'Joy in a joyless situation': How I deal with the loss of two grown-up children

Where others might see only the colourful glass beads she makes, Heidi Hunt sees hope.

Along with her husband Phil, she has endured the heartache of the deaths of two of the four children they share between them.

In between times, Heidi herself almost died due to a critical illness which left her in a coma for 10 days.

Despite enduring more tragedy than most of us could imagine, she has been able to build a new life on the remote Mull of Galloway thanks, in part, to the creative process which distracts her from any sadness she might be feeling.

She freely admits that the reason she ended up moving to the very tip of south-west Scotland from Merseyside is "not a pretty story".

Her 21-year-old son, Stefan Osgood, took his own life in 2016.

"It was extremely hard to deal with," said Heidi.

"The stress and the upset of it all affected my health very badly and I had a lot of surgeries and a lot of unpleasant time really."

It ultimately meant she retired from teaching on medical grounds and ended up doing some voluntary work at a centre in Birkenhead for depressed and anxious teenagers.

The director there was looking for a house and Heidi mentioned they were looking at selling their home in about six months time.

However, their prospective buyer was keen to do the deal straight away which led to senior firefighter Phil speeding up his retirement plans and the move to Scotland.

"I'd never been to the Mull of Galloway before," said Heidi.

"We had friends at the other end near Dumfries, really good friends and that's why we were looking in Dumfries and Galloway, but couldn't find anywhere.

"One house was too big, one was too small, one had more water running down the chimneys than it did out the taps."

It was only when they expanded their search that their new home appeared.

"I felt instinctively straight away that's where we're going to live - and it all happened very quickly," she said.

It has not been plain sailing, anything but. About five years ago, Heidi suffered a perforated ulcer and ended up with multiple organ failure.

"I wasn't expected to survive it," she said. "I had 10 days in a coma, which gave me brain damage.

"My sister jokes that I'm only as intelligent as the rest of them now, but I can tell how badly it's affected me.

"But, you know, I'm lucky to be alive."

Then, in 2023, Phil's daughter Lauren Hunt who had moved up to Galloway to be close to the family - with her daughter - died, aged 35, in a car crash.

"We've lost two adult children in unexpected and tragic circumstances out of the four that we have between us," said Heidi.

"We've lost two of our adult children and you think lightning won't strike twice and there you go, it does."

"I don't know how I've survived it, but my creativity is the anchor, it's the distraction, it's the fuel.

"It provides me with joy in an otherwise joyless situation."

It all started after they booked a course on making glass beads two years ago.

"They're total mindfulness," she explained. "All the upset and the pain of the past is gone because you have to focus on a 1,000 degree lump of glass on the end of a steel mandrel.

"That gives you the kind of distraction from any thoughts you might have, sadness you might be feeling.

"It's gone because the whole focus is on the bead and I find it therapeutic.

"I find it full of joy, you know, to find yourself enjoying life again and it's a wonderful thing."

Being in the Mull of Galloway also helps - she describes it as "an amazing place to be understood and to heal".

She said: "It is so breathtakingly beautiful every day, I wake up and I look out the window and I think, oh my God, aren't we lucky?"

Along with other "amazing artists" nearby, Heidi and Phil - who also makes jewellery by hand-forging repurposed copper - are opening the doors to their studio as part of Spring Fling weekend at sites across Dumfries and Galloway from 23 to 25 May.

It will give the public a chance to see a demonstration of how Heidi makes her beads.

They might also get an understanding of what they mean to her after all that she has been through.

She said: "It's a message of hope, isn't it, that you can learn to live with these things.

"When you lose a child, you lose your life that you had, you lose that life and that's also hard to bear.

"But what you can do is you can build a new life.

"You will always have this millstone, but you can build a life around it that's bigger than the one you had."

If you have been affected by any of the issues in the article, more information is available at BBC Action Line.