Meet our directors
Forever Held is a charity overseen by a Board of Directors. We’d like to introduce you to our directors, who have chosen to share their personal stories of grief.
Sheree Ballinger
Director and Founder
Sheree and her husband Hayden live on a dairy farm in Naringal with their five children.
“In the darkness before dawn one morning in May 2018, our son Jamin was born at only 18 weeks gestation. In the moments that followed, my husband and I held his tiny, precious, lifeless body as we watched the colours of the sunrise through the window of the hospital. Holding our son in that way was a moment we hoped would never come and at the same time a moment we never wanted to end. Glimpses of golden light shone through the dark silhouettes of the Norfolk Pines on the horizon.
The beauty of light interwoven with darkness was something I carried into the days ahead, one of the darkest seasons of my life.
After the loss of Jamin, the waves of grief came with an unrelenting force. Walking through the deep grief that follows the loss of a child as well as the constant struggle with anxiety and fear in subsequent pregnancies has been one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.
Today, I’m learning to savour the small everyday moments as a mum. As a family, we love to spend time appreciating the beauty and wonder of the natural world, exploring the outdoors together.
My hope is that
Forever Held offers a glimpse of light and hope in the darkest of times.”
We would have cherished an opportunity to have time away together to escape our everyday lives in the early days of grief.”
Fiona Howell
Director
Fiona lives with her husband John and two boys on a beef farm on the edge of the Otways. She also runs a farm consulting business specialising in dairy farm business analysis, strategic planning and succession planning.
“We lost our first son Oliver at 20 weeks gestation following a long journey through IVF. The feeling that life just continued on around us was very confronting when our grief was so raw. Coming back to our home where we had started to prepare for Ollie’s arrival was made all the more confronting when my maternal hormones kicked in.
There was a loss of innocence around the joy of being pregnant and having a baby, which was only repaired by the safe arrival of our two beautiful boys, Jack and Harry.
Ollie is forever in our minds and forever in our hearts.”
Jacinta Lenehan
Director
Incredibly,10 months later, we fell pregnant naturally with our second child. After a healthy textbook pregnancy, we sadly lost our little boy Teddy at 16 weeks gestation through a spontaneous miscarriage at home. In the hours that followed, as we held his little body in the hospital room, time seemed to stand still, and yet no amount of time could have prepared us for the pain of holding our lifeless baby and kissing him goodbye forever.
We have gone on to have another baby, Tom, who was incredibly due on the first anniversary of his brother’s passing.
Experiencing the loss of our baby has changed my life, and it took some time to figure out who I was as a person, a mum and a wife. I was shocked that we’d experienced something so huge, and yet the world continued on as though everything was normal.”
I can see such value in supporting families to grieve, heal and grow together while escaping the demands of life.”