Jason's Story- Give him the strength to support her

Gidday. I’m Jason.

Going to Cholmondeley is helping my ten-year-old girl through a real rough patch. I’d like to tell you a bit about us, and ask that you might help Cholmondeley to carry on being there for families like ours.

Things weren’t always this tough.We used to be a solid family unit, Maria, Amy and me*. But early last year, everything changed.Maria left us. She’d made up her mind, and one day, she just walked out. Nothing Amy or I said could stop her. Since then, life has changed so much.

It’s been hard on Amy. She’s at that age where she knows what’s going on, and she feels my stress. I’m trying to cope, but my health’s not great and parenting alone isn’t easy. It pulls me apart when I can’t be there for her because of work and or when I’m having my treatments. I know Amy needs to lean on me – she misses her mum and can’t understand why she’s not coming back. We don’t have anyone else; there’s no other family for us to turn to.

I didn’t know about Cholmondeley. The doctor told us about it, that it’s a place where kids like Amy can go. It’s a chance for her to be a kid again. She can drop the sense of responsibility she has around me, and just have some fun.

They’ve hooked her up with a counsellor who is helping her with her sadness about her mum too. She loves the education programme at Cholmondeley and she’s really into the outdoor activities, so now she’s got me taking her fishing on my day off. I guess you could say I’m learning with her. Cholmondeley has set it up so Amy stays once every six weeks for two or three days and she really likes the staff there as she can talk to them. She really trusts them.

It’s hard to describe how this feels for me – I guess it’s a bit like someone is there for us, that they’re looking out for us, and that we’re not alone anymore. I know we’re not the only family who needs the help Cholmondeley provides. 

Many thanks for reading our story 

Jason 

* Names have been changed to protect privacy.