Karen Bell tells: I've found joy again!

The arrival of a baby girl has brought a new chapter of delight into the life of Karen Bell. She tells how she is healing from tragedy and embracing a hopeful future.

With her beautiful baby girl sleeping soundly in her arms, a beaming Karen Bell is in a “very happy place”. That happiness is something Karen, clearly born to be a mother, thought she’d never glimpse again. Then, on Valentine’s Day this year, she received the ultimate gift of love – a much-wished-for daughter, Eva Rose. As Karen sits cuddling her cute little bundle and drinking her in through a blur of joyful tears, the happy moment isn’t lost on her.

Little Eva, along with her brother Connor, 22 months, and the love of her partner and “rock”, Dean Gray, have allowed Karen to experience an emotion that had been out of her reach for some time – overwhelming joy. “This is just wonderful,” says Karen, smiling, as Connor bounds across a vast golden paddock to cuddle his baby sister. “Look at me. I have a little boy and a little girl. Good things are happening.”

If anybody deserves “good things” in life, it’s Karen, now 36. When Woman’s Day first met her in 2008, she was a broken woman, the victim of the most unspeakable act of cruelty. After she escaped a violent and abusive 15-year marriage, her husband Gary Poxon took their three children – Jack, 8, Maddie, 7, and Bon, 16 months – and murdered them before killing himself. Consumed by unrelenting grief, Karen told Woman’s Day then that there would be no coming back from this horror. She would never know happiness again. Nor could she ever love or trust a man again.

“How wrong was I? And how glad I am that I was,” she says, leaning in to nuzzle Dean, 42, the man she credits with helping turn her life around. He had been a long-time family friend, and in her most anguished hours of grief he was always there to offer a shoulder to cry on. “I could never have met a better guy, or a better dad, than Dean,” Karen says. “We were friends first and love progressed from there. “I do marvel at the progress I’ve made. It’s still very hard when I think about the kids. The pain is still as hard and as real as when it first happened, but you learn to live with it. That pain becomes a part of you. It’s always there, but you can keep it on the backburner a bit.” Karen admits there were moments “I thought it was the end of life. I’m so glad I was wrong.”