A tale of unconditional love overcoming adversity
Anne Marr, 68, loves working with wildlife and has lived in a home with four different generations of family. Here she explains how a family bond can be mended with unconditional love.
The sobbing came from the kitchen and it was my adult daughter, I could tell. “Oh god what now,” I thought and rushed in from the other room where I was doing a good friends hair. “Go she said, go it sounds bad.”
In between sobs, her dad and I were told she had done something really bad and was probably going to end up in jail. She had to sell her house and her six-year-old son and her had nowhere to live and just couldn’t stay in her house any longer; meaning she would be returning to live with us, again. Plus, she had already gone to the taxation department, given them all the evidence they needed to charge her and was now waiting for the court date. She was yet to find a decent lawyer, so that’s something we’re going to have to organise I thought.
I stood there in shock and in a few seconds so much ran through my mind. I could either yell at her and tell her how much she’d let us down and herself, or I could just throw my arms around her and say we love her and of course she can move in with us and we’d get through this together.
I’d always raised my children with the philosophy that they should forgive themselves for stuff ups as they were one of the most important things in life. Our mistakes are what we learn from and how we handle them is how we grow and become stronger. Our achievements are just the icing on the cake to give us a boost to get through our next big stuff up.
So, I threw my arms around her, as did her dad and let her cry for a while. Then we set about the big move, shifting her and her son, with all their worldly possessions into our little 100-year-old stone cottage we were renovating ourselves on a very tight budget. We had already shifted my elderly Mother into an organised area at the back of the house as dad couldn’t cope with her, and she didn’t want to go into a nursing home. Well this is going to be a challenge I thought to myself.
Next came all hands on deck to clean up and paint my daughters house so she could get the best price for it possible. This was done in about 10 days and it sold. No money left of course, it all went to pay off the house loan.
And so our four-year learning journey started on so many levels. Being parents, raising our own children, to watching them grow, make mistakes and learn, then move on to have their own children, who just the same, make mistakes and learn from them with the help of an entire family unit. It’s not easy being a constant carer, faced with all sorts of life challenges. How to cope with the younger generations parenting ideas, compromise, patience (I thought I’d learnt that but no I hadn’t) probably most important of all how to actually put unconditional love into action.
Related links:
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