Julie Thomason's son was just four weeks old when a police officer knocked on her door.

Charles Donald Thomason, Sr., age 29, of Atlanta, died September 29 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. He is survived by his wife, Julie Kinsey Thomason, and his two children, Kinsey Berry Thomason, age 22 months, and Charles (Charlie) Donald Thomason, Jr., age one month.

Charles Thomason's obituary from last year is brief, and at only 29 years old, so was his life - but that doesn't mean it wasn't jam-packed with family, friends, cute text messages, laughs, in-jokes... and of course, love.

More than anything, there was a heck of a lot of love.

"He was my best friend and my person," Charles' wife, Julie, tells Mamamia over the phone from her home in Atlanta, Georgia in the US.

"He remembered everything, which came in handy when it was Christmas, but did not come in handy when it came to fights! He was so smart, so hilarious, just like a good old guy. Loved a dirty joke, as I do too. And just was fun to be around.

"He had more friends than anybody I know of. He was such a good husband, dad, friend, son, brother, I mean, you name it. He was really one of those people that made an effort to connect with everybody he met and really listened when you talked and was super thoughtful."

Julie and Charles met in her senior year of high-school, and dated from the time she was 21.

"We grew up together, in a sense of adulthood. We had been together for 10 solid years. We talked about everything together; we had a 21-month-old little baby girl and a newborn baby boy. Life with him at the time was just absolutely blissful."

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And then suddenly a policeman knocked on their door, and the world stopped.

It has been 13 months since Charles died, and for Julie, it seems she is now living a whole other life.

"It has felt like seven years. I think because every single day, especially at the beginning of grief, feels like you cannot get through another day, and every five minutes feels like hours on end. And you really don't know how you're gonna get through the next hour," she explains.

"Every week gets a little bit better, and every month gets a little bit better. And you slowly but surely start having more better days than worse days. And all of a sudden, you know, I laughed genuinely. It's like, Oh, my gosh, you know what, that's not a fake laugh, I'm actually communicating with somebody, I actually paid attention in that conversation. Because the beginning is such a fog, it's almost like you're just a skeleton sitting there watching the world go fast forward around you. And there's nothing you can do about it. Everybody's lives move on, but yours is just stuck."

What helped Julie was pouring out her grief and heartache on her Instagram page. She doesn't shy away from talking about the rawness and intensity of her loss, nor does she shy away from posting some very funny videos and messages. The juxtaposition isn't cumbersome - it just adds to the authenticity of the Julie's life. After all, life is a mish-mash of everything and anything all at once.

Her content has struck a chord with people, and she now has close to 145K followers on Instagram. It has also caught the attention of the US media, with Julie recently appearing on heavyweight morning show Today and penning a piece for them on the lessons she has learned in a year of being a widow. She has also featured on a number of parenting and grief podcasts.

Not bad for someone who couldn't even speak at either of her brothers' weddings and hated English class growing up.

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"From where I was at the beginning to where I am now is just a complete one-eighty. I would have never ever in my life guessed that I would be where I am today; up and moving around every day, taking care of my kids by myself, starting a new business by myself. You know, showering and putting on makeup and putting on clothes!" Julie says with a laugh.

"Those little things you don't really think much of when you're not grieving but when something traumatic happens, are huge milestones. It's just crazy. I remember a month or two after he passed, I sent a text message to my friend saying, 'Hey, I made my bed today'. You know, how big of an accomplishment that was. And then here I am, with my career just blowing up and getting all these amazing opportunities.

"It's like, I'm actually making an impact on other people's lives, when it's helping me heal as well. It's wonderful for me because it helps me move forward and heal and grow. And then I get so many messages a day saying, 'Thank you for sharing your story because I needed to hear that today'. So it's just been an amazing, crazy, awful, wonderful, beautiful, terrible year."

While it has been humbling and gratifying to receive so many messages of support from her followers, it has also sometimes been difficult to take in the shared trauma of loss.

"Some days, I can't look at my DMs or I just turn off my phone because it just is so heavy. I already have this capacity for grief and sadness. It's pretty full. And so there's certain days where I can handle it and I can talk to people and I can call them, send them voice messages, I give people my phone number, I'll talk to whoever about whatever. And then there are some days where I do not have the capacity for it," Julie says.

"I'm pretty aware of my own emotions, where I know what I can handle and what I can't that day. But it definitely is very heavy, and something that I wasn't expecting to carry when I started sharing it. Because then I'm also carrying other people's grief with me. As an empathetic person, it's impossible not to. But I think it has become part of my calling and part of my new journey."

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Since her children are so young - Kinsey is almost three and Charlie is one - it's important for Julie to ensure the children remember their father.

Luckily, she has always been one of those people who documented life. Her Instagram feed is littered with bright and bittersweet memories, like a video of Charles singing to her pregnant belly and photos of him holding both her and their children close.

"I've had so many people say, 'I can't believe how many videos and pictures you have of Charles and the kids even though they're so young'," she says. "I've made a whole album of videos and photos of him that we look at almost daily. His pictures are covering their rooms and we tell stories and all those things. I think just talking about him, and looking through those whenever my toddler asks, I'll pull them out. She remembers him. It's kind of crazy. And with Charlie, we're just going to have to do that a little bit more, I think."

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In amongst all the photos and videos are ones that capture the epic love story between Julie and Charles. The week that he passed away, Julie wrote a heart-wrenching post on Instagram. "They say you don’t realise what you have until it’s gone but that’s not true for me," she wrote. "I knew exactly what I had. One in a million. And I tried my best to tell him daily."

Julie misses her husband. Every day.

"I miss the comfort of him. I remember at the beginning, saying, he was so warm. And now I'm just forever gonna be cold. I don't know why that stuck with me but he was like my personal heater. And his humour was something else. Now I just text with his friends quite often because no one gets his humour except for me and a couple of his best friends. Because it was like all an inside joke. Him and I just had so many inside jokes. Because when you're together for 10 years and you watch a million movies, you tend to just quote things," she says.

"And one of my favourite things we did all the time, which my mum still brings up, which I almost forgot about - which is crazy because we did it all the time - was we talked in British accents to each other when we talked on the phone. Every single time I called him or he called me, we'd be like, [imitates British accent] 'How are you, how are you doing?' I don't know why, I don't know when it started, but that's just what we did. And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I haven't talked in a British accent in a whole year!'

"It's the little things that you almost forget about until somebody brings it up that you miss the most. It's not the big things. It's all the little pieces that put together make up your life together. It's Kinsey running up to the door when he came home and us having Taco Tuesdays every Tuesday. There's a million things. I don't think I can say there is one thing and I think I'll remember little things for the rest of my life that I go, 'Oh my goodness, I forgot about that'."

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Several of Julie's followers on social media have commented on the love between her and Charles, and lamented the fact they have not yet found "their person" the way she found hers.

"That makes me cry daily that so many people are like, 'I can't believe you found that kind of love because I haven't ever found that'. Of course, you know, you don't really talk about it when they're alive because it sounds like bragging! It's just crazy that I've gotten that response from multiple people," she says. "I know several people that are in their 40s that are just now finding the love of their life. It just takes it takes time. And you know, I found mine young, but I lost mine young."

It's this kind of interaction with her followers that has provided a lifeline of sorts for Julie.

"When you put something on social media, you can connect with others. Grief is just so lonely. I knew other people would be grieving, and maybe I could connect with somebody, and maybe I could talk with somebody that day that was going through something similar," she says.

"It just kind of snowballed from me just kind of saying where I was on that day, at that time, at that hour, to now, where I talk to hundreds of people a day about their grief and how you can find joy again and how you can keep going, even though this awful thing happened.

"It doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to end your life. You still have things to do. You still have places to go."

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You can follow Julie Thomason on her Instagram @spilledmilkmamma.