Strength from a song ....

A lovely short article by British mother, Heidi Reid, was published on World Down Syndrome Day (yesterday) in the Family Life section of The Guardian. Heidi talks about her expectations of the births of her children, and how different her experience actually was when her second daughter was born with Down syndrome, and some health problems. She unexpectedly drew strength from a song that was popular at the time, concluding:

..... During a rare moment of respite, I found myself sitting alone in my car in the hospital car park, when this song came on the radio. I had heard it before and thought little of it, but suddenly the words bore enough significance to knock me out of my dazed cocoon of grief and send me racing to my daughter's side, desperate to hold, love, feed and fight for her.

Six years on, when I hear that song, I am always reminded of a moment when I stopped thinking about what her disability meant for me, and started to think about what I wouldn't allow it to mean for her.

Click on The Guardian's website here to read the whole piece, and to see which song it was. Scroll down to the second article, Playlist Out of my cocoon of grief.