Throughout lockdown, while the world stood still, so did Heather.
“During COVID I started feeling isolated and lonely. My mood was up and down, I felt depressed and struggled to get up every morning.”
Her husband asked the question that changed everything: “What’s wrong?”. For the first time, she didn’t have an answer.
For years, Heather had a desire to do something meaningful but she didn’t know what that ‘something’ was.
Heather Brown is a wife, mother, friend and Big Hearts employee who’s experienced incredible highs and difficult lows. Now a qualified Counsellor, she shares her journey of learning, loss and the experiences that shaped her career.
After discovering an introduction to counselling course, she took the chance to sign up. “I like listening to people and enjoy hearing their stories, so I decided to give it a go.”
What followed was life changing growth, both academically and emotionally. As she developed her counselling skills and began to better understand herself.
University always felt impossible, writing essays overwhelming and the fear of failure was constant, but she decided to apply to study Psychotherapeutic Counselling.
The journey wasn’t easy, living with dyslexia had put a dent in her self-belief for decades, but Heather was determined to complete the course.
Balancing motherhood, home schooling and study, she began thinking differently. “I was peeling back layers, learning lots about myself and my personality. This is what made me want to help people who are struggling, give them that wee bit of belief in themselves. This is when I started to believe – maybe I’m capable of doing this.”
While completing a course on supporting young people through bereavement, her world changed suddenly. “In March that year, we found out my dad had cancer and he wasn’t well.”
Heather considered stopping her studies, but decided to continue and used the skills she’d learned to help process her dad’s illness.
Sadly, a few months later, in July, her father passed away.
Grief arrived suddenly and heavily, but her learning helped her make sense of it. “It was a short time from my dad’s diagnosis to his passing. Things I learnt helped me understand grief and taught me there’s nothing to be frightened of and my feelings were valid.”
After her dad’s death, Heather attended counselling to process her grief, gradually finding a way forward where she felt understood and supported.
In 2023, Heather was appointed to the role of Young Person’s Support Officer at Big Hearts while completing her final year at university. As part of her course, she undertook a placement in a local school.
There, she was asked to support a young person who had also experienced a loss. “Instantly I had a panic, my head filling with ‘what ifs’. What if I start crying? I get triggered? I can’t do this?”
With those thoughts in her mind, Heather used the coping strategies she’d developed at her own counselling to help support her emotional wellbeing and feelings of doubt, before going ahead.
After the first session, she recalls leaving with a sense of relief. She was able to stay present, focused entirely on listening and understanding the young person’s grief.
It was at this moment that things began to feel real for Heather. She was experiencing what it would feel like to be a counsellor. Using her own journey of loneliness, self-doubt, learning and loss as the foundation of her work to help others. “For the first time in three years I realised this is what it’s like to be able to support people and make a difference. Using my own experiences as a tool to show that healing is possible, feelings are valid and that you are never, ever alone.”
Today, as Big Hearts’ Counsellor, her work is shaped by her own experiences. Each week, supporting 16 young people, sitting with them in their darkest moments and quietly showing them what she learned herself. Understanding grief not only as a concept, but as something real, ongoing, and deeply human. “Grief doesn’t just end, it continues with you every day.”
Heather’s journey is not just about becoming a counsellor:
It’s about resilience.
It’s about grief.
It’s about choosing to keep going, even when everything tells you to stop.
– May 2026
