“On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me: Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.” As you all know, this year has been the most horrendous we have had so far. We went through a devastating leukeamia diagnosis with Georgie, months in the children’s hospital and then the most surreal and painful goodbyes from the boy we had come to treasure and love with all our hearts. We have since attempted to find some balance. Not only us as grown-ups but also Emma, as a sibling, who has witnessed all these events and has been marked by them much deeper than we probably will ever comprehend. She is not your typical five-year old anymore. She never was but now, even less so. Emma has developed an eery insight on life and death and her own deep life philosophy, coping mechanisms and rationale, all unique and coming from the heart-wrenching and life-changing events she had to witness at such an early age. What has helped enormously …

“On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me: Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree” This year, Emma is five so she understands much more of the world than in the years before and questions what she is being told much more thoroughly. It is in a way my “fault” as I have raised her in this way. I do not want her to become lazy and complacent in her thinking and acceptance of things as they are but always find her own answers to life and its dilemmas. I have been considering carefully ways of how to make the anticipation of Christmas center not only on the Christmas day and the presents that it will bring but also on the possible life lessons I want her to learn at this age. The Santa debate has been solved early for us as a family as we had both agreed as parents that we wanted her to “believe” in him. But as I have responded on a fellow mummy …