When Marie Poggi left home, she’d spent 15 years sharing a bed with her mother.
“I left home when I was 19, so from four to 19-years-old we slept in the same bed,” she said.
The co-sleeping started after her parents separated and “never stopped”.
“I slept in my own bed before my father kicked us out and we went to live with my grandparents because we had nowhere to go,” she said.
The French mother and daughter shared a bedroom in her grandparent’s house in Marseille.
“We didn’t have any other choice but to share the same bedroom, so we were sleeping in the same bed, and then my Pop passed away and my Grandma was on her own, so we decided to all sleep together in the same bedroom,” she said.
The 29-year-old said she didn’t want her grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, to sleep alone.
Years passed. By the time Marie was turned 16, her grandmother had also passed away.
“I had my own bedroom but I didn’t want to sleep on my own. I didn’t know what it was like to sleep alone. I don’t even remember that,” she said.
“I could have slept on my own if I wanted to. We tried, but I would always go into my Grandma’s bed.”
Marie was in the middle of her “horrible” teenage years and formed a “love, hate” relationship with her mother, Evelyne.
Marie is an only child. Image supplied.
"I don't even know why, but I was so angry at everything and I hated the world and my life, and who I was, so I feel sorry for what I did to her [my mother].
"I was a very bad teenager, I did a lot of things. I was just a rebel," said Mrs Poggi.
But every night - even in those years - Marie would sleep in the same bed as her mother - in her grandmother's room.