My mother may not be here in her physical form, but she’s still very much here. She’s still there inside me. I hear her speaking through my sister Antonia. I hear her speaking through my daughters, I hear her speaking through my nieces and nephews. She had such a huge impact on all of our lives.

It’s a loss, but when I dig deep, and I go, “where is she?” She’s still here. I can hear her, feel her, and there are moments when I cry out in my heart. But that’s the pain of life and the pain of love and the pain of a very, very close relationship. It’s also the beauty of it because we were so attached, all of us, the whole family.

Nicole Kidman and her mum Janelle at the 2018 AACTA Awards in Sydney. Credit: Getty

The memory that most seems to capture her essence is resilience. The “get up, and get on with it”. The “pull yourself together”. The “one foot in front of the other, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how bad it gets, you keep moving forward”. And she would say, “you’re a role model now, for your children, you must be that”.

The other thing I feel strongly is her sacrifice for us; that’s a very emotional thing for me because the idea of her sacrificing a huge amount of her life for us, and for our dreams, and for my father’s, has become more resonant as she’s passed. Things that she said now make sense, all the little bits of wisdom.

I desperately still wish she was there because the loss of that voice and guidance is hard. Life is a journey, and the mother [figure], the guide through that, is such a huge part of it.

Mum was incredibly smart. She was always the smartest person in the room. She wasn’t scared to speak her mind. She had sort of a decorum about her,........

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