How one dad helped his children through unimaginable tragedy

Stuart Green and his three children faced unthinkable tragedy when the mother of his three children, Mia Mascarinas-Green, shot while driving the children home from school.

The human rights and environmental laywer was hit in the head by nine bullets during a 2017 attack near their home in the Philippines.

The gunmen then turned the gun on the children who were sitting in the back seat – but the gun reportedly miraculously jammed. The 18-month-old twins and their nine-year-old sister were physically unharmed – although left with the mental scars of witnessing the attack.

Within days of the murder – which has led to an ongoing case in the Philippines – the British-born marine biologist moved back to the UK with the children.

A Global Witness report in 2015 found that killings of environmental activists were increasing – with at least 116 murdered in 2014. The NGO found the worst-hit countries at the time were Brazil, Colombia, Honuduras and the Phillippines.

The dad-of-three is keen to stress that they have not ‘bounced back’ from the tragedy, but instead have bounced forward, and he has chronicled how his family emerged from the darkness in his book, The Regenerate Leap.

Drawing on his work as an ocean regeneration advisor, Green highlights the surprising parallels between ocean regeneration and both family and business life to show how damaged ecosystems and devastated lives both possess the capacity to emerge stronger than before.

It’s about not just surviving after tragedy, but thriving, he insists.

“Everyone kept saying just be resilient,” says Green, 54. “But resilience is about going back to the past, and there was no past for us – Mia was gone.

“We had to leave the country because the kids are eyewitnesses to the murder. So we left everything in 10 days – we lost Mummy, and for security reasons we then lost our home, job, schools, everything. So we literally had three bags, but we were lucky because we were able to come back to the UK.

“I had three little faces looking at me for answers I did not have, and I was supposed to be strong while my whole world was falling apart. So we started from scratch – they didn’t need magic, they didn’t need too many answers, they just needed me to be there.”

Green wrote 500 journals over the subsequent years, describing them as “my only place to put my sanity”, but it was only about 18 months ago, when he sensed his children could “just be children again” and were finally able to have fun, that he felt he could explore what happened and the process his family had come through.

“I wanted to look at the steps you can walk your family through to come out of what was a pretty horrendous situation and get to a place where the kids miss Mummy and always will do, but we’re all willing to move on with our lives,” he explains.

Green’s own Regenerate Leap was about learning how to guide his children despite his own grief, and he stresses that as well as being for business and community leaders, his book is for parents facing crises that tear their families apart, like death, divorce and trauma, who still need to provide hope and stability for their children.

He says the twins – a boy and a girl now aged 10 who he calls James and Grace Jr in the book – don’t really remember what happened to their mother, although his son had nightmares afterwards, shouting ‘Go away bad man!’.

His elder daughter, named Grace Sr in the book, remembered what happened, has had counselling and is now 18 and studying law at university. “She’s decided to fully confront the devils in her mind, and she’s flipped it so that she now wants to follow Mummy in her exact career path,” says her proud dad.

Green “reframed” what happened as a car accident to his younger children until they were aged about eight, and they had trauma counselling before he told them what really happened to their mother.

“They remembered,” he says, “but it’s really been hidden deep down, so we’ve had to pull it out and reframe it for them.

“I think it’s very important that they understand what happened and not to be scared about it. And the way we’ve framed it is that Mummy was very brave, and she stood for her principles on certain things, and these people didn’t like that, but we will always stand for our principles.

“And you can’t let people come in and kill you to silence you. For me, that’s a very important narrative within our family, that we stand behind Mia and everything she did. We are very proud of her for standing up for her principles.”

In a bid to help other families and leaders come through crises stronger than they were before, Green outlines a Regenerate Framework in his book to help them understand that “their deepest wounds can become their greatest sources of strength and wisdom”.

The framework has three phases – raze, where you clear away what no longer serves a purpose and recognise your new reality; enrich, where you build the capability you need for the future, gaining new skills and support systems; and grow, where you emerge stronger than you were before the crisis by adapting your approach based on your new reality.

He explains: “Basically, it’s like a forest fire – everything burns down, you raze, you clear out, and if that leaves some lovely compost, you need to seed the compost and build that. And then you get to the grow phase. But you need to go through each of the three phases – you can’t just jump to grow without going through enrich or raze.”

He advises parents who’ve experienced a crisis not to try and understand it initially. “Just focus on what you have control over in the first few days, the sense-making will come over time,” he says.

“Then find your angels – who’s really there for you, whether it’s your family or your friends, and lean on them. Without some of the angels that I had in those first days, I wouldn’t have got through it.”

Green recalls that he and the kids didn’t laugh for many months after Mia’s death, and then one night he did pizza for dinner, and burned it badly.

“It was like death by daddy pizza,” he remembers. “I got really upset about it, and my eldest just started laughing, and then we all laughed. And it was the first time I realised you can still be happy.

“We call it happy-sad, but you don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying life. Slowly when you’re ready, let joy come back into your life. My joy really has been working with the kids, they’ve become my full purpose, my energy – I wouldn’t have got through that whole experience without them.”

So are they happy again now?

“Happy-sad,” he says. “It’s like the British weather – some days are lovely and sunny and some days are wintry and rainy. But there’s definitely more sunny days now.”

The Regenerate Leap by Stuart Green is independently published, priced £14.46. Available now.