When I was pregnant with our first baby we didn’t want to know what we were having … it was exciting enough to know we were have a millennium baby (born in the year 2000) … we were happy either way … during the pregnancy I remember having strong dreams that could be interpreted that I was expecting a girl … I didn’t mind either way … buying clothing was interesting as I loved the greens, yellows & reds … splashes of blue as well as the white, beige and cream … was I nervous about the impending arrival of our baby … a little but it would be what it was …
Mother-daughter relationships are famously complicated, and my relationship with my mother growing up was no different. I have to say that I have tried so hard to do it differently with my own daughter … ohh did I forget that bit … yes I birthed a gorgeous girl in April 2000 and life changed significantly …. nothing could have prepared me for the roller coaster that has happened since her arrival earth side … nearly 17 years to the day she finally made her entry … I am always in awe of her … feel very proud to say that she is my daughter … I’m never surprised when she says “Can I ask a question … ?” Our bond is amazing … do I get frustrated by and with her? Of course … especially the bedroom that needs tidying … she’ll be mortified I’ve shared that … I could go one step further and share photographic evidence … but I won’t 🙂 … I am honoured to say I am her mother.
What have I learnt so far … birth is a journey, not just of a baby but of a maiden into a mother … and there is no rule book, there are no step by step instructions to tell you what to do, they aren’t a piece of flatpack furniture from Ikea … it’s a fly by the seat of your pants experience some days and most definitely nights! It can be a lonely journey and you think you are the only one …. ohh thank goodness for circles of support … when you look at the woman chatting to you and slowly start to open that clam shell you have hidden yourself in and tentatively say how tired you are, how your baby doesn’t sleep, how you are feeling at your wits end with x, y or z … expecting to be told to toughen up, suck it up and get on with it … and low and behold … a new world is opened to you when they say “I know … I understand … little J or B is exactly the same …” …. ohh my goodness the world seems a lot smaller when you know you aren’t alone and that there are lots of other women who are struggling with a, b, c or x, y, z.
I feel honoured to have parented my daughter and I hope there are many more years to come … she is an amazing young lady … she’s embraced challenges of the everyday and bigger ones that have been like climbing Mount Everest but the smile on her face afterwards has been worth it … she has taught me so much … yes some of the lessons I so wished we hadn’t had to journey but they were soul changing and have opened up discussions that we never thought we would embrace … they have challenged us … but we are a strongly connected unit … and accept that these experiences are part of her personal development … helping her become the strong woman that she is and will continue to be ….
Some days I feel like I have been dragged half way up Mount Everest and then left to flounder, slip and slide my way back down … the old saying 10 steps forward 5 steps back …hitting your head against a brick wall … yup that is me on some days when parenting has felt hard … really hard … and other days I have marched my way up to the top of the hill … like the Grand Old Duke of York … and marched back down again … full of beans and fist punching the air that today was a great parenting day … I survived … I made it … and my child is still alive …
My daughter is strong. Stronger in more ways than I ever was at her age. But I look at the societies in which we have both grown up and I have to say I think this is a much tougher audience to please and in some ways I know sometimes we say “ohh I wish we could trade places with them” but the reality is … no I wouldn’t want to be her age group now! We have had the inevitable chats of “I have a boyfriend … ohh who is he?” … ohhhh and we have had the inevitable heart break … appearing at the door, collapsing into my arms and sobbing her heart out … so many lessons learnt and actually I feel so sorry for the poor sod who tries in the future to mess her around … be warned this is one strong woman … she’s going to see you coming from 50 yards and the wall will be up … you are going to have such a hard job of breaking it down or climbing over … be prepared to do battle … in order to win the smallest of concessions … and that might be a trip to the cinema … you have to earn the rest … don’t say I didn’t warn you …
Hormones … ohh boy … if someone had said to me what this aspect of having a daughter would be like … I might have said pop her back and change her … but through thick and thin we have mustered on … in tune with her in primary school knowing that her menarche was coming being in an amazing place to celebrate and journey with her for this rite of passage to support her and guide her … over the years being very aware and sensitive to her cycle … trying to ask the males of the house to be more aware and sensitive and ‘not push the buttons” so that she wouldn’t stomp out of the room or be aggressive … they were good at pushing the right buttons … but as she has started to become more aware of herself she is able to support and nourish herself … take herself off to spend some quality time doing what she needs to support herself …
Sleep – if someone had told me that an early rising child could suddenly change to one who loved to lie in and sleep … I would have passed out … but that is just what happened … overnight she suddenly changed … her bed … her pit … she can spend hours in the land of nod … and emerge and look absolutely exhausted … what I have learnt about teenagers is that they need their sleep … that if they don’t they can be an absolute nightmare …
She’s journeyed her GCSE’s and survived – yes if you are reading this and are about to sit them … you will survive and what happens on Results day is not the end of your world … you have to believe and follow your heart … she hasn’t looked back and is loving her course and all the challenges that come with this … meeting deadlines, stepping out of her comfort zone … if you’d told me she would learn to play base guitar and actually look pretty awesome doing so … I wouldn’t have believed you but she has and does …
She continues to volunteer in Girl Guiding and had the most amazing trip Stateside last summer raising over £2000 so that she and her team – @Princess_Posse Link could take part in a 100 Challenges across the USA and Canada … they were amazing and won the challenge … here’s the amazing video of their trip … I think you can tell that I’m a little bit proud … most definitely … and the fact that they were the Princess_posse and … ohh but that’s going to spoil the last little bit of this …
Anyway … my daughter … our daughter … has a plan … a grand scheme … a bucket list … a passion for travel … and all the other interests she has … but over the last few days she has started to formulate a challenge we chatted about way back when she was 14/15 years old and decided that she was going to grow her hair out so that she could at an appropriate time then cut it off for the Little Princess Trust; a Charity that provide wigs to children with cancer to help them cope when they lose their hair.
My daughter recently shared a video on her Facebook page that has truly inspired her. In the video, Jae West invited the public in Times Square to cut or shave a piece of her hair with the message that “Beauty isn’t dependent on the external appearance”. Link
Imogene has set herself the challenge of raising £1000 to support the work of the Little Princess charity but is taking this to another level … she would like to invite the general public to shave off the remainder of her hair. Believe me when I tell you that I have sobbed over this as her hair is amazing … however I respect and support her fully. My heart will be in my mouth and there will be tears flowing when she meets the target or exceeds it however I am so proud that she wants to support such precious work and ensure that a young girl somewhere will have the gift of hair.
If you feel that you can please do sponsor her … if you can’t … thank you for reading this …. and please do share the message of what she is doing … we all have amazing children that will go to great lengths to support causes that they feel passionate about … I know when I was younger it was the British Heart Foundation, as a teacher Cancer Research trekking to Peru, then Tommy’s when I started to work in the birth and baby world, doing The Moon Walk for breast cancer not even thinking that I might complete the challenge and a few months later have a team member embarking on her own breast cancer journey. I know my endeavours have encouraged Imogene and the fact that the Stateside team were the Princess_posse and she is doing this for the Little Princess Trust … it’s meant to be …
We never know what is around the corner, we need to live life in the moment … as the acronym YOLO says “You Only Live Once” … and you know what my daughter will go on to do many more wonderful things and her hair will grow back … I look forward to see her undertaking this challenge and succeeding at raising the money and supporting a charity that she is passionate about. Thank you for sponsoring her … hugs Cx