High school senior remembers her mother, speaks on connection with stepmother on Mother’s Day

HUBER HEIGHTS — Many of us spend Mother’s Day celebrating the women who brought us into this world, but some people, like one local high school senior, spend the holiday remembering their mothers.

>>PHOTOS: High school senior remembers her mom on Mother’s Day

Wayne High School senior, Aubrey Mullins, lost her mother, Melissa, to pancreatic cancer when she was seven years old.

News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson talked to Mullins about what it was like growing up without her mom.

For a while, it was just Mullins, her older brother, Austin, and her dad, Robert.

The day her mom passed, she remembers her dad saying, “She would want us to just like keep going and always like be happy.”

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Mullins said she was so young at the time, that the news took a while to sink in.

“I was like, oh she’s going to be gone for like a little bit,” Mullins said.

But that time never came, and Melissa’s memory is all the high school senior has.

“Everything happens for a reason, so you just have to think of that mindset,” Mullins said.

Mullins’ world took a turn again when her dad met her stepmom, Colleen.

“I remember like when we first met, like met her, she told me that her mom passed away too,” she said.

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An instant connection, that Mullins said helped her get to where she is now.

“I really am glad that I got that because a lot of the girls in my grades, like they bond so much with their moms,” she said, noting that she thinks her mom would be proud of the way Colleen helped raise her.

They now spend Mother’s Day together, remembering both of their moms.

Mullins will graduate from Wayne High School this week. In the fall she is heading to Fairmont State University in West Virginia to compete on the Acro team.

She told News Center 7 a piece of advice to anyone living with grief.

“Don’t always try to be down about it, but it is okay if you want to be down about it sometimes. You just have to realize that it is what it is, and you just have to work through it and persevere,” she said.

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