Lottie Tomlinson, the younger sister of One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, has opened up about the tragic passing of her mum and her sister.
Lottie and Louis’ mum, Johannah Deakin, sadly passed away in 2016 after a battle with leukaemia.
When Johannah passed, she left behind seven children - Lottie, Louis, Félicité, twins Phoebe and Daisy and twins Doris and Ernest.
The Tomlinson family also faced heartbreak when Félicité passed away in March 2019 at the age of 18.
Now, Lottie has reflected back on the maternal role she took on after her mum passed away to help her younger siblings grieve.
While appearing on Lorraine, Tomlinson, who was just 18 when her mum died, explained, “I think it was such a natural instinct for me and I credit my mum for that because she instilled this really maternal instinct into us all and I think when something like that happens, you go into a survival mode, an instinct mode".
“Straight away, I knew that the little ones needed me and I wanted to do whatever I could to make things easier for them”.
“It kind of just came naturally but, you know, it was such a life-changing experience for me to have that responsibility. I think it's really set the tone for everything else that happened in my life since that”.
Lottie also spoke about her younger sister’s tragic death, admitting, “I think it was just really hard that we knew we were going to have to go back to square one and deal with it all again”.
“I think when something as big as losing a parent happens you never expect it to get any worse than that and then it did so, yeah, it was a really tough time for the whole family but I think we’ve really stuck together and we managed to come out the other side”.
Lottie recently welcomed some happy news as earlier this month, she announced that she’s expecting her second child with her fiancé Lewis Burton. The couple already share a son named Lucky, whom they welcomed into the world in August 2022.