Tag: #firsttimemom

The Thing About Failure…

Dear G,

The first thing you need to know about this particular “F” word, is that it is relative. There is no black and white, and regardless of what we were all taught and how we were all graded in school, there is no pass mark. Got it? What, you don’t believe me? 🙂 Let me break it down for you.

Scenario 1: Kid comes from a family of brainiacs. All his older siblings were top in their class and both parents well accomplished in their professions. If said kid comes home with “B” grades, in his family’s eyes, he is letting them down and thus to some extent, classified a failure.
Scenario 2: Kid comes from a family where none of his siblings graduated from high school. Same for both parents. Kid toughs it out in class and scrapes through with “Bs” and “Cs” and ultimately ends up in some form of tertiary education. Success story! Kid is hailed in his family.
My point; failure (and success for that matter) is relative.

I myself am more of a Scenario 1 kid believe it or not. Most Ghanaian parents like to brag to their kids about how great they did in school, maybe to set some kind of benchmark for them. I don’t know. My reality was that while your auntie was bringing home the first prize in physics each year, I was struggling to make it out of the bottom ten list! Let’s take a moment to pray you didn’t inherit the “oh-my-God-what’s-with-all-these-numbers-and-weird-symbols-and-what-do-they-all-mean” gene.

I guess what I’m trying to say to you today is, don’t sweat the small stuff. But don’t get me wrong; you are not allowed to be anything but the best version of yourself. Anything less will keep you up at night. I guarantee it.

Great things come in the most surprising packages and instances. So when you feel like you’ve failed at something over and over again, when you reach the point where the thing you’re pursuing seems to be getting further and further out of reach, take a minute, take a day, a week or even a whole year and just stop to listen to yourself. The voice inside you that knows more about you than you can ever imagine will tell you if it’s time to pursue something else, or approach from a totally different direction. I call it God, some call it fate, destiny and even luck. We’ll talk about that later, but for today, you must always believe that there is a bigger world out there that you have no control over and in which you have a significant role to play that’s been predetermined. Once you find that track, there’ll be no turning back and whatever ‘failures’ you had experienced prior, will suddenly make so much sense to you.

Through it all, I will be cheering you on with bells and pompoms on some days, and other days with quiet pride and satisfaction. No matter who or what you become and how things progress, know truly, that I will always be your number one fan!

Love you always. Angels on Guard.

XOXO

First letter….

(this post was written at an earlier date)

My dearest darling girl,

I’m full of emotions writing this. I don’t know where to start to be honest. This is something I always wanted to do; write you letters to tell you about me, about my history, and about life and love as I know it.

It’s just after midnight, 7th September 2014. Exactly a year ago I was wriggling in bed from the worst pain and discomfort I had ever felt. And at 6am I packed a small bag and headed to the hospital to get checked. At about 2pm, I was told that your fabulous self was tired of my womb and wanted out immediately!  You were 35 weeks. After a couple of hours of prepping me for surgery, I heard your first cry at 5:30pm…the most beautiful sound I ever heard. Nothing I had experienced in life prior to that day could have prepared me for meeting and falling in love with you. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me see you just yet because you had to stay in an incubator, and I was strapped to a bed to wait for the epidural to wear off. I slept fitfully. I could hear you in the nursery and I wanted you next to me, never to leave my side!

I must have had the quickest post surgery recovery because bright and early the next day I was sitting up and begging to be brought to you. Early in the afternoon, the midwives gave in and I was ushered into the nursery. You were asleep. I reached my hands in and held your tiny little one. And then the love attacked my heart and carved out a permanent space bigger than my heart itself! 🙂 I cried. Tears of joy that I had brought life to earth, tears of relief that you were fine, tears of fear because all the tubes and machines connected to you were scary, and tears of something close to pride; 1 day old and already such a strong fabulous woman.

The first 24hrs of your life I will never forget. I may over time forget who was there and the series of events. But that moment when I touched you for the first time…that overwhelming sense of pride, fierce love and protectiveness,…those I will never forget because everyday I look at you, I’m reminded of those very same feelings.

This is my promise to you:

I will not always make the right decision for you but I will always make the decision that feels the “rightest”. I will do my best to protect you from unnecessary pain in life but at the same time, I will make a conscious effort to be unprotective enough so you make the necessary mistakes for your life. I promise to commit annually to be the best version of myself that I can possibly be, not only to set an example for you, but so we both learn to be independent in love. I will do my best to be there for you, to talk to and listen to you. Somehow I will learn when to be your mommy, when to be your mother, and when to just be your friend.

I hope you enjoy my letters to you. If nothing else, I hope they remind you that underneath whatever exterior I put on when you interact with me, I’m still just a girl with a baby/child/daughter that I am desperately learning to love the best way I know how.

Like your grandmother always said, Angels on Guard.

XOXO