Monday, August 27, 2012
Several weeks ago I sat with a mom of another young woman altered forever many years ago by an assault on her brain. We spoke for hours. She said something that first shocked and then halted me….It has taken me as many weeks to process and to come to terms with some of our conversation. Mind you…it was not her words but my own fears that I needed to reconcile.
I rarely even think of her life before the woman said. “It’s as if the only life I’ve known with her is the one we know now” she continued. And I thought to myself,…how dare she not remember her daughter's life before, how dare she not hang on….when in reality…how dare I dare, to know,,, or think to know,,, what this woman should or should not do…..I am not her…I am not her life. Yes, we may be similar in that we are both mothers with daughters no longer living the life we once thought they would live. Yes, we may be similar in that we both have a child we always assumed we would share a particular type of relationship with at a certain age. Same – but different.
And so I reflected on me…and what I thought – and while I was not yet ready to honestly address some aspects of a perceived then and now relationship – what I was able to look at is my then and now role in terms of plans and dreams for my daughter.
What I was then and what I still am now is a mother who has plans and dreams for her child. While Toris life has been changed and those dreams have been forced to change – we are not left without life and therefore not left without hope or the opportunity to dream. And so my plans and dreams for my child and her altered life have changed.
I have dreams that she live her life to the fullest and to be happy. A bit modified perhaps than the plans and dreams I had for my child before…but when you truly break it down…same…,but different
