Hi, I’m Rochelle. When I was 25, my mum was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour.

My dad had already died of pancreatic cancer when I was 14, and my two younger
sisters were both still in education, so it fell to me to look after Mum.

Not that I would have had it any other way. I wanted to be able to repay her for all the
love she had given me over the years. But I wasn’t prepared for how hard it is to be a
young adult carer.

How relentless it is. How it wears you down. How it feels like nobody
sees everything you’re doing.

Becoming a carer meant being a voice for my mum, but I felt like I lost my own voice in
the process.

One of the hardest things for me was that nobody seemed to be talking about how
being a carer affects you as a young person.

It’s as if everyone presumes that from your
mid-teens to your mid-twenties you’ll be so busy going to Nandos and scrolling
Instagram that you’ll never have any ‘serious’ worries. So, I decided to do something
about it …

I’ve written a book – Handle With Care – sharing my experiences of what it’s really like
to be a young adult carer.

I know that no words (not even a whole book of them!) will
magically make things easy, but I hope that by sharing my story, reflecting on my
experiences and writing about the lessons I have learnt, that I can make things slightly
more bearable for other people going through something similar.

Handle With Care is available to buy now – http://smarturl.it/HandleWithCareBook.
You can also follow me on Instagram @rochellebugg or visit www.rochellebugg.com