Nikki Peterson is Director of SLOW – Surviving the Loss of Your World.
On National Grief Awareness Day (30th August) we are sharing part 5 of 6 in “Walking For Rosie”, a living blog by Nikki Peterson, Director of SLOW, written during this summer’s training for the South Downs Ultra Challenge 55km – Eastbourne to Brighton – 5th September 2026.
There are stretches of these walks where various body parts feel completely broken. Hips that protest (really loudly). Feet and even my little toes tell me they have had enough.
Pain in my body that goes beyond the physical and into something deeper, something that sits in the bones. There are moments where I genuinely think: I cannot go on.
And then I do.
Broken, and Still Moving
Slowly. One foot in front of the other. At my pace, nobody else’s. Not the pace of the person who just overtook me, not the pace I think I could be managing by now, not the pace that would impress anyone watching. Just mine. Just slow, steady, forward.
Grief breaks you in ways that are similarly invisible. There are days when something in you feels like it simply cannot take any more, when the sadness, or the exhaustion of carrying it, or the sheer weight of the absence overwhelms everything. And you think: I cannot go on.
But you do. Slowly. One foot in front of the other. At your pace, nobody else’s. That is not weakness. That is the bravest thing I know.
The Downhill Lie
Here is something I didn’t expect about long distance walking, and nobody warned me about it: the downhill is often the hardest part.
You’d think it would be the climbs. The steep, relentless uphill sections where your lungs burn and your legs scream – surely that’s where it gets difficult. And yes, the climbs are hard. But the descents?
The descents are where my knees give their loudest opinion.
The descents are where the body, already tired, has to work in a completely different way to stay controlled, to stay safe, to not let gravity win entirely.
I’ve learnt to zigzag my way downhill, taking the pressure off, finding a different angle on the same slope. It takes longer. It’s less direct. But it gets me down in one piece. And in my way.
Grief is exactly like that.
Mud and tired legs at mile fifteen or so
The Days I Brace For
There are days I brace myself for, anniversaries, birthdays, the days that are marked in the calendar as ‘harder days’.
Rosie’s birthday. The anniversary of her death (which I can’t even say).
Mother’s Day.
I prepare.
I give myself permission in advance to fall apart. And sometimes I do, often in private. But sometimes those days arrive and I find I can breathe through them, because I was ready, because I had armoured up, because the anticipation held me together.
Walking the Descents Differently: More Respect for What They Ask
It’s the other days that catch me.
The random Tuesday. The song in a supermarket. Seeing a girl who would be about twenty, laughing with her friends.
The downhill moments, the ones you didn’t see coming because you were too busy watching for the climb. Those are the ones that take your knees out.
I’m learning to walk the descents differently. Slower. More carefully. With more respect for what they actually ask of me.
I’m trying to do the same with grief.
If you’d like to support the walk and the families SLOW serves you can donate here:
Nikki Peterson is Director of SLOW – Surviving the Loss of Your World, a UK charity providing free, peer-led bereavement support for bereaved parents and siblings. She is also Rosie’s mum.
