Nikki Peterson is Director of SLOW – Surviving the Loss of Your World.
This is part 1 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.
A Reminder and a Release
I’ve been trying to work out what these training walks are doing to me. Not physically, though my legs have plenty to say about that, but something deeper. Something I didn’t entirely expect when I signed up to walk 55km from Eastbourne to Brighton on 5th September 2026 in memory of my daughter Rosie.
What I’ve landed on is this: they are both a reminder and a release.
A reminder that she was here. That she is still very much here, in me, in every step I take across this landscape I call home, in the reason I get up and do the work I do every single day. And a release, too.
Because grief, when you’ve carried it for twenty years, needs somewhere to go. It needs air and space and sometimes a clifftop wind that takes it out of your chest and flings it somewhere over the English Channel.
The walks are giving me that.
Letting It Come, Letting It Go
I live just outside Seaford. I moved here a couple of years ago, and here’s something I didn’t anticipate when I did: I had never walked long sections of these paths. I had seen the pictures, of course – the Seven Sisters, Beachy Head, Birling Gap, the long stretch of chalk cliff that feels like the edge of the world when the weather comes in. You can’t live in this part of the world, even briefly, without knowing what it looks like.
But knowing what something looks like and walking through it are entirely different things. When I moved here, it never crossed my mind that I would find myself out on these cliffs, walking for Rosie. And yet here I am.
But walking it for Rosie is different still. Recently I walked from Seaford Head to Eastbourne, via Birling Gap and Beachy Head, about 15 miles of the jaw dropping, spectacular coastline. My now backyard. And yet I saw it differently.
Every view felt like something being offered to me. Every hard climb felt like something worth doing. I cried as I left Birling Gap. A song came on, one that gets me every single time – The 1975, When We Are Together and that was it. I didn’t try to stop it (I wouldn’t have been able to if I tried). I just let it come.
I think that’s what these walks are teaching me. To let it come. And then, to let it go.
A Border of Roses
When I arrived in Eastbourne, there was a kiss in the sky. An x, drawn in cloud or vapour trail or something I can’t explain. And then, on my final stretch of path, a border of roses. Red and pink and white, just blooming, lining the way like they’d been planted there exclusively for me and my girl – or from my girl. I’m still trying to figure that one out!
She Was There
I will tell you something about me and signs. I am absolutely someone who looks for them. If I need the universe to help me make a decision, I ask for an elephant to appear. I know how that sounds. I don’t care. It works for me.
But on that Sunday, Rosie had other ideas about what a sign should look like. She didn’t send an elephant. She sent a kiss in the sky and a path full of roses, and I think that tells you everything you need to know about her. She was there. She is always there.
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.
