I tried to write my Mother-in-law-Sister a poem for her birthday, but it seems I can’t sum up the people I love in such small verses, and especially not this lovely lady. Yesterday was her birthday, so we travelled down from London to join her for dinner. It is always so special spending time at The Farm; somehow cleansing and inspirational.

It’s difficult to say how much I have learned from my husband’s mother. She is so full of affection, so open in her love. She grabs things with both hands – always looking for new challenges, always finding new things in the world to be amazed at. Among the many things I feel I should thank her for, is the way she always makes me feel so incredibly special, so absolutely loved. She teaches me to take life a little less seriously, all the time, and to ignore that voice in the back of my head that tells me ‘No’ and ‘You can’t’ and ‘It shouldn’t be done like that’.
She is incredible as a mother, having raised two beautiful men (and one beautiful soon-to-be man) who say she is less a mother, more a friend. She is the kind of teacher that young men and women still remember, decades later. She plays in a band, volunteers to work with difficult teenagers, remembers everyone’s names and makes them all feel special too. When I grow up, I want to be as young as her.
She noticed today how far I have come in recent years, mending relationships, discovering myself and feeling happier with so many things, and I didn’t know how to tell her how much I owe a lot of that to her influence in my life. I didn’t know how to thank her.
Maybe this will go some way to doing that.