Imagine
Imagine for a second, that someone gave you a list of all the things that could go wrong in your life. A manual of negatives, a checklist of worst-case scenarios, a guide to a languishing life. Now imagine being handed this bleak outlook about your child’s life, only hours after your little miracle arrived in the world.
Life can be a bitch. We all know that, but no one welcomes a child into the world with a guide of all the things that can go wrong from now until old age. No one tells a woman, who has been a mother for 24 hours, that her little baby may get bullied in school. That he or she might get depressed, sick, anxious, difficult to understand and unhappy. No one. No one. Unless of course, that child is born with a unique infrastructure.
With an unexpected diagnosis - whether prenatal, after birth or years later - the hopes and dreams you have created for your child are shred to pieces in an instant. “This is it”, we thought as we sat through meeting after meeting, receiving manual after manual with information about everything that could possibly go wrong in life. “This is it. Her life, our life, already spelt out in colourless font”. Except, of course, it wasn’t a picture of reality. It was simply a list of worst-case scenarios that will probably never come true!
And that is why we created 21 Gifts; a welcome-to-this-world gift for babies born with Down Syndrome and their parents. Because if there was one thing we needed, it was something to help us see the big picture. We didn't need guidelines of everything that can possibly go wrong in life, but resources that shone light and hope for the future we couldn't imagine. Not a map of obstacles and challenges that may never happen, but a guide to rebuild the dreams and hopes for our girl, and ultimately, realise that these dreams and hopes are still the same as before we looked into her mesmerising almond shaped eyes. That life is still life in colour. Big, bold and beautiful.