Dear Daughter

 I often feel like I forgot something, like I left the iron on or didn’t do something I should have. Its the switch that is turned on when you become a mother. I think your body knows to always watch when you birth a child. 

So I wonder where you are and what you are doing. I haven’t heard from you in a few days. I wonder how cold it is there, whether you are wrapped up warm enough. I wonder a lot. 

The stress of the pandemic is affecting children, the news says. They don’t talk about the stress of years of separation for children like you though. For a while, the BBC touched on this, in the documentary I did with them, but I wish they had touched more upon the harm to your mental health. 

Although we got some contact, out years of separation have had few interruptions and I truly hope one day the cost of long term separation from mothers will be addressed. 

A few months back, you appeared in a dream, your four year old self, in a little brown coat embroidered at the pockets. 

I waited for you on a corner, knowing that any moment you would appear on it. You did. A man carried you in his arms. He didn’t say anything. He handed you to me and I held you in my arms and kissed you. 

It was a dream of perfect peace. I think I cried before I woke up. I cried for that little girl and the years in between us. 

In pictures of the past, I see light in your eyes. In your eyes now, I see the pain that most people deny. I see everything you have survived. 

It has snowed here quite a lot this year. The sky turns silvery white. I remember pulling you around the village on a sledge in the snow, the rosy glow of your cheeks. 

‘Do you remember me?’ I have asked you in our text chats, countries apart. 

‘Yes. How could I forget you?’ you have said. 

The heart remembers.

Love Mummy