Hi, so very sorry I was unable to participate at the 2nd global meeting. I have just enjoyed watching it.
When I was in primary school I read a book, I think called Chalky, about a boy with an imaginary friend, I remember thinking it was like me with my sister Alison. I remember it felt comforting to chat with my invisible other half. I always felt Alison was a part of me.
She was so very young, only three and a half months old when she died, I was conceived only two months later. My mother asked the ‘all clear’ from our family doctor, worried she may have another child with a heart defect. She also imagined she was having a boy, I would have been called Nigel David. Not surprisingly I was a Tom boy. My mother, like myself, was a nurse, and therefore I think she may have been aware a little of maybe having another child so soon.
In later years, I realized I always seemed to ‘copy’ the way friends dressed long after my teenage years, never being able to find how I wanted to look. Only recently I feel I dress how I really feel good in myself.
When my mother died, I had a depression, for a long time I didn’t understand why I couldn’t get through it. Alison hadn’t had the chance to live , I should be happy to live. However as soon as I was cheerful, it was like a constant reminder, ‘hey you are not allowed to be happy, you shouldn’t be here’. I felt my role in life, to help my mother through her bereavement, to keep her happy, to please her, to be the good little girl, and quite often, her confident too, had gone forever. When my mother died, in her final moments I was able to be present, I was able to say to her she could know reunite with Alison, that I had been lucky having such a wonderful mother, and now it was time for her to fly back to Alison. I felt as though I’d ‘stolen’ her mother in some ways. I always felt my mother was an angel on earth. I would never be able to be as good as she was. I put her on a pedestal. She was an extraordinary lady.
I grew up with a girl called Jacqueline, she was also born with a heart defect the same year as my sister, and lived around the corner from our family home. She went to the same school and guide club. She was a constant reminder how my sister would have been. My mother would say, I wouldn’t have wished Alison to go through all the operations, and not being able to play like other children. I must have been very inquisitive at a very young age. Jacqueline died at the age of 16. I had left the area before at the age of 12.
I was then diagnosed with an auto-inflammatory disease, and then a cancer, like my mother, now I’m trying to find a way to go towards individuation. To truly break free.
If I didn’t assist in the first two webinars, it was also as I was afraid to show so much emotion, that I’m feeling at present. I thank you all for sharing your stories and feelings, they are inspirational.
Best wishes,
Trisha