Jill Halfpenny has spoken about finding love again after the death of her partner Matt Janes.
The Byker Grove actress, 48, felt “cursed” when she lost Matt in 2017 to a fatal heart attack that mirrored the death of her father Colin four decades earlier.
Colin passed away at the age of 36 after suffering a heart attack during a five-a-side football match. Jill was only four years old.
Appearing on The One Show on Wednesday, Jill confirmed she is “in love” again, although she didn’t give any details about her new relationship.
She said: “When you lose a partner, a romantic relationship, sometimes it can feel a bit like a betrayal if you move on and it’s not.
Jill Halfpenny has spoken about finding love again after the death of her partner Matt Janes.
The former EastEnders actress, 48, felt “cursed” when she lost Matt in 2017 to a fatal heart attack which mirrored the death of her father Colin four decades earlier (Jill and Matt pictured in 2016).
Appearing on The One Show on Wednesday, Jill confirmed she is ‘in love’ again although she did not give any details about her new relationship.
‘You are absolutely allowed to be happy again. If you do the process, the healing, and the work, you will be able to enter into another relationship and be happy again.
‘If you haven’t managed to do that work, there will always be a part of you somewhere else. “I feel like I deserve to be happy and I feel happy and it’s really nice to be in love again.”
The star, who appeared on the show alongside Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, has written a new memoir, A Life Reimagined: My Journey of Hope in the Midst of Loss.
Jill shared how important it was for her to be honest with her son Harvey about the struggles she was going through after Matt’s passing.
She said: “When my partner died, I really wanted my son to know that you can feel a lot of pain and suffer, but you can get through it.”
‘I think it’s an important lesson for a child. Tell them: I will be fine, this will take some time but everything will be fine. I didn’t want to hide it from him.
‘I wanted to be honest and say I’m struggling but I’ll be fine. “I hope he learned a lot from that.”
It comes after Jill said Matt’s tragic death finally helped her grieve her late father.
Jill, who has a new memoir published, also appeared on Thursday’s This Morning with Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley.
During her One Show interview, Jill said: ‘You’re allowed to be happy again. “If you do the process and the healing, you can get into another relationship and be happy again.”
He added: “If you haven’t managed to do that work, there will always be a part of you somewhere else.” “I feel like I deserve to be happy and I feel happy and it’s really nice to be in love again.”
The actress is sorry to have lost Matt, then 43, also to a heart attack, which forced her to confront her father’s grief, as she spoke with The Sunday Times Magazine about his new book.
Determined not to completely shut down and lead a “miserable” life from then on, Jill vowed that this time she would not “bury her pain” and dedicated herself to learning how to mourn Colin.
Jill remembered the day Matt died, how he woke her up while she was on her way to a spin class.
The couple was trying for a baby and shared one last loving look as Jill shuffled to the bathroom to urinate on an ovulation stick.
The actress went back to sleep before she was woken up by a knock on the front door and turned around to see that she had 17 missed calls.
He ran to Matt’s gym in Crouch End and found him lying on the floor. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.
The first person Jill called was her mother, who knew the scenario very well.
“I was calling her to tell her the news about Matt, but I was still thinking about her, that she knows exactly how this feels,” Jill said.
“And I could hear it in her voice, I could hear that she knew I was about to go on the same journey.”
Jill’s family policy after her father’s death was not to mention him. The only thing that remained of her presence was a photograph of him on her mother’s nightstand.
Jill told The Sunday Times that Matt’s tragic and sudden death finally helped her grieve her late father.
Jill has now revealed that losing Matt, then 43, similarly forced her to confront her father’s grief, as she spoke to The Sunday Times about her new book, A Life Reinvented: My Journey of Hope Amid of loss (Picturd in 2016)
Determined not to completely shut down and lead a “miserable” life from then on, Jill vowed that she would not “bury her pain” this time and dedicated herself to learning to mourn Colin (pictured in 2019).
Jill said she didn’t blame her mother, as she knew it was an attempt to protect her and her siblings.
“I thought: I’m not going to follow the same path,” he explained about his new vision of grief. “If I accept it, I will not repeat history, I will not bury my pain again.
And I knew I had to mourn my father. This was the moment. “It’s happening,” I told myself. “Let’s do double.”
In March, Jill said the grief she suffered after Matt’s death made her a “better person”, and revealed she had found love again seven years later.
‘There was a sense of feeling cursed when Matt died after what happened to my dad. How can that happen twice?’ he told Prima magazine.
“That led me to therapy to investigate those feelings because I thought, ‘I’m not going to live that narrative.'”
The West End veteran spoke of her “unprocessed grief” which grew after her father’s death and which “manifested” in “anger” and “shame”.
‘I was in my twenties when I realized that a lot of my behavior was due to this unprocessed pain. “I got divorced, I stopped drinking alcohol and then everything seemed very clear to me: the pieces of the puzzle fell into place,” she said.
But learning to deal with pain again at 40 has made her a “better person” as she now knows how to be kinder to herself.
‘Pain has made me a better person. Processing the pain has softened me and I have become less critical of myself. “I’m my own worst critic, but I’ve gotten better,” he said.
Jill remembered the day Matt died, how he woke her up while she was on her way to a spin class (pictured in 2016).
He has written his memoirs about learning to cope with deep pain, as he believes it should be “talked about” even though it is “disturbing.”
She said: “There is this idea that you shouldn’t talk about grief because it will be upsetting.” But I need to talk about it; I want Matt in the room with me. I want to keep it alive in my mind.
Jill was previously married to actor Craig Conway from 2007 to 2010 and they are parents to son Henry, 16.
She found love again with her boyfriend Ian, who has been her “cheerleader” as she processes her grief.
“It sounds really cheesy, but I think Ian and I met at the perfect time,” she said.
“After Matt died, I didn’t know if I would ever meet anyone again, but Ian is my cheerleader; I know I’ve met someone I love and who loves me.”
