she had found her life’s cause.
‘What had happened was terrible, and this poor woman was so confused and angry, I felt completely helpless,’ recalls Julia.
‘She poured me a cup of sweet tea and I listened while she raged. And, over the weeks, I saw the intensity gradually change. ‘I knew she would never stop missing or loving her daughter, but she began to find a way of living with the loss.
‘And I realised that it was enough to just listen. I wasn’t trying to fix anything —– I was just bearing witness to her pain. And the transformative effect of that was quite extraordinary.’
Julia took all she had learned from that experience to her job as a bereavement counsellor at St Mary’s Hospital.
She had campaigned for the establishment of a counsellor at the hospital where she had given birth to her four children and where, before that, there had been no one whose job it was to offer comfort to parents who had lost a baby during childbirth. As well as comforting parents at the hospital, Julia ran training sessions for clinicians.
‘I realised that the way people are looked after at the time of a death has a big impact on their capacity to grieve,’ she says.
One of the first things she did was to introduce an annual Remembrance Service, where parents, doctors and nurses came together to mourn lost children.
‘Parents never stop grieving,’ says Julia. ‘The most moving thing was watching a huge man, covered in tattoos, clad in a biker’s jacket, holding the gloved hand of a very elegant, elderly lady. They were strangers — united by the death of a child,’ Julia says.
It was her work at St Mary’s which, in 1994, drove her to help establish Child Bereavement UK. More than two decades later, Julia — who left her post at St Mary’s two years ago to write a book, Grief Works, to guide people through bereavement — is still involved with the charity.
JULIAcouldn’t do what she does every day without soaking up some pain. ‘I don’t think I’d be any good if I kept a defence,’ she says. ‘I’ve cried a lot and I’ve had nightmares. I once fainted after seeing a young girl whose leg had been amputated.
‘She was a 14-year-old ballerina. She’d contracted meningitis and I was with her and her family all through the hours when her life hung in the balance, and then when she died.
‘Knowing that bad things can happen at any point has left me with a slightly skewed view of the world. I imagine the worst first.
‘If one of my four grandchildren has a headache, I’m convinced it’s a brain tumour. And I’m super worried when my daughters are pregnant.
‘My big outlet is kickboxing. I have a session every week, when I can get rid of all the stress.’
But, despite devoting her life to helping grieving families, this indomitable woman refuses to accept she’s anything special.
‘I don’t believe in the concept of doing good,’ she says firmly. ‘I believe I have received much more than I have ever given.’
When parents of terribly sick children face their darkest hour, Julia Samuel is there to ease their crippling grief – and that’s why she’s been nominated for Britain’s most inspiring woman