She took a solo honeymoon after her fiancé died - and found a community

Laura Murphy in Carlingford, Ireland, while on her solo honeymoon in September 2024. Photo / Laura Murphy

Laura Murphy’s TikToks of her trip have helped her connect to thousands of grieving people.

Like scores of honeymooners before her, Laura Murphy documented the dreamy details of her European excursion on social media, like attending a performance of Phantom of the Opera and a James Bay concert and wandering through London bookstores.

But Murphy’s posts have drawn millions of viewers largely because of what is missing.

Murphy, 28, is on a solo honeymoon after her fiancé unexpectedly died the month before their wedding date.

Murphy began documenting the trip on her TikTok account as a way of processing her feelings and hoping to connect with others who had experienced a similar loss. The “grief account”, which began with about 20 followers, mostly her close friends, was also meant to give the bereaved lawyer a reason to leave her hotel room every day.

But her first video under the username @murphs_up was viewed by more than three million people, and about 40,000 people started following her. Murphy has found a grief community she didn’t know existed.

When her partner, Devon O’Grady, 31, died after a sudden cardiac event in May, Murphy got an outpouring of support from her and her fiancé's families but still felt alone in her grief, she said.

“It’s very lonely and isolating because I knew no one my age who had lost a partner,” she told The Washington Post. “I needed to find people who could relate because I wanted to know how to go on.”

While still home in Corner Brook, a small town in Newfoundland, Murphy came across a few young people online who had experienced a loss like hers. She found it “inspiring” that some of them had taken solo trips they had prebooked with their partners.

“I also felt I needed to remove myself from my hometown and our house. I was just sort of sitting there for months not knowing what to do with myself,” she said.

Murphy said she left on the trip to explore “if life is worth living after something like this.” Through her videos she has found comfort in the kindness of strangers online who can relate to her loss, she said.

“I’ve decided to document my journey because grief can be incredibly isolating,” she said in her first TikTok, over a montage of raw video clips from her first day in the city. “Maybe I’ll connect with even one other person who has been through something similar.”

Laura Murphy, left, and her fiancè, Devon O'Grady, with their dog Leni at Murphy's mother's house in Corner Brook in 2022. Photo / Laura Murphy

Murphy’s videos are generally unfiltered and gritty, with darkly lit scenes. The journal-like narrations are heartbreaking, uplifting and tinged with humour all at the same time, as she presents a summary of how she felt at various points in her day. “Grief is not linear,” she says in a video, noting that she can be enjoying herself in one moment and in tears the next.

Murphy met O’Grady in 2021 in St John’s, Newfoundland. She was interviewing for a summer position at a law firm where he worked. Because of an elevator outage, she climbed 12 flights of stairs to the office, only to find she was trapped in the stairwell and the phone in her leather backpack had a dead battery.

O’Grady heard banging on the door and came to rescue her, she said. Later, they told each other that in that moment he had dubbed her “the backpack girl” and she began referring to him as “the cute guy”.

She was hired, and the two formed a friendship until eventually he asked her out. Their first date was to Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America. They watched the sunrise together over the Atlantic Ocean.

He had planned a grand proposal during a vacation in Arizona in March 2023, but he couldn’t even wait to cross the border, Murphy said. O’Grady proposed while they were still at an airport hotel in Toronto.

They planned a June wedding in Murphy’s father’s backyard overlooking the Humber River, and a life together in Corner Brook with their two Bernedoodles: Leni and Chewy.

They had tickets booked for a honeymoon in England in August and then planned to play it by ear and travel more widely.

O’Grady’s death in May is still raw for Murphy. The sudden cardiac event happened while they were both at work, their offices across the hall from each other.

“I won’t go into detail because it’s really traumatic for me,” she said. “I was there for the whole thing.”

Murphy had never travelled alone before the honeymoon. Friends have called her brave to venture out solo, but she said she is just willing to try anything that could give her life meaning.

“It’s very out of character for me to be travelling alone, and it’s even more out of character to be documenting it for the world,” she said. “Before this, I thought of myself as a very private person.”

Her best friend of 25 years, Rebecca Dawson, agrees that Murphy’s decision to travel alone and make TikToks replete with dark, absurdist humour is unexpected.

In one, Murphy jokes about needing “a good cry” between meals. In another, she notes “a nice little ambulance trigger for the morning”, making a reference to her trauma from the day O’Grady died. In another video, she jokes about needing to find work after spending about US$20 on an espresso martini.

“I am shocked at how funny she is in the videos, but it’s helping people relate to her and that’s all she is looking for,” Dawson said.

In the comments of the videos, people from all over the world have reached out, sharing their own experiences of loss, offering to hang out with her, and calling her inspiring.

“Girly I’m a young(ish) widow! You absolutely can do this and it is absolutely worth living,” said one user. “Did the same in Bali after my fiance passing. It will be such a healing experience that you’ll be so thankful you did one day,” said another.

While in London, she met up with another woman experiencing a similar loss and “found it comforting to be able to talk with someone who actually understands.”

Murphy feels overwhelmed but also bolstered by the response she has gotten.

“Getting messages from so many people in similar situations honestly broke my heart,” she said. “I know how painful and heartbreaking it’s been for me and his whole family, but in another sense, it’s also sort of comforting because you know you’re not alone.”