The mother of the transgender teenager Brianna Ghey says she has found solace in cold water swimming as she tries to come to terms with her daughter’s brutal death.
Esther Ghey is taking part in Saturday’s Great North Swim in Windermere, in the Lake District, raising money for the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP).
She said she was supporting the charity, which teaches pupils how to calm their minds, in the hope that its work “could potentially prevent the same situation that’s happened to Brianna from happening again”.
In an interview, she described how training for the one-mile swim had been “cold water therapy” as Brianna’s death made international headlines. She said she initially wanted to “hide away” from the media glare but she had been “filled with love” from people around the world.
Sixteen-year-old Brianna was stabbed to death in February in a park in Culcheth, near Warrington. Two 15-year-olds were charged with her murder and will go on trial in Manchester on 27 November.
Brianna, an extrovert who dreamed of being “TikTok famous”, came out as trans when she was 14, her mother said. Esther supported the transition. “It didn’t bother me. It was just something that Brianna wanted to do and I was happy. As long as she was happy then that’s all that mattered.”
Esther and her partner, Wes, took up open water swimming during the first Covid lockdown in 2020. Brianna showed no interest in their new hobby, Esther said. “She didn’t swim with us. Brianna wasn’t really into fitness when she was a teenager. I think she was just a normal teenager who would prefer to be on a PlayStation than in cold water.”
Brianna was “very outgoing and very confident. She was the complete opposite of me really. I’m quite quiet. I think one of her main goals in life was to be famous, and she wanted to be TikTok famous. She just absolutely loved the attention. I remember her coming downstairs when one of her TikToks, in inverted commas, ‘blew up’. And she was absolutely over the moon with all of the attention that she would receive.”
Despite her extroversion, Brianna struggled with her mental health, Esther said. She praised Brianna’s school, Birchwood community high school in Warrington, for supporting her daughter when she announced that she was transitioning to become a girl.
“The headteacher … has been absolutely amazing, she’s fantastic. Brianna’s school was always really supportive to both me and Brianna, and they continue to support us even after all of this,” Esther said.
After Brianna was killed on 11 February, Esther initially found the global attention difficult. She had been warned by her police liaison officer that her daughter’s death would be reported in the media but was unprepared for the scale of public grief, particularly among the transgender community.
“Initially, because I am quite quiet and not the same way that Brianna was, I just wanted to hide and I didn’t want it to be in the public. But then my other daughter [Aisha] would come up to me with her phone and she’d say ‘look at all these vigils that have been arranged’, and I was, I can’t think of another word to use, but I was overwhelmed. And I just felt this great, great sense of support from the community. It felt like the whole world was sort of a community in a way, and it just filled me with love.”
Parents of other trans children reached out to her, as well as trans people from all over the world. “The level of support from the trans community has been overwhelming. I think it’s probably hit them quite hard,” she said.
Brianna would have loved the attention, Esther said. “I think it was absolutely beautiful how people rallied together and showed support for Brianna. And I think how she would have loved that. And I, in a way, I hope that she saw that.”
Esther is raising money for MiSP having found meditation helpful to deal with anxiety. “For the past couple of years, I’ve been practising mindfulness, and I meditate in the morning. In the past I have experienced mental health issues such as anxiety, and I feel that mindfulness has really, really helped me to overcome that. And I think it put me in a very good position to be able to deal with the whole situation, around Brianna’s death,” she said.
Swimming outside had also helped in her grief, Esther said. “I find open water swimming really relaxing. I think when you’ve got your head under the water, and you can just hear the water and hear the sounds of nature on the outside, it’s really therapeutic … I suppose it’s like cold water therapy. It’s been quite good for my mental health.”
