When Lisa Madill found out her 25-year-old daughter had been murdered, she felt incapacitated with grief. The pain was made worse by the fact that Shannon had been missing for seven months since late 2014, and it was her husband who did it.

Madill, 58, described the experience as being constantly hit in the head by a two-by-four.

"So you get the first impact of the shock of her being missing, then you get the shock of them not being able to find her," she said.

"The shock of them saying expect not to find her, and then you get called into the police station and they say, 'We have her, we found her. She's dead, murdered.' And not only that, but the fact that it was her husband that had done it — someone we had taken into our home and that we'd been supporting these seven months."

'If I don't wake up tomorrow, that's OK'

The shock of that news sent Madill into a deep depression.

"I had a hard time getting out of bed, I couldn't eat, I wasn't sleeping," she said.

Shannon Madill was reported missing in late 2014. Her husband eventually admitted to killing her and is now serving a life sentence. (Calgary Police Service)

Shannon Madill was a budding actress with a quirky sense of humour. She was the kind of daughter who — on her mother's birthday one year — performed a surprise stand-up comedy routine for her at the Calgary Fringe Festival.

"She loved to be the centre of attention," Lisa Madill said.

At her lowest point, Madill said she almost lost the will to live.

"If I don't wake up tomorrow, that's OK," she recalled some of the earlier dark thoughts. "I wouldn't want to kill myself, but definitely that wouldn't be such a bad thing."

It was around this time in 2015 when she met Geoff Starling, a fitness trainer from Australia at a support group for victims of homicide.

'Come to the gym and punch things!'