11 months and a new year – by Simone

by Recover the gift

You would have been 11 months old today my precious girl, and it’s also the beginning of 2016.

 

I normally use a new year to reflect on the year before, the good, the bad, whether I achieved the goals I had set out for myself at the beginning of the previous year, and also to look forward and to set out a few things that I would like to achieve or do in the year ahead.

 

It would be so so easy to say “Good riddance to 2015, it was awful, full of so much tragedy, and most importantly the loss of you” but that would be short-sighted, and also not how I feel. Because 2015 was wonderful in many ways too. Firstly, and most importantly, it was the year in which you were born. 2015 was the year in which we had 7.5 amazing months with you, our precious little girl.

 

2015 was also a year in which your brother developed and changed and grew so so much. It was pretty much half of his life. And to see the change and development in him, his little personality flexing itself every day is amazing!

 

It was also the year we settled into our new home, a home we love, and it was also a good one professionally.

 

2015 was also a year I learnt a huge amount about people and community. About the kindness of strangers, about reaching out to people and allowing people to help you. About how to communicate my thoughts and feelings better. About how not to shut people out in a time when ones natural inclination could just be to “batten down the hatches”. About what it means to have real friends. About the inherent good in people. About rather saying something, even if it’s the “wrong” thing, than not saying anything at all. To not acknowledge somebody’s pain/hardship is far worse than to risk not finding the perfect words.

 

My goals for the year normally include some physical challenge – run some race, do 500 sit ups a day and get a six pack 😄, do half ironman – and then a few things around life-work-family balance, how I want to grow emotionally/mentally. I don’t feel able to make a huge physical commitment this year. I feel like the most important thing physically right now is just to stay fit and healthy and cancer-free (it will be 5 years this year!) and to just concentrate on maintaining a good, healthy balance, and control my stress. And mentally my main goal is just to survive! And to try and “heal” in some way. To try and find some kind of “new normal” for our lives, where we can try to find some kind of joy from things again. I have realized over the last few days how incredibly emotionally fragile I am, how I am pretty much permanently close to tears, and how easily the tears come. And so there is a long way to go on this side of things.

 

So my darling girl, my goals for 2016 aren’t particularly tangible and may seem a bit airy-fairy but here it goes
– to stay healthy and cancer free
– to take a quiet moment every day to be grateful for what I have
– to help those who have experienced similar hardship and who don’t have the support networks we have had
– to treasure every moment with your precious brother and dad and to exercise 100x more patience than what I sometimes have the energy for
– to make you proud of me, as your mom, and as a person. I will honour you every day.

 

I love you baby girl, with everything I have and not a moment goes by that I don’t think of you and miss you with a yearning too deep to ever describe.
Your mom Xx