Motivational speaker Pete Cohen pays tribute to inspiring wife Hannah who passed away after long battle with brain cancer

Pete Cohen, 53, said Hannah Bradley-Cohen, 38, ‘kept fighting right until the end’ after being diagnosed with a brain tumour following a seizure in November 2021.

Pete said Hannah passed away on May 19 and he has announced that her funeral will be live-streamed at 12pm on Friday, June 2.

Pete said: “People have been following her story for such a long time – people in America, people in Australia, people all over the world – so why just keep it to ourselves?”

He said: “Hannah’s motto literally was ‘just get on with it’ and everything that she demonstrated in her life, long before I met her, was someone who was all about ‘let’s just get on with this’, whatever it is.”

He added: “She would want people on the back of this to just get on with their lives, to maybe be inspired and to lean in. That’s what she did. She leaned in to things that were difficult and uncomfortable.”

Hannah, who owned the Sussex quilting business The Bespoke Quilter, had previously been diagnosed with a brain tumour 13 years ago. She underwent successful treatment for her anaplastic astrocytoma in the USA in 2011 and remained cancer-free for a decade after that. When a recent MRI revealed a reoccurrence of the tumour, Pete and Hannah started raising £250,000 for new pioneering treatment on GoFundMe. They were also helped by their friend from Hassocks Jenny Jackson who set up her own GoFundMe campaign.

Pete said they went to Germany in 2022 for a procedure where Hannah’s four tumours were treated with viruses. He said: “She had the most incredible results. Three of the tumours basically disappeared and the treatment really worked. There was one tumour that was left and it was getting smaller and smaller.”

Pete said Hannah, who had to have scans every month, ‘came back to life’. He explained: “She was able to walk, she was thinking better, everything was better. Then she got Covid in December 2022 and we didn’t see really what was going on, but very slowly after that she started to get worse.”

He said the right side of her body began to ‘close down’ and she had trouble thinking before she lost her sight. Eventually, he said Hannah was admitted to St Peter & St James Hospice where she spent 19 days before she died.

Pete said: “She never complained, she kept fighting right until the end and she just had a massive impact, especially on the people in the hospice.”

Pete thanked the hospice for their amazing work and also thanked everyone who has been involved in Hannah’s journey. He said: “Hannah really impacted a lot of people’s lives and I'm massively grateful to everyone’s who’s supported us.”

Details of Hannah's funeral can be found at www.facebook.com/Itspetecohen. People who would like to support St Peter & St James Hospice can visit stpjhospice.org.