“By age 18, I’d lost both my parents.” – Alice Cutler On the Marie Curie Couch

By the age of 18, I’d lost two of my grandparents, I’d lost two really close aunts who were almost like second mums and nd unfortunately I’d also lost both of my parents. Grief has been a really prevalent part of my life from the age of nine, which is when I lost my dad.

For me, the experience with grief that’s really the most prominent in my life was when I lost my mum. I lost her in June 2015 – so ten, almost 11 years ago, which is slightly terrifying – and I lost her very suddenly. We were involved in a car accident when she passed away.

I was 18 and had to work out what a world looked like for me without parents. My younger brother was 16 at the time. Trying to figure that out too, it took years. We were really lucky that we had support from family and there were some charities as well that helped us. But it really was a process of having to rebuild a life that had only just begun.

About three years ago, I decided I wanted to get involved in pageants, which sounds completely left field. But it's something that's always been on the periphery of my world because I know a few friends that have done it.

As part of it you're encouraged to have a topic that you're passionate about and really want to advocate for. Given everything I've spoken about, it’ll come as no surprise that that something has been grief.

I started a series of Instagram lives, called Living with Loss. The thing that I started noticing, and it came up as a bit of a thread through some of the conversations on there, was that some people had had really awful experiences with their employer around grief.

I'm a qualified solicitor, and although I don't currently work as a solicitor in a law firm I always have my legal head on. So the first thing I did was go to the law and have a look at what the legal position around bereavement leave was. I was really shocked to find out that there's actually no legal right to any time off work when you lose a loved one – and definitely not for that time off to be paid.

It's 100% up to your employers, within their discretion, whether they have a bereavement leave policy or not. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that I was going to change this.

I started my campaign, which is now called Time to Grieve. I started out with a government petition campaigning to introduce a legal right to bereavement leave and hopefully to introduce that as a paid entitlement. I've been campaigning since December 2024.

I certainly can't take all the credit for this at all, or even any credit, but the government has recently introduced a legal right to day one bereavement leave at work in the Employment Rights Bill. Which is amazing.

It's exactly six months ago today I won the title of Miss Great Britain. It's been such a fantastic platform. I always say that pageants is the hook. Being Miss Great Britain means that I can hook someone into a conversation and then tell them about all the work that I'm doing. And then they realise that this is a real issue and actually start talking and they start campaigning themselves. So it’s been amazing. We are making progress.

I'd love to leave a positive mark. And I think for me, that's why bereavement leave has become really important because I just think it's shocking that we don't have it, but also because it’s my way of honouring my parents, I think.

This blog is adapted from Alice’s conversation in our podcast, On the Marie Curie Couch. To listen to the full episode, tap the Acast player below, watch the subtitled version above or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you need support with bereavement or grief, call the Marie Curie Support Line on 0800 090 2309 or visit mariecurie.org.uk/information