Post-traumatic growth: the woman who learned to live a profoundly good life after loss

After the deaths of her son and husband, Rhian Mannings emerged slowly from grief to start a charity and find love again. What does her experience tell us about how suffering can change us?

In February 2012, Rhian was a happy, busy wife, mother of three and a PE teacher in Cardiff. She and her husband, Paul, had met on a blind date in their early 20s. I knew as soon as we met that I wanted to be with him for ever." Paul was handsome, kind and sports-mad"; he was Rhian's rock, she says. By the end of their honeymoon, she was pregnant, while their third child, George, celebrated his first birthday on Valentine's Day 2012. He was a smiley baby, giggling, crawling everywhere, saying hiya" all the time. It was everything I'd ever wanted," Rhian says.

A week after that birthday, Rhian and George were playing together after his bath when he had a seizure. An ambulance was called, but two hours after arriving at hospital, George died. Rhian says: The nurse carried his body out of A&E and through the hospital corridors and found a closed children's day unit, with cartoon characters all over the walls, cots with teddy bears in. That's where we said goodbye to our little boy." In her memory, she watches the scene from above, hovering over it as if in a dream. That emotion of shock saves you in a way; it protects you. Because I didn't feel anything." They had left home with their youngest son; they returned without him. George's birthday cards were still up, and his presents were in a pile in the corner - but in the other corner was his vomit from when he fell ill, and bits of his clothing that had to be cut off him."