{"id":1784,"date":"2026-03-31T08:06:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/1784\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:06:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:06:37","slug":"grimsby-woman-who-lost-her-father-to-suicide-on-running-the-london-marathon-to-help-mental-health-charity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/1784\/","title":{"rendered":"Grimsby woman who lost her father to suicide on running the London Marathon to help mental health charity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018My dad wasn\u2019t able to get the support he desperately needed\u2019\"Nicki<\/p>\n

Nicki Smith at her graduation with her dad, Steve Wilkinson(Image: Nicki Smith)<\/p>\n

A Grimsby mum has achieved her ambition of gaining a place to run this year\u2019s London Marathon<\/a> after many years of trying. For Nicki Smith, it is not just about the kudos of partaking in the prestigious event; when the starter gun goes off, she will be carrying thoughts of her late father with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to do this in memory of my dad,\u201d said Nicki, who tragically lost her father, Steve Wilkinson, to suicide in 2018 when he was aged just 48. \u201cMy daughter was just ten months old at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was an only child dealing with everything, and running kind of helped after all of that.\u201d Nicki is running the marathon on Sunday, April 26, to help the charity Rethink Mental Illness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On her fundraising page<\/a>, which has a \u00a32,200 target towards Rethink’s overall \u00a380k goal, Nicki said: \u201cSuicide is the biggest killer of men in their 40s and it is so important to have access to resources and support.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad wasn’t able to get the support he desperately needed, mental health services in this country are under-staffed, under-funded and vastly under-appreciated. That is why I am taking part in this event – to help Rethink Mental Illness continue its mission of improving the lives of those affected by mental illness.<\/p>\n

\"Nicki<\/p>\n

Nicki Smith and her daughter after the Humber Coastal half-marathon, Cleethorpes, last year(Image: Nicki Smith)<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe our donations can mean that someone gets the help they need, when they need it.\u201d Nicki said contributions would help provide vital services such as support groups, and educational resources for individuals and families affected by mental illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, hopefully, we can make a difference.\u201d Nicki has previously run a half-marathon and takes part in Tape2Tape events, including the \u00d8rsted Great Grimsby 10k, which she has been running since 2020.<\/p>\n

But as running goals go, London is the one, she said, being hopeful of completing the race in around four-and-a-half to five hours. \u201cI\u2019m training a lot, four runs a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m on a teaching placement at a school, which means I\u2019m there five days a week, and I work in the evenings as well. It\u2019s a case of fitting it all in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicki, who has spent ten years working with children with SEN, was 25 when she lost her father. \u201cHe had quite a hard upbringing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a foster child – his foster parents were amazing – and then he was a single father to me. My mum kind of decided she didn\u2019t want to be my mum when I was two-and-a-half and my dad brought me up on his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was properly out of the blue when he took his own life. He was quite excited about being a grandad and when my daughter was born he was at my house pretty much every day, without fail.<\/p>\n

\"Steve<\/p>\n

Steve Wilkinson with baby Nicki …(Image: Nicki Smith)<\/p>\n

\"...<\/p>\n

… and with his baby granddaughter(Image: Nicki Smith)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did have a lot of trouble finding his feet after an injury at work. There was no support for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe man at the JobCentre came to his funeral because he said he felt like he had let him down so much.\u201d Nicki said: “There’s the guilt people feel when they lose a loved one the way I did.<\/p>\n

“Running and fundraising helps alleviate some of that guilt for me. I know really that there\u2019s nothing I could have done, but that doesn\u2019t help the guilt.<\/p>\n

“Fundraising to try and help others not go through the same thing as me helps a lot.” Nicki said she had always been interested in mental health, having studied clinical psychology at university.<\/p>\n

\u201cI applied for a charity place in the London Marathon with Andy\u2019s Man Club (AMC), but was unsuccessful. I thought, if I\u2019m running in memory of my dad, it needs to be for a mental health charity, which is why it\u2019s so good that it\u2019s for Rethink Mental Illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got the call the day before my daughter\u2019s birthday and they emailed me a message to say I\u2019d made it into the race for Rethink because someone had an injury. I was sat in my car crying; I just thought, this is really, really weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicki said: \u201cOver the next few weeks I\u2019ll be fundraising and it\u2019s also about getting that awareness out there, that there are places like AMC and that Samaritans have free numbers you can ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you know you can make Grimsby Live a preferred source of news in Google, which will mean you get more of our breaking news, exclusives, and must-read stories straight away? Here’s more information<\/a> about what this means and how to do it – you can also do it straight away by clicking here<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018My dad wasn\u2019t able to get the support he desperately needed\u2019 Nicki Smith at her graduation with her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1315,27,1317,1316],"class_list":{"0":"post-1784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-grimsby","9":"tag-london","10":"tag-london-marathon","11":"tag-mental-health"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}