This week’s guest is a mother from Manchester who’s life was turned completely upside down, on the night of May 22nd 2017. Figen Murray’s son Martyn Hett was one of 22 innocent concert-goers killed at a suicide bombing that devastated Manchester and beyond, as Salman Abedi, detonated an explosive device in the foyer of The Manchester Arena. 

Speaking to Sasha, she described the night of the terrorist attack, as they excruciatingly awaited some positive news, as information trickled into their family home. Figen’s maternal instincts sadly proved to be true in this case. 

“He’s dead. I just know, because it is like somebody has just taken this giant pair of scissors and cut off any presence of him. It feels like he’s suddenly gone, it doesn’t even feel like he is on the planet any more ”  She continued, ”call it mum’s intuition or something, but I just absolutely knew that there was suddenly no sense of him whatsoever. It was quite weird” 

It’s clear that Martyn had something extraordinarily unique about his personality and character. The 29-year-old was a self-professed superfan of Coronation Street and had garnered many connections with the thousands of followers subscribed to his social media channels. Although thinking back about memories of her beautiful son sparks a certain level of pain, Figen still delights in telling Sasha about just how loved he was. 

“ A lot of his friends were moaning that they had to make an appointment with him to even spend time with him, he was so popular. He lived life a hundred miles an hour really, and I don’t know where he got the energy from”.

On the podcast, Sasha and Venetia have spoken a lot about taking action in grief, and how a devastating loss can often spur a loved one on, to channel their energy into something new. This is no different for Figen, who at the age of 59 has begun a Masters Degree in Counter-Terrorism, in a bid to try and understand why and how an act like this is possible. 

Unlike the majority of death’s that have been discussed on the podcast, there was someone accountable for Martyn’s death, which makes the grieving process much more complicated. Remarkably, Figen has acknowledged in the past that she forgives her sons attacker, something requiring a huge amount of empathy and emotional intelligence. Through her Masters and advocacy work, she is determined now to focus her efforts into preventing radicalisation from an early age, which she believes is the root preventing terrorism claiming more lives.

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