My three amazing mothers

When I was first diagnosed with EDS my mother with her usual amount of tact and charm told me "you're an adult, it's your condition, you deal with it". I wish I could tell you that she'd since softened, become all warm and fuzzy even, but that is not her way, after all this is the woman who for reasons known only to herself somehow managed to so deeply deny my premature birth that I found out about it from my medical records. Funnily enough to everyone else the woman is a saint, wonderful, warm, compassionate even, certainly can't do enough to help. Anyone but her own daughter that is. Although there has of late been something of a thawing whereby she has regained some memories. Ahem. Well, not so much regained as more stopped insisting she can't remember and admitted actually she can. But that's another story.

So unsurprisingly we don't have much of a relationship. Actually I avoid her and the rest of my 'family' like the plague. Instead in my life there are three incredible women who are all my surrogate mother figures. I love them very much.

When Social Services removed the funding for my 'care' (haha) package a few months back they also removed my ability to cope day to day, and substantially reduced my chances of becoming a financially contributing member of society. Not that they give a shit about that. Too busy moaning about how badly they are paid and looking at my arse. They also pushed me further away from the world, but such things are irrelevant in a modern social work role, only concerned with budgets and determined not to see how an attractive and slim woman could possibly need the kind of help automatically given to an older, or obese person with substantially less disability, and less attractive arse to be distracted by.

All three of these women worried about how I would cope. I decided not to think about it. Some things are best not thought of, being a bit like a yawning black void of panic.

All in their own ways have offered me the love and support my own mother refuses to. At any time I can pick up a phone and pour my heart out to any one of these women, as they do in return to me. They all were there through the long, dark, cold winter when so ill, so desperate, so desolate they none expected me to still be there in the spring. Thanks to them I was.

This morning, despite having taken two weeks off work, Surrogate mummy #1 arrived. Not willing to leave me alone for that length of time she arrived with my sheets, taken away every week, lovingly washed and ironed to change my bed, just one of the things she knows I am unable to manage. We talked while she did that, and cleaned out the kitty litter trays. The cats of course are a priority as much to her as me. She laughed, said I was a muppet, but her muppet and in that moment I felt both truly loved and as though I belonged.

I love you as I love all of you, I wouldn't be here if not for you.