💛 My Son Was Alive—But I Was Reliving My Sister’s Death

ascension autism

Oct 7

4 min read

📚 From 2014 to 2019, pain, research, questions and hope shaped our journey.

https://lnkd.in/p/emHX9EMn

💛 My Son Was Alive—But I Was Reliving My Sister’s Death

PTSD, identity and the Belfast woman behind the journey

By Marguerite O’Reilly | 7 October 2026

It was the PTSD that shocked me most.

I knew physical injuries could change a life. What I had not understood was how a new collision could bring an old loss so close that it felt as though I was living it again.

In 2014, a car hit both me and my son.

He was alive. I was overjoyed. I believe guardian angels protected him. 🕊️

Yet alongside that enormous relief, I was pulled back to 26 November 1997, the night my sister Danielle was killed on the road.

When I heard the thump, time seemed to slow down. I recognised something in that sound.

Seventeen years separated those events. In that moment, it did not feel like seventeen years.

Relief and trauma existed together

I kept thinking: my son is alive. Surely that should be everything.

And his survival meant everything to me.

But the joy did not stop the terror or the return of grief. That was the part I struggled to understand.

I had heard people around Belfast talk about PTSD so often that it sometimes seemed everyone was carrying it. I do not mean that as a diagnosis of a whole city. It describes how familiar the word had become—and how little I understood its force until I experienced it myself.

Being grateful did not mean I could simply switch off what had happened.

Research helps explain why reminders can remain powerful long after a traumatic event. A study of 289 survivors of the Utøya attack found that trauma reminders could still cause distress and affect functioning 8.5 years later. Their experiences were different from mine, but the study supports an important point: time passing does not necessarily make a reminder harmless.

Clinical literature also describes how PTSD following a traumatic bereavement can involve intrusive memories, avoidance and a continuing sense of threat. Grief and PTSD can overlap, although they are different experiences.

For me, the collision brought the loss of my sister into the present.

“The milly returned”—in my own words

There was another part of the aftermath that is harder to explain.

It felt as though “the milly” returned.

I use that phrase about myself, in the Belfast language I grew up with. It is not a medical term.

During my training as a therapist, I remember being told to “lose the milly”. We were shocked. Were we being seen that way?

I understood that training involved learning how to present ourselves professionally. But looking back, I also think about how much effort went into changing the way we spoke, reacted and carried ourselves.

For me, some of that felt like masking: learning which parts of myself were acceptable in a particular room.

After the collision, I felt that years of keeping myself polished and contained had come undone. The raw Belfast woman was there again.

That is my description of how it felt. It does not establish that a head injury caused a particular change in my personality.

But it raises a question I still care about:

Can we help someone grow without making them ashamed of where they came from?

Head injury and PTSD need careful understanding 🧠

Head injuries were part of what I was trying to understand too.

Research describes overlapping difficulties after traumatic brain injury and PTSD, including problems with sleep, concentration, memory and mood. Those overlaps can make it difficult to work out what is contributing to someone’s symptoms. Both conditions can also occur together.

A paper cannot determine what happened in my individual case. That needs clinical assessment and my medical history.

What I want people to understand is that a change after an accident deserves attention. A person may be struggling with pain, trauma, injury—or several things at once.

Judging their tone tells us very little about what they need.

Belfast, “the upgrade” and appearances

Belfast knows about reinvention.

We learn how to enter different rooms, speak to different people and present a more polished version of ourselves. Sometimes that opens doors.

But I question the illusion that looking composed means someone is well—or that speaking with a strong local voice makes their experience less credible.

In my own life, the “upgrade” could hide how much effort it took to hold everything together.

I want professionalism to include compassion for the person underneath it.

From 2014 to 2019: still a mother 📚

Through the pain and PTSD, I was still caring for my son.

From 2014 to 2019, I kept learning, researching and asking questions about his needs. By 2019, we began observing changes in his everyday life that mattered deeply to our family.

Our 00AI journey cards make those years easier to see. They tell a personal story; they are not clinical evidence of what caused an outcome.

Behind the cards is a mother who was relieved her son had survived, grieving her sister again, and trying to find a way forward.

I share this because someone else may recognise that confusing mixture of gratitude and distress.

You can love the life that was spared and still need help with the trauma.

If this feels familiar, speak with your GP or a qualified trauma clinician. You deserve to have both your physical injuries and your emotional experience heard.

💛 Listen beyond the polish. Respect the person. Make room for the whole story.