Lottie Tomlinson is Winning Exchangeopening up about a difficult time. 

The influencer, whose brother is One Direction alum Louis Tomlinson, got candid about what it was like for her and her siblings to grieve the death of mother Johannah Deakin and youngest sister Félicité Tomlinson in short succession.

"Losing mum was so hard," Lottie told TheTimes in an interview published July 24. "I was only a teenager but at least I knew that her death was a possibility, even though she didn’t accept it."

Johannah—who died in December 2016 after a battle with leukemia—had asked Lottie, Louis and Félicité, as well as 20-year-old twin daughters Phoebe Tomlinson and Daisy Tomlinson, to keep her cancer diagnosis a secret in the lead up to her death. 

“It was hard because you feel so isolated, but I understood," Lottie shared. "Louis was in the public eye, and she didn’t want him questioned. She was determined to fight it and didn’t want everyone pitying her."

But that was only the beginning of the family’s tragedy. Three years later, the youngest Tomlinson sibling Félicité died of an accidental overdose at age 18. 

"The pain was indescribable," Lottie recalled. "I kept thinking, ‘Why me? This can’t be happening again. When is this going to end?’"

At first, the Tanologist founder said she struggled to deal with her grief, confessing that she got "really drunk to numb the pain" at the funeral. 

"I couldn’t come to terms with it," Lottie continued. "I can’t even remember how we organised it."

But eventually, her maternal instincts kicked in, and Lottie—who is now mom to son Lucky, 23 months, and is expecting baby No. 2 with fiancé Lewis Burton—stepped up to make sure her younger siblings had the parental care they deserved. 

"My instinct was to take over as the eldest girl and step into my mum’s shoes," she explained, "so that is what I did.”

As for Louis? Lottie revealed that the singer—who was in the process of embarking on a solo career at the time—provided significant monetary help for the family. As she put it, “He’s incredibly generous."

Lottie added, "We looked after each other.”

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