Lottie Tomlinson has spoken about her ‘horror’ of losing her mother to cancer before her younger sister died three years later when she was only 18 years old.
The 24-year-old influencer is the sister of One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, who rose to international fame as a youngster in the great boyband.
Louis has frequently discussed his strong relationship with his mother Johannah Deakin, who died of cancer in December 2016, especially in his documentary All Of Those Voices.
Not long after, the family was stricken with another tragedy when younger sister Felicité died at the age of 18 from an accidental drug overdose.
Lottie has now spoken freely about the’shock’ of losing two close family members on the podcast Grief Kind, hosted by bereavement charity Sue Ryder.
‘You felt like you were living in this nightmare,’ she admitted -but ‘while it’s horrendous and the worst thing you’ve ever been through … it strengthened us so much because we all had to look after each other.’
She characterised the months following her mother’s death as’surreal,’ revealing that as the eldest daughter in the family, she felt she assumed the motherly role to her younger siblings.
In addition to Louis, Felicité, and Lottie, Deakin was the mother of twins Daisy and Phoebe, now 19, and Ernest and Doris, now nine, who were only two years old when she died.
Felicite, affectionately known as Fizz, died abruptly from a heart attack less than three years later.
‘When Fizz died, it was obviously such a shock,’ she said.
‘It was like a disbelief that we were going to go through this again. It kind of felt like we were just coming through the other side of losing my mum. For it to happen again, it was just shocking.’
‘It felt like the world was against us – why was this happening again?’ she added. ‘Where is this going to end?’
The family rallied together once again, and ‘we’ve been through the worst thing ever.. and we’ve had it again … but we knew how it felt.’
‘You’d survived that. We’d got through that, by some miracle.’
Lottie went on to provide her advise for anyone suffering, asking them to ‘be nice to yourself’ after surviving two tragic losses.
The actress previously discussed the hardships of grieving in public.
‘It was definitely a nice thing because there was so much support and there was always so much love given to us online, and from the fans.
‘But I guess at the same time, it was hard because everything is kind of judged, what you’re doing and how you’re coping with it, and the ways that you’re dealing with it.’
She added: ‘I’m lucky that I’ve got to the point I’ve got to in my grief and I feel good in the way I live my life and cope with it now.
‘But it’s still hard and it’ll always be there. I think it’s about finding ways to cope with it.’
