Page One of Chapter One of Love-Ella

When I went to buy my eleven year-old daughter a birthday card this year, I paused to read all the "to my daughter" cards in the supermarket and realised that I would never find a card with the right words on it to tell my daughter what she means to me. I stand in the crowded noisy store and fight back tears hoping that no-one notices me, and I wonder when the tears are going to stop and the total acceptance is going to start. Acceptance that my baby daughter is like no other, she has an intellectual disability. There are no cards that say happy birthday to my special girl -- to celebrate that she is alive, that she is so unique and individual. How different our mother and daughter relationship is in many ways but at the face of it all our relationship is based on love. And love is enough, it has to be.
The relationship I have with my daughter is complex and all-consuming; the enormous love I feel for my youngest daughter who is labelled as having "Special Needs". What I feel for my daughter is the greatest pain and deepest love I have ever felt in my life. This dichotomy greets me in the morning when I wake, sleeps with me as I dream, sits with me as I work and at times is a pain that I experience in a physical sense. Not only do I carry my own pain over loving this little girl and being her mother, but I carry all her pain as well. It is a heavy burden, but it is also a joy that few will ever know.

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