It can be tough being a parent, even when things are going well.
Juggling your children's meals, activities, learning, moods, hormones, social lives and school schedules along with your own, can be challenging at the best of times.
So when something goes wrong for your child, that may affect them for a lifetime, only then do you realize where your strength lies and how it re enforces what it means to rise to the tough task of parenting.
Living in Hong Kong in 1999, at the age of 3, our middle son Aron was diagnosed with a rare developmental ( acquired) cataract in his right eye.
This meant he could barely see the big A on the screening board.
I am sitting in a hospital waiting room (again) waiting for my son Benjy to come out of surgery (again). This is the 8th time in the last 4 years that I have waited for my husband or one of my sons to come out of a general anaesthetic, from procedures as routine as wisdom teeth removal to complicated heart and brain surgery.
You'd think it would be easier each time.
But no. It is not.
Eight years ago, my very close friend was diagnosed with stage IIIC breast cancer at the age of 39. Her 3 daughters were all under the age of 7 at the time. She went to a support group for breast cancer survivors. Expecting unqualified support and upbeat messages at the first meeting, she was very surprised by what the facilitator had to say. Her message that day, and I paraphrase, was this:-
