“THE MARATHON GAVE ME A WAY TO MANAGE MY GRIEF”

When her estranged stepbrother died, Andrea-Louise Glenn discovered he ’d shared her love of running. What followed not only helped her heal, but also resulted in her writing an inspirational book about her running journey

INSPIRATION

WORDS: LISA JA CKSON

Bristol Half-Marathon 2013 was a PB (1:52) – thanks, she thinks, to her marathon training

“As soon as my parents called me late at night to ask if they could come over and tell me some news about my stepbrother Mark, I instinctively knew he’d taken his own life,” says mum of four Andrea-Louise Glenn, 45, from Bristol.

Mark and Andrea-Louise grew up as stepsiblings from a young age. Mark’s mum had died suddenly when he was a baby and his dad married Andrea-Louise’s mum when she was three. “We weren’t close when we were young,” she says. “In fact, we pretty much ignored each other. He was an awkward child. But I always understood life had dealt him a rough hand, so I empathised with him, even though as a child I had no idea how to express that.

“In our early 20s we started to connect for the first time by going out socially, but our budding relationship fizzled out when I married my husband Pete, and sadly we never found a way to rekindle it. I tried to bridge the gap with regular letters as Mark moved to different cities. But, although I was told after his death that these meant a lot to him, he never responded to them. It was a strange grief to process because I hadn’t seen him for 10 years. Yet I had a lot of regret and deep sadness that my hopes that we’d find a way to rebuild our relationship would now never be realised.”