This is where it changes.

My mother was 14 when her mother took her own life. This was the catalyst for her abandoning me at 3 (my daughter's current age) and my brother at 1. She named me Kathleen after her mother, connecting us, but I grew up without either of them. 

In the couple of years that we were in our mum's care, we'd been living in a crack den. My baby brother slept in a cardboard box as a cot. We had to flee when the house got set on fire by drug dealers wanting money. Our mum dropped us off at our paternal grandmother’s one day, promising to be back in two weeks. She never came…

Growing up, there were no photographs of my mum. I used to point out those who seemed like the kindest, most loving mothers in the playground and ask my Nan if that was what my mine looked like. Growing up on a small council estate, people would approach me to say 'you look just like your mum.' It was the most confusing thing to be told I look like her, but I'd never seen her face. It created a conflicted relationship with my own reflection. 

Being a child with an absent mother, I always felt a disconnect. Simple things like friends playing with their mum's lipstick and trying on their heels; I felt like an outsider. 

Another motherless friend summed up the feeling when she said 'no one clapped when we danced.' We're told about the strength of a mother's love; that she would go to the ends of the earth to protect her baby. You're supposed to feel it in your bones. You also feel it deeply when that's not the case. 

My beautiful Nan did her best, yet I still felt the absence of a mother. When I lost my Nan, I sought maternal connection from other places. I found it in my school teacher. It wouldn't be allowed these days, but she let me live in her house when I had nowhere to go. My ex-partner has an amazing mother, and she is still in my life now. Women are powerful in the way they step in to support with their maternal instinct.

I found a lot of people wanted to step in and help me, but I couldn’t really accept true connection because I was consumed with anxiety and depression, terrified of getting close to people.

I did a lot of work on myself into adulthood. Both my brother and I went on to become social workers. My mother had been looked after in the care system, and we had been looked after by our Nan when my dad was in prison. So we'd had social workers growing up. Our experiences definitely informed our career paths. 

Then came a focus on starting my own family. I’d always had such a strong urge to become a mother, and I think a lot of that was born out of trying to prove that I wasn’t like her.

We had five years of heartbreak, miscarriage and fertility struggles before our daughter arrived. I started to think I was cursed and not allowed to be a mother because of my history. It was the most heartbreaking time of my life, and a lot of wounds resurfaced. 

I realised that I had dissociated from my past. I maintained that I was totally unaffected and had blocked it out. I read a lot of research, including The Body Keeps the Score, about the impact of trauma and how it manifests in physical ways if it isn't dealt with. My body had registered the impact with an autoimmune disease, and my nervous system was a wreck. I had to address a lot of what had happened in order to be able to get pregnant and carry a baby full-term. 

When our daughter was born, I became obsessed with trying to avoid passing on the mental health struggles that I had. My biggest fear was that suicidal tendencies were genetic and she was going to inherit the darkness. I tried to be the perfect mother, to respond instantly, co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding — I was terrified of not being a good enough mother, and I exhausted myself. I didn't realise I was already enough. 

Trying for a sibling for Martha meant a further miscarriage. A therapist suggested that perhaps in wanting two children, I was trying to symbolically rescue my brother and me as babies. Part of that could be true, but I think having a sibling was a major protective factor growing up with abandonment. I just wanted that protection for my daughter. 

Mothering without a mother, with the added complexities of estrangement, is brutal. I now realise that I choose what to pass on, and I'm a good mother. My daughter is a mirror of everything I've overcome. All the beautiful parts – I still can’t believe she is mine; it never sinks in. I think it will always feel surreal to me. I’m so lucky to have her, and I feel like I’ve broken a cycle.

Over the years, I tried several times to have a relationship with my mother. It didn't work out, but I came to think of her from a place of forgiveness. She was just surviving. She knew she couldn't care for us, and she did the best thing by giving us up. I still struggle with the word 'mum'. It has never been a word I felt comfortable saying, but my relationship with my daughter is rewiring this connection for me.