WHEN Gillian Millane placed a pebble, with her late daughter’s name on it, upon the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, she felt she had brought her travel-loving daughter with her.
She took on the mammoth five-day trek in Tanzania with her brother-in-law Martin Millane, Grace’s aunt and godmother Heather Gammer, and family friend Jason Bedding.
Her beautiful daughter Grace was tragically taken from Gillian and her late husband David when she was murdered in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2018.
“Every day I climb a mountain just to get out of bed and get dressed,” said Gillian.
“My whole family have been given a life sentence and are all going through this grieving process. I thought - ‘Why not climb an actual mountain and raise some money for charity?’.”
That is exactly what Gillian and her teammates did and they have raised an amazing £32,889 so far for The White Ribbon charity, which engages men and boys to end violence against women and girls, St Luke’s Hospice in Basildon, and the widow and young bereavement charity WAY.
Gillian’s husband David tragically passed away from Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2020.
“St Luke’s were amazing and made it possible for David to come home,” said Gillian.
The climb was tough, but all the teammates made it to the summit on New Year’s Day 2023.
“There wasn’t an easy day, it was all hard going and the climb to the summit was eight-and-a-half hours,” said Gillian.
“When we got there I also placed a pebble for Emily Longley, who was from New Zealand and was murdered in the UK, and Amelia Blake who was murdered in Sydney, Australia. The mums of those girls have been a big support to me. Every day we turn on the TV and see another woman murdered - it has to stop.”
The initiative Love Grace, founded by Grace’s cousin Hannah O’Callaghan and run by family and friends, puts together bags with essential items for women fleeing domestic abuse.
Each bag has toiletries as well as lots of luxuries like face masks, make up, purse, scarves, hair care products, body lotion and costume jewellery. Each bag has a tag on it with a flower drawn by Grace, a white ribbon, and her handwriting from the last card she gave her mum Gillian. It started as 50 to 100-bag target, and they now have delivered more than 13,000 bags to women all over the world.
Add your donation at https://justgiving.com/team/team-millane.
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