MUM

My mother is a very brave woman.

There are some things you can't value or appreciate until you reach adulthood, a new set of eyes to conquer reality. I grew to understand my mother as an individual.

Life had been filled with some very complex and traumatic matters in which in turn was very stressful to my family.

"There was a knock at the door and there you were." My oldest sister has been the only consistent truth-teller in my family.

My birth mother was an alcoholic who was losing her grip. My father had left our family home and my teenage siblings were left to fend for themselves. I was an infant passed back and forth to where I can only hope was family.

My father had left my birth mother a while before, remarried after she passed away and continued to try and give us the best stable home possible with my stepmother.

During this time, my older step-sister went to live in Dubai. One of the very many letters documented the fact "Rosie calls me Mum."

I never really thought of how significant this was, more because I was so young at the time until I was told yet another excerpt of my childhood. There are my experiences, what I remember then what I am told like most people.

Now the stress of all of that trauma covers my milestones, achievements and most of anything I did as a child because I was quiet and well behaved no one can remember anything significant about me.

Fast forward twenty years or so. Sitting watching television with my mum as you do and we were talking about my sister living in Dubai because she had found the letter and told me about it so I bravely brought it up.

Moments like these are nerve wrenching mainly because I'm bringing up negative times asking a question or both.

I'm not shy but I hate rocking the boat out of fear of what will come next. Figuring out your own life is not a fun adventure, it's like trying to find edge pieces in a very confusing double-sided puzzle.

I said 'I remember that she said in the letter she found that I started to call you mum that's how long ago it must have been."

"You were not allowed to call me mum."

My head eclipses into memory, there are few experiences of my birth mother and the main one that I was very afraid of her. So I don't doubt this statement.

"You came to me one day you must have been 3 or 4 and said, "My mummy says that woman is not your mother. But you really are." So it took you a while to let yourself call me mum comfortably."

I have a child development qualification, been in childcare a long time seen some sad scenarios out of life, But looking at myself as a child just got more complicated.

My mum just handed me my heartbreak and comfort in one go. Lovingly supporting children losing their parent is hard for anyone but to have a baby in your care, loving, feeding and nurturing knowing you have to listen and see to the struggle, ouch.

This conversation went on for a while and it only got darker. "My friends would walk past the house and you wouldn't even be dressed. Just wondered around the house yourself until who knows when. " We talked very frankly about my lack of speech, dexterity and most issues I have struggled to contain.

I found out almost too much about my own life that quite frankly I was bewildered. Never played the you are not my mum card, screamed shouted. Nothing but absolute respect for my mother.

I appeared on her doorstep and all my sister could say "Can we keep her?!" It's a funny joke in our family now, like a stray dog they did.