A student who died of stab and slash wounds in an horrific car park attack wrote a positive blog about making the most of life just weeks before her death.

Molly McLaren died at the Dockside Shopping Outlet, Chatham, last month and tributes to the popular 23-year-old from Cobham have poured in ever since.

While struggling to deal with their grief, family and friends set up The Molly McLaren Foundation, a JustGiving page, to raise £23,000 to be distributed among charities that support people with eating disorders.

Ms McLaren had battled with bulimia and subsequently anxiety.

The page, which has raised more than £10,000, was inspired by a blog the University of Kent student wrote about her battles with the “darker times” in her life.

Entitled “take your own advice”, the article started with Ms McLaren telling readers she was finally feeling like herself again after “a roller coaster of a few months”.

The former Mayfield Grammar School, Gravesend, pupil, revealed she had received "such lovely feedback" about a blog she wrote a year previously about mental illness and eating disorders that she decided to share another one.

The positive piece, posted on Ms McLaren's Facebook page, urged everyone to aim high, do things they love, smile at people, try to find something good in every day and “push through the storms to find your sunshine”.

In one chilling sentence, Ms McLaren, who also went to North Kent College, Dartford, admitted: "I am a realist and accept that there are many horrible things that we have to deal with in life that are unavoidable, uncontrollable."

"I am a realist and accept that there are many horrible things that we have to deal with in life that are unavoidable, uncontrollable" - Molly in her blog

But the optimistic young woman went on to say: "But what if we took more control over the things that we have the chance to? If we put in 100%, believe we can achieve and radiate positivity?

"I am a firm believer that for many things, we get back what we put in."

She concluded by asking: “Why shouldn’t we get our hopes up about things we are striving for, just because there’s a chance that we don’t get what we hoped for this time. Why shouldn’t we want and HOPE for the best for ourselves?

“It’ll be a sad day when people stop hoping.”

Ms McLaren's former boyfriend Joshua Stimpson, 25, from High Street in Wouldham, Rochester, has been charged with her murder and is due in court later this year.

An inquest into her death has been opened and adjourned until after the court case.