The mother of a girl who took her own life at the age of 11 says she has not made peace with the fact that her daughter is gone.
Milly Tuomey died by suicide in 2016 – weeks after posting a message on Instagram that she was unhappy with her appearance and wanted to die.
Her heartbroken mother Fiona has since set up HUGG (Healing Untold Grief Groups) to support other families affected by suicide.
She said one of the hardest things for her was the fact that her daughter’s name and the word tragic would be linked.
Speaking to Brian Dowling on the Death Becomes Him podcast, she said: “Milly is the furthest thing from tragic. Her death was tragic but her life was not.
“Milly was joyful and fun and a delight and infuriating and loads of other things. Milly and tragic are two words that should not be put together.”
Recalling her daughter’s vivacious personality she added: “Milly was a ball of energy, quite literally. She would burst onto the scene.
“She and her sister were Irish twins, 15 months apart. Milly and Daisy were really, really close.
“They were like the Pied Pipers for other children, they’d lead the other children, there’d be plays put on, full productions...
“We lived in Switzerland for five years, there was a really really posh old folks' home behind us.
“The girls saw there was a swimming pool so they decided to go in and offer their services to entertain old folks in return for a swim, it was turned down.
“Instead they decided to entertain the old folks individually while they were sitting outside.
“This is the kind of kid she was – fearless, probably a bit impulsive, creative, incredibly popular, tons of friends, like world at her feet stuff.
“It is a cliche to say somebody had it all in front of them, but I was very excited to see what Milly would make of her life, because she had it all.
“I think about it all the time, that is the heartbreaking bit, when you think about what could have been.”
Milly died in hospital four days after her family discovered her unconscious.
The family later learned she’d scrawled “beautiful girls don’t eat” across her body in pen before telling pals on social media of her plan to die on a certain date.
Fiona said there were no alarm bells, adding: “It’s easy in hindsight to put the pieces of the puzzle together, when you’re in it it’s very, very different.
“Death by suicide is traumatic, it’s usually violent and everybody who dies by suicide dies alone. That is tragic because nobody wants to die alone.
“I did not want to live, I wanted to die because the pain of it was so overwhelming I did not think it was possible to live with it.
“Milly was in a coma for three days before she died. That was traumatic and as real as it gets, it was horrific.
“It took about two years for the horror to hit – that she’s gone forever. That was a different type of grief that hit me so hard.
“That until the day I die she’s never going to be here – I haven’t made peace with that. She’s frozen in time.”
But she added: “The relationship never ends because the person you loved has died. That relationship is not over.
“How could a relationship be over just because a person isn’t physically here? It doesn’t end.
“That energy cannot be destroyed. I believe that perhaps I’ll be reunited with Milly with that energy.”
