Kelsey Parker may have suffered immense heartache, but she refuses to let grief stop her from living. And with a “rainbow baby” on the way, she’s excited about the future.
“We’ve been excited since the day we found out I was pregnant again,” she beams. “I just don’t let myself go to that dark place of, what if? It’s not me.”
Speaking to us from her Spanish holiday villa, children running around in the background, Kelsey looks sun-kissed and content. But the journey to this point has been one of the toughest imaginable.
The podcaster and performing arts school owner lost her husband, The Wanted star Tom Parker – father of her children Aurelia, seven, and five-year-old Bodhi – to brain cancer in 2022, aged just 33.
It turned Kelsey’s world upside down. But somehow, she found the strength to slowly pick up the pieces and in late 2024, she revealed she’d found love again, with tree surgeon Will Lindsay.
The couple were overjoyed to discover they were expecting their first child last January, but there was more pain ahead. In June they revealed their baby, a son they named Phoenix, had been born sleeping.
It would be understandable if Kelsey had mixed emotions about being pregnant again. But showing the hard-won resilience that has become her trademark, she says, “We never know what’s going to happen in life, do we? So there’s no point being anxious. We can’t control what happens.
“Six years ago, I thought I would still be with Tom, we’d have our kids, we might be planning more kids. But that’s just not where my life went.”
In an episode of her podcast Mum’s The Word! last September, Kelsey revealed that after losing Phoenix, Aurelia “blamed” Tom, explaining, “She was angry with her dad, saying, ‘Why is Daddy taking everyone?’”
But Kelsey says they’re excited about having a new brother or sister – and they’re asking a lot more questions this time.
Kelsey, 36, says, “Obviously, we’d lived this experience with Phoenix, and Aurelia does ask me things like, ‘Could this happen again?’ But what can you say? Because I haven’t got the answer for that, have I?
“I left it till very late to tell them this time. I don’t know if you’ve met my daughter, but she’s a foghorn! So we wanted to keep it quiet for as long as possible.
“My two have already gone through so much, but they’re strong. They’re the most resilient children you’ve ever met.”
Kelsey tells us she’s been feeling good both physically and mentally. But it took time for her to get here after her traumatic experience with Phoenix. In an emotional chat on Good Morning Britain two months ago she spoke about how, after a fast natural labour at home, paramedics took her baby out of her arms after only nine minutes.
She recalled how she felt like her home was labelled a crime scene as no midwife was present, and, shockingly, she was then placed in a hospital maternity ward surrounded by newborn babies.
“It took me a long time to be able to talk about what happened with Phoenix, because it was so raw,” she says softly. “I definitely had PTSD, from how I was treated. You sometimes take your mind back and think, did that really happen to me?”
But the outpouring of love she’s had since has been a huge source of comfort.
“The support has been unreal,” she says. “I’m so happy that I’ve shared my story now. It felt like a whole year of me bottling it all up and that’s not good. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe that a problem shared is a problem halved.”
In June, Kelsey and Will marked the first anniversary of losing Phoenix.
“I had a triple hit that day,” Kelsey says. “It was Phoenix’s first birthday, Father’s Day and it was Father’s Day for Will, too. It was a really hard day. I was very numb.”
But she says Will is her “rock”, and she adores how he never baulks at conversations about her late husband.
“My two absolutely adore Will. He’s lost his dad and has a stepdad, so he truly relates to the situation. And you can see he’s always happy to talk about Tom. He would never want to take that away from the children,” she explains.
While mum life and work keep Kelsey busy, her main focus right now is keeping herself fit and healthy, and making sure everything is good with the baby.
“I’m going to be in a total baby bubble soon. I might even take some time off. But nesting, I don’t know – someone else can do that for me,” she says. “I’ve got lots organised though, so it’s exciting. Like, the buggy’s delivered and everything.”
Kelsey is also backing a campaign with asmodee, which has partnered with Welcome Break to host Memory Making Break Points – pop-up zones at select motorway services where families can play quick travel games together during summer road trips.
She explains, “As a family, when you stop off at these Welcome Break service stations, you can do fun stuff for the kids, play the games, get them off their screens. We dropped into one in South Mimms on the way to the airport and it was fantastic. Now we’ve got all the games, like Dobble, and we’re playing them out here in Spain.
“They’ve caused drama, for sure. Bodhi keeps crying that he’s never going to win, but that’s a learning curve. When we get back, we’re going camping, so we’ll be hitting a Welcome Break again. It gives us parents a second to breathe, too.”
Kelsey says she’s more focused than ever on making memories these days.
“After everything we’ve been through, just seeing my kids glued to a screen doesn’t benefit me. I want to spend quality time with them. That’s playing games, doing activities, laughing together. It means everything.”
Kelsey has partnered with asmodee, the global leader in tabletop games, to launch its Memory Making Break Points campaign, where families visiting select Welcome BreakService areas this summer can play asmodee travel games and make shared memories.
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