Motherless daughter – my true disability.
Ten years after my mum passed away from cancer, the second biggest thing in my life happened.
Pickles was born.
As a motherless daughter I knew, just knew, that losing Mum would hit me like a speedway train when I had a baby. After she died I told myself that ‘that was it…there was no way I was going to have children without my mum’, because Mum always said “you will be bed ridden for your pregnancy” and “you are going to need all the help you can when you have a baby’. So losing the most important person, my support network, at just 25 years of age shocked me into thinking there was no way I would cope and I convinced myself that I did not want children. ‘Noooo way’. Without my Mum how the hell would I manage?
Nine years later I was pregnant and about to do what I feared the most.
You see, I have a disability. If you saw me standing in a room, you would think I was joking. If you heard me on the phone, you would think I was joking. It’s not until you see me walk that you would realise I do truly have a disability. Its one of those muscular disabilities that Doctors give a ‘really special name’, you know the ones that sound like E.T. made it up.
So how the hell was I going to get through pregnancy especially as a Motherless daughter? I was terrified, I was so terrified.
I had been told from a young age that ‘having children’ was going to be difficult for me. Pregnancy was made out to be a horrible, bed ridden existence for 9 months and parenting…well. That was going to be a lot harder. I guess people expected that because my disability is muscular, my body wouldn’t cope with the physical strain from both pregnancy and motherhood. But my god, I have seen women who are way less able than me become parents, very capable, happy parents.
But I was still terrified!
Thanks to the stories of what it was going to be like for me as a parent, I had a very old belief that I was about to enter some kind of hell. Isn’t it funny how little stories told by parents can become a belief, one so ingrained in your pattern of thinking that fear begins to rule your thoughts. I know Mum was just protecting me, letting me know she would be there for me, warning me that it wouldn’t be easy, but that it’s OK, she’s there for me. She never, in her worst nightmares ever thought she would never be here to share the journey with me. However, the universe decided to tear her away from me way. And the belief, that turned into a sentence for me. One I was not prepared to go through without my Mum.
But, ten years after losing Mum, and 9 months of blissful pregnancy (no sickness, no tiredness and NOOOOOO bed ridden days at all thanks to Bowen Therapy), this motherless daughter became Mummy to a little cherub, a girly cherub, a beautiful, tiny 6lb cherub. And it was then that I realised my true disability.
My disability is not a muscular condition that affects my physical capabilities. My disability is not having my Mum around so that she can she the wonderful job her daughter is doing and to share in Pickles life, the beautiful little person that is her grandaughter!
Little did I know ten years ago that I would become a Mummy. One that does cope. One whose life is so far away from the beliefs that I had, that it would turn my life into something so incredibly beautiful, even as a Motherless Mummy.
The biggest surprise in my story is how much I love being a Mum and how, even with a physical disability, it has become the most successful time of my life.
I love you Mum!
Love always
Pickles and Me
xxxx
Some days I want to curl up in a ball.
Just like the Charles Fuge, Vicki Churchill book, Sometimes I Like to curl up in a ball!
‘Today is a bad day. Today I feel alone. Today…I just want to hide’ I thought curled up under the duvet. ’Where are you Mum?’
I lay in bed curled in a ball listening to Pickles and Daddy downstairs doing the morning rush. I pulled the covers up over my head and sighed.
It’s not that anything is wrong. It’s just some days I wake up and that gaping great hole in my heart is unbearable and all I want to do is curl up in my Mum’s arms and have her cuddle me.
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