It would be easy to sit here and say that losing my mum when I was young hasn’t impacted me as an adult. But when I reflect on my early life, I can see that it is actually the everything that has shaped me and made me who I am today — the founder of meminio, helping families everywhere keep their memories safe.
In many ways, I feel I am building a legacy for my mum, who didn’t get the chance to make more memories.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my younger years and reflecting on life. Partly because my firstborn is now looking at universities, and partly because each year I get a little older myself. After losing my mum at the age of five, I often felt different from my classmates. I felt envious that they had their mums picking them up at the end of the school day and giving them cuddles. But I wasn’t old enough then to fully understand the deep emotion that comes with losing a parent.
As the only child in my primary school to have lost a parent, it became part of my identity. Teachers and school friends were often more sympathetic towards me, without ever really acknowledging why, and it became the unspoken thing. The same happened at home with my dad, where talking about my mum in any way felt impossible. The only keepsake that my sister and I held onto — and still treasure today — is a photo album my mum had started, with each picture carefully dated on the back.
As I moved through senior school, university, and into my first teaching job, the loss of my mum slipped further into the background. All I could do was look ahead to the exciting future in front of me.
Until that day — the happiest day of my life (after my wedding day, of course) — the day I gave birth to our first daughter, Maisie.
The love I felt instantly was beyond anything I could have imagined. It flooded me with emotion, and alongside that came a sudden sense of loss for the memories I didn’t have — and the thought that, 29 years earlier, my own mum had once felt this same kind of love for me.
Those first years of being a parent, as many of you will know, are a rollercoaster of emotion. I loved every minute of being a mum and threw myself into it completely. But as Maisie started to grow, I felt this overwhelming urge to keep all of her baby things safe — so I could look back on them one day, and so I could show them to her when she was older.
I didn’t have anything from my own childhood apart from a few photographs in an album that stopped when I was four. I wanted so much more for Maisie. And so the story began — although at the time, I had no idea this was the very beginning of meminio.
I kept her hospital band, her first cardigan, the outfit she wore home from hospital, a baby book, the cards our friends and family had sent, printed photographs, her first shoes, the newspaper from the day she was born… and the list went on. Every single item felt important to keep, both for me and for her one day in the future.
Before long, I had a bottom drawer full of precious keepsakes, and I knew I needed somewhere just as special to store them. I started searching for memory boxes, but nothing felt right. Most were too small, and none were beautiful enough to keep out and return to time and time again.
When Maisie was five, my Granny Irene(my Mum's mum) passed away. She had the sweetest little vintage case that she kept on top of her wardrobe. And that was where the real beginning of meminio started.
The case itself was lovely, though too small and a little worn with age. But it carried such nostalgia. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that little case planted the idea of the memory keepsake case in my mind. Three years later, I would be sitting with Ali, sharing my idea, and together we would begin bringing it to life.
Love,
Marie xx