Facing fear: the story of my son's birth
A few days before my son was born, I told Simon that it felt like Christmas eve everyday, waiting for Christmas morning to come. What better day than Christmas eve to write out the story I have long been wanting to pen, the story of my own son's birth into this world and all that the journey to his birth represents for me. To start off his story, a bit of my own first. For many years now, the concept of being "true" to oneself has been important to me. My early years were most noticeably plagued by a deep shame of self, and attempts to escape myself in various ways. Onlookers would say that watching me run amok brought pain to them, but my own pain deafened me to their words of warning and concern. Fear was my most constant feeling. I struggled with it in many forms: anxiety attacks, obsessive compulsive thinking and action, insomnia....