You both needed new shoes.

I hate shoes. My bad balance, hammer toes and bunions mean that for me, shoes are painful, styles are limted and dressing up is a chore.

I have, for example, never been allowed to wear open toed shoes. My feet are different sizes for one (one-and-a-half sizes different in fact) so it looks pretty ridiculous) and I drag my toes forward so they would likely (quickly) be bleeding.

These were my mum’s reasons anyway. As I stood in the show shop, you asked for some ombre gladiator sandals. My stomach tightened. No, no, bleeding toes, open-toed shoes are not allowed….

Wham! Proper sledgehammer moment. Not allowed… for me. Proper reasons, I realised, though my younger self has never not felt put out by the truth of it. But my neurologically, anatomically perfect daughters were. Not. Me.

I couldn’t reasonably say they were going to stave their toes into the pavement like their disabled mother would, and will always, do. Then I realised, in my parenting, I was emulating how my mum had had to parent me. Hers were not my circumstances. They were however, the only examples of parenting I had been privvy to.

Almost 7 years into being a parent myself and this was the first time my mind, my emotional self and self-worth had been calm and level enough for this thought to occur to me as an actual truth. This very first time a realisation made its way through the previously impenetrable defences of self hatred.

Sat on the floor of the shoe shop, I stared at the sandals, hearig my mum tell me that if I walked in these, I’d bend back the sole and fall. But did this sole even bend? I tried. Nope. And it wasn’t my feet going into these, so what actual, real objections did I have?

You put them on and walked up and down the length of the shop. I watched how instinctively your perfect feet met the floor in a flat, effortless motion. I was in awe and couldn’t stop myself saying “You walk so beautifully.” These were just mechanics I never got to see in my own body. It was mesmerising and miraculous.

It was a huge deal for me to buy you those shoes. It was acknowledging that you are not limited as I was. I felt incredibly proud of myself for giving you what I could not have.

But once that realisation hit, I began to recognise it in so many aspects of our life together.

We took your sister swimming for her birthday. She loves water and wearing her swim vest (that used to be yours!) she is full of confidence. She swam over to join you and Daddy in the deep end, all of you swimmers. Mummy is not, something else where the mechanics have just never really appeared in my limbs.

I did learn to swim after you were born, but once I stopped the weekly lessons, I never went swimming on my own so quickly lost all that was learnt. I want to start again, feeling I need the second person in the water to remind my body what it needs to do, whereas you and your sister seem to know it effortlessly.

I couldn’t follow you. I went as far into the depths as I could, but when you launched at me, wrapping your legs around my waist like I was a pole and I was terrified at not being able to keep myself steady, or worse, keep you safe if I went under.

I felt so isolated as I headed back towards the shallows. Not that I could name this feeling until I sat with it for a while.

It was becoming clear that you and your sister, growing as you should, were becoming more capable than I had ever been allowed to feel. I was never taught to swim. I was just told that I “couldn’t.” Mum had given up teaching me how to ride a bike. I clearly “couldn’t”. I’d never climbed a tree or walked along a wall. I was still scared of all these things because all I had ever known was that I couldn’t.

When Kev got this out of me later the next evening, I cried that I felt left behind. He was so kind, said he should have noticed me holding back in the pool and not left me on my own.

I shook my head. Your dad hadn’t done anything wrong by taking you both to play. The problem here was that in seeing everything you could both do, just by being your beautiful selves, wass that my younger self, my inner child, was realising everything she had missed.

I had fear instilled in me at the youngest age, because I believe, it made it easier for my mum to manage my limitations. If I was not challenged, then neither could she. I, here as a mother with my own workload, get this completely. As her child, it is only some twenty-five years later, that I realise I feel cheated. The fear is lifelong and it has stopped me having experiences every child is completely entitled to.

I realised that my inner child’s fear and sense of resentment has been parenting the two of you. Keeping you small, so that you, as perfectly devloping and capable girls, were kept small enough for your disabled mummy to manage, just as my mum did with me, her disabled daughter.

This blog exists for you and your sister to find one day and know firstly how hard your mum has worked to overcome her many struggles, but mostly to know that I did it because I love you.

And so, I know now, that I need to tell you how sorry I am. I was absolutely wrong to keep you small.

I want nothing more than for you to be big, brave and adventurous. My fears probably won’t ever leave me, because I have to live in this body. You do not. My fear is not yours to live by. Please always remember that.

I am not my mum. I absolutely choose differently than the ways in which she felt she was able to parent me.

You are not me.

We spoke about this yesterday. You listened carefully as we lay on Mummy’s soft bed and said: “I’m not disabled, so you don’t need to be as scared as Granny was for you when you were little.”

“That’s it Squidge. Is there anything you think Mummy worrying has stopped you doing?”

“You don’t like me climbing on walls. But I can do it!”

Yes, you can. I see now I have to be prepared to let you. But I hope one day, you will understand how close that feels to letting you go and what a sad event that is for Mummy. But rest assured how proud I am of everything you are, and everything you are capable of.

Know that it is you who will inspire me to have a go at the aqua zorbing we saw at the fair. I have always wanted a go, but convinced myself I will fall and hurt myself so have avoided it. I told you this and you said:

“I’ve always wanted a go on the helter skelter!”

It was only as you said that I remembered seeing one on the sea front at Weymouth when I was a little older than you. I was with my dad and the fear in me told me that if I did hurt myself as it expected, my dad, part-time in my life at this point, didn’t know enough about me or my body’s limitations to know how to help me, so I trotted glumly past it and didn’t bother asking for a turn.

So, I have stored away a promise to you Squidgelet that one day we will have a go on a helter skelter together without fear. Me, you, my child and my inner child. I hope we will all get a laughter-filled memory out of it, that when you read this, you will be able to easily conjure from your archives.

I will never be as much physical fun for you as your Daddy. But, I promise you as I promise myself to parent you as I want to, not as I have been. I promise not to be on the sidelines anymore.

And remember what I told you. Never, ever get The Fear.

Keep being you. Because you are perfect.