New Year - Fresh Hope.

Today is a special day and a really great way to start this new blog at The Mother Mama. My lovely daughter in law, C., has just emailed the photos from her 12 week pregnancy scan and I'm privileged to see the new life that is my very first grandchild to be! Having been a midwife I've seen a great many images from fetal scans, but to witness the beginnings of another generation of my own family is a different kind of wonderful! All new life is miraculous, but this one is particularly meaningful... 

Over thirty years ago, as a scared and depressed young, single mother, I gave my own baby - his father - up for adoption. There weren't any routine scans back then, not necessarily a bad thing, but after a particularly horrific birth I was fully unprepared for the upcoming tug of war between my new mother heart and my own inadequately parented, child-self.

There were years when I genuinely believed that I would never overcome the separation from my baby son and that it wouldn't be possible for me to truly know happiness again. Despite eventually marrying and going on to have a large family, there would always be a chunk of my heart missing. I learned to live with loss.

Years later we found one another again and began the tentative process of reforming a mother/son relationship based on who we are now, and with no history of shared memories upon which to build. This has meant some determination and the making of conscious choices on both our parts. Each year brings us a little closer and now I feel a sense of such awe and gratitude that I am lovingly  included as part of his own new family to be.

 I am reminded that when we are in the midst of various life traumas we can somehow believe that this is IT - the whole story, and that our perceived failures are an end in themselves. This is not so. Our lives have purpose and meaning, and although it may be a long time before we begin to see the outworking of events that occurred many years previously; there in the background of our daily activities, threads are quietly being woven together to form some spectacular tapestries. Our role is to hold on to hope, learn to love, and patiently trust the process.