June Shannon is opening up about what’s been the hardest part of this last year as she reflects on the anniversary of her daughter Anna Cardwell’s death.

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the anniversary, the Mama June: Family Crisis star, 45, shared that it’s been a difficult year since her daughter Anna died on Dec. 9, 2023, after being diagnosed with stage four adrenal carcinoma in January of that year.

Anna is survived by 12-year-old daughter Kaitlyn from a previous relationship, as well as 8-year-old daughter Kylee, whom she shares with ex Michael Cardwell.

Asked what the hardest part of this past year without Anna has been, Shannon says, “Her just not being here for the girls, and a lot s— has happened.”

“We had to go through a custody battle that we won. We also had to deal with Michael taking Kylee away from everybody here and moving to Alabama,” she shares, referring to Cardwell and her younger granddaughter. “We made sure that we stayed in Georgia because we were going to move out of state and move away.”

In September, Shannon won custody of granddaughter Kaitlyn after a lengthy court battle with her former son-in-law Cardwell. Although he is not the father of Kaitlyn, he began dating Anna in 2013 when Kaitlyn was 8 months old and filed to regain custody and visitation of his stepdaughter in December 2023.

This past June, Shannon opened up about keeping her late daughter’s husband Eldridge Toney, whom she was married to at the time of her death, involved in her granddaughter’s life, saying that it’s what her daughter would’ve wanted.

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the midseason premiere of Mama June: Family Crisis, the reality TV star shared more about how she’s been stepping up to care for her granddaughter Kaitlyn, who lived with Shannon and her husband Justin Stroud following Cardwell’s death in December.

“It is kind of an adjustment for me and Justin because honestly, the first year of our relationship, we didn’t have any kids in the house,” Shannon, who married Stroud in 2022, told PEOPLE. “And then it came where Anna and Eldridge and the kids moved into our house before she passed away and now Kaitlyn’s there and it’s just an adjustment period.”

“But it’s not a bad one because if something’s going on, I’m going to call Pumpkin and then put it in our family group chat and say, ‘Hey, this is going on,’ ” she continued, referencing daughter Lauryn, 24.

“And we just try to, I’ll be honest with you, even with Eldridge, we try to bring him in because Anna would want [him] to be a part of it, for sure,” Shannon said. “So we do bring Eldridge in a lot on some stuff and then some stuff we just keep as a family and just try to really figure it out.”