“I Will Learn, I Will Learn to Love the Skies I’m Under………..”
On November the 9th 2014 Jemima and I walked out of the gates of the Australian International School Singapore after her final Visual Art exam.
This would be the last time we would ever have to walk that long path.
Talk about being a proud mother and not because our daughter had just managed to complete year 12.
(Only the year before we had talked about her not even doing it. Maybe just waiting until she felt better.)
No.
Proud because she had managed to complete year 12 in the most dire of circumstances.
She had found such remarkable strength in the midst of a whirlpool of devastation, darkness and pain.
One that would see her question her very existence, whether she was up for the long journey in this physical incarnation.
Something changed and she managed to look deep, down inside her to find that little ball of hope and strength, way down in her core.
The light that would help her see in the dark.
She had done it.
Jemima had taken the support, the love and the advice on board. She had shared her pain and we had been helped by so many. Friends, family, the school, everyone had gathered around us cradling us in love and support, helping us edge slowly through this difficult and rocky terrain.
She was strong again.
Strong enough to come off the medication that had helped her through. She was to move back to Australia in February the following year so I could monitor how she was doing without that support.
She was in a good place. You could see it in her face. In her smile. In her body.
She was back and Julius and I could never, ever be more proud of the strength, resilience and courage she had shown.
“You heard my voice.
I came out of the woods by choice.
Shelter also gave their shade
But in the dark I had no name……..”
Hopeless Wanderer, Mumford & Sons