Thursday 16 April 2009

Why going mad and nearly dying isn't, necessarily, a bad thing...

The wonderful Claire Allen (who is actually a real proper journalist and published author of MULTIPLE books) has asked me here: http://diaryofamadmammy.blogspot.com/2009/04/world-according-to-mom.html to write about the 5 best things about being a mum.

It's part of some sort of blogging experiment so no doubt I will totally cock it up. Experiments and me tend to be a dangerous combination - I'm still trying to recover from the day I let cold water siphon back up into my boiling hot test tube and exploded glass and Potassium Permanganate across the entire Chemistry Lab. I had to be sent away for decontamination.....

Anyway as tempting as it is to write:

1. Child Benefit.
2. Free Dental Work for a year.
3. Free prescriptions for a year.
4. An excuse to eat birthday cake more times a year than you otherwise would.
5. No need to spend anymore money on bikinis as I will never be going near one ever again....

I will actually go all serious on you for a moment and say that I will put all 5 things in 1 giant big one and say this:

My children have undone me. They have deconstructed me and taken me apart.

Between them they look me into the labyrinth of my own mind and showed me how it feels to lose it. They took to me to the precipice of death and let me look over the edge - and then they called me back again. They showed me how it feels to be imprisoned by your own mind with the people you love most in the world on the other side of the bars. They gave me a new definition of pain, of loss, of guilt and of depression.

They stripped me of what I thought I was and took me away from where I thought I belonged in the world. They shipped me to a foreign country from which I thought there was no way home.

And then?

They rebuilt me. It was they who taught me how to walk again. How to keep putting one foot in front of the other even when the journey seemed impossible and the top of the hill invisible. It was my children who taught me where I really belonged in the world - this new home of motherhood.

My children - you have shown me, the hard way, what courage is and made me prove how hard I will fight to be your mother again. To hold you without charade or pain or fear.

You have taught me who the real me is - far from faultless - but your mother. Forever, yours. In eternity. Because even when I'm not here - I will be with you.

So thank you. Thank you for taking me apart and rebuilding a truer, better, stronger me.

I would change nothing because when you have stood on the brink of eternal darkness and you get the chance to turn back towards the sun, everything is touched by a golden light. Whilst you fear the shadows you revel in the warmth.

Your beauty, your laughter, your delight in the small and shock at the old. Your energy, your light and your eternal love.

So thank you for everything, for proving the power of a mother's love. For taking me home and giving me a better future.

Motherhood - the hardest and the greatest thing I ever did and keep on doing.

(Are you crying yet? Because I bloody well am!).

Right I can get back to shouting at them for unravelling the loo roll now.....

13 comments:

  1. Yes... yes I'm crying.
    Well done.
    x

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  2. I always cry when I read your blog, usually it's because I'm laughing enough to wet my pants...but this was something else. x

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  3. Thanks everyone - that means a lot to me.
    xxx

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  4. Yes, I'm crying, and only moments before I have to run out to do the school run.

    Thank god for huge sunglasses.

    Thank you for such a stunning post.

    XXX

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  5. Me too crying. normally with hysterical laughter but thats a lovely post

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  6. I'm crying too as someone above said - I normally cry with laughter - Vicky you are a fantastic writer and I am sure a mother xxxxx

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  7. I think you are a remarkable lady

    Barbara
    SparklesSimpleStuff.blogspot.com

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  8. Thank you to everyone who read this and was touched by it. It is now going to be published in a local parenting newsletter (cheers Kat!) so a whole new sector of my home town will get to read about my piles and inability to dispose correctly of dead rabbits...

    No seriously - thank you. More than one person has told me that it gave them an insight into depression they had never experienced before - and if that helps one person, whichever side of the insanity they are trapped on, then I've more than done my job.

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  9. Wow. Absolutely amazing wow.

    I thought I had read your blog 'cover to cover' as it were, but I only found this post today and I had goosebumps and tears in my eyes reading it. As someone who suffers from depression, I get you. I totally get you. You are fab xxxx

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  10. Thanks Clare - that means a lot to me. That is one of those posts that I just wrote as it flowed out - from the heart. I wish you all the best.

    xxxx

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  11. wow, I'm crying too - and I still have tears of laughter from the last posts running down my face. That'll teach me to read so many in one sitting - emotional rollercoaster! xx

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