Beauty technician helps to nail feeling of intense grief

For 50 years, Sarah felt her mum had never really loved her. Mum lost her first child, a boy, when he was five months old.

Sarah had always felt like a poor second best. Somehow, she found herself telling her nail technician this. The young woman asked what age Mum had been. “Ohh, that’s the same age as me,” she said, when Sarah told her. “I’d be a hopeless wreck if that happened.”

For the first time, Sarah understood her mum had been a hopeless wreck through those early years. Understandably. It was an awful loss to bear, and Mum hadn’t been much more than a child herself.

Picturing her nail technician dealing with that grief brought a huge wave of sympathy – which she immediately transferred to her mum. And that, in turn, helped her understand that she absolutely had been loved...just the best her mum was able.