Nikki Peterson is Director of SLOW – Surviving the Loss of Your World.
This is part 4 of 6 in Walking for Rosie, a living blog by Nikki Peterson, Director of SLOW, written during training for the South Downs Ultra Challenge – 55km, Eastbourne to Brighton, 5th September 2026.
Something to hold onto
At the end of every single training walk, without fail, I am reminded of the same thing.
I can do this.
Not easily. Not gracefully. Not without cost. It is really hard. It is really, really, really frickin tough.
My body reminds me of that in ways I won’t go into detail about here. But I can do it. I keep doing it.
And at the end of every walk, I bank it as evidence, it’s something solid to hold onto.
We Can Do It
Grief is the same. I know it is, because I have twenty years of experience.
Every time I thought I couldn’t do it – every time the weight of Rosie dying felt un survivable, impossible, too much for one person to carry – I did it anyway.
Not well, sometimes. Not without falling apart. But I got through. I kept going. And somewhere on the other side of those hardest moments, that same quiet knowledge was waiting:
I can do this.
I can. We can. All of us carrying something this heavy – we can do it.
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.
