After losing her twin daughters, Skye and Angel, Tiffany found her way through grief and back to life through community, purpose, and an extraordinary hike across Tasmania.
Skye and Angel
Some loves arrive before you are ready, before the world has had a chance to prepare you. For Tiffany, that love came twice over, in the form of twin daughters born too soon. Finding words for what she had imagined for them, she says, is heart-wrenching: the milestones, the laughter, the joy of watching two unique little people discover the world side by side.
What happened next took courage she hadn’t known she had. After IVF, weeks of hospital bed rest, and infection, Skye was stillborn. Tiffany developed septicaemia, and Angel was medically induced. She wasn’t ready to meet her daughters.
The fear was enormous. But a midwife, with quiet and profound wisdom, began by slowly pulling back the blanket to reveal their feet. “They were so cute,” Tiffany remembers. They were asked how they felt before anything more was shown. Step by step, fear gave way to love.
“Once we met them, we didn’t want to let them go.”
“I loved the idea of them dancing up in the stars.”
Initially called Twin 1 and Twin A, the girls were eventually named Skye and Angel, names that felt like a home for them. When the family returned to the hospital to spend more time with their daughters, they were met in the corridor by a bereavement midwife who looked at them and said, “You must be Skye and Angel’s parents, I can tell because their features are exactly like yours.” It is a moment Tiffany will never forget. Skye had her rounder face; Angel, more like her father Pete, with longer, finer features.
Holding space for others
The kindness Tiffany received after losing Skye and Angel, from hospital staff, caregivers, and Red Nose workers, lit something in her.
“In a world that felt very broken at the time, where it seemed like everything had let us down, the kindness offered by others was like a beacon.”
She began volunteering with the bereavement team at the Mater, with Red Nose, and as a Support Group Coordinator for Precious Wings, a charity providing hospital memory boxes in Queensland. When the opportunity arose to work as a Bereavement Support Worker for the Red Nose Hospital to Home Team, she took it without hesitation.
The gift she most wants to offer other bereaved parents is the one she was given: permission to slow down.
“Often, society urges us to move on because it’s easier to accept. I was fortunate to be given permission to slow down, a gift I continue to treasure to this day.”
A friendship forged in grief
Thirteen years ago, at a Red Nose support group in Queensland, Tiffany walked into a room and found someone who understood. Debbie had also lost premature twins, Michael and Jayden. Two women, both far from their families overseas, both learning to carry an impossible weight in a country that was beautiful but unfamiliar.
The Red Nose Todd Freemantle House became, in Tiffany’s words, “a lifeline.” With family and friends back in the UK, it offered warmth and a sense of belonging at a time when everything else felt broken. The support group gave them something rare: a space to be unfiltered, to grieve without pretending everything was fine.
She remembers a volunteer helping them make scrapbook pages, photographs of their twins at the centre, along with sun and dream catchers and clay butterflies.
“I appreciated making something in their honour and feeling immensely proud.”
There was no obligation to speak. Showing up was enough.
“We would often talk about how lucky we were living in such a beautiful country, yet missed the familiarity we craved from back home.”
The friendship deepened over the years. Both women went on to have sons, boys now in Years 5 and 7, in the same grade, giving them even more to talk about as they navigated life, grief, and parenthood together.
A hike across Tasmania to raise funds for Red Nose
As the twelfth anniversary of Skye and Angel’s passing approached, the 28th of March, and with one year having passed since Tiffany had had to undergo brain surgery, she and Debbie, whom she calls “Twinny,” signed up for the Hike for Hope. The timing, Tiffany says with characteristic warmth, felt like a “no-brainer,” pun intended.
3 days across the 3 Capes, Tasmania
24,000 average steps per day
$5,212 raised for Red Nose
The challenge was intense, the elevation relentless, with one day alone featuring 4,000 steps that felt “endless.” By the end, the pain in Tiffany’s calves was agonising. But she had come prepared, stocked with anti-inflammatories and vitamins, and she was deeply glad her endurance was tested.
She was placed in a cabin with five mothers who had all experienced loss. Between the treks, conversations went deep. One mother she already knew was a Hospital to Home parent who had since welcomed a rainbow toddler.
Another she barely knew before the hike began; by the end, they were friends. This woman had lost her baby only eighteen months earlier, and they talked about how the physical act of walking was helping her process grief, how some steps felt heavy with emotion, how others felt lighter, almost like dancing.
“Some of my steps felt heavy, like the weight of my emotions, allowing some deep-rooted tears to flow, while other times the ‘dancing’ steps felt lighter and more manageable.”
The middle day of the hike fell exactly one year after Tiffany’s brain surgery. It marked a shift in perspective, in possibility.
“Since then, I haven’t stopped seeking that high through exercise and the natural endorphins it provides.”
For families walking through it now
To anyone in the depths of grief right now, Tiffany speaks with the gentle authority of someone who has been there and found a way through:
“At times it may feel like it, but you are not alone. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, to cry, it’s also ok to find ways to smile and laugh again. Wherever possible, try to take each day moment by moment. Your love for your child is eternal, and their presence will always be a part of you.”
She encourages leaning on support, family, friends, groups, and choosing quality over quantity. She speaks of “hope holders,” people who carry hope on your behalf when you cannot hold it yourself. And she speaks of healing as something that ebbs and flows, with good days and hard days, and no timeline that belongs to anyone else.
Around her home, Tiffany and Pete have quietly gathered the presence of their daughters. Paintings made in their honour. A family photo where Skye and Angel appear as shadows. Keepsakes are placed softly throughout each room, so that wherever you stand, something catches your eye. And on certain days, when the light is right, rainbows stream through the glass.
Tiffany is a Bereavement Support Worker with the Red Nose Hospital to Home Team in Queensland.
If you or someone you know has been affected by pregnancy or infant loss, visit our Grief & Loss Support Hub or call the Red Nose 24/7 Support Line on 1300 308 307.
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