a love like this

The Days Roll On

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment


My precious Teddy,

It is 5:22 am, the birds are singing, your brothers and Father are fast asleep and I am awake thinking of you. 150 days ago you entered into the world and left 22 precious minutes later. My heart met yours, my eyes saw the wonder you really were. You were so beautiful to me, and when I looked at you I instantly saw a video reel of an entire lifetime that will never be lived, all that you would never get a chance to experience all that I desperately wanted to experience with you.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, then Monday marks the 5 month anniversary of your birth and passing. It is hard to believe so many days have simply rolled on by. Tomorrow I should be waking up, your Dad and I exhausted from another night with little sleep, seeing your smiling little face, having your two brothers make breakfast with Dad and all of us together in bed laughing and loving each other, feeling so grateful I am the one you three call Mom.

As I lay here I wonder what you would have looked like at 5 months old. Would you have grown super fast and been a big boy like your brothers? Would you have been funny or taken on the roll of being our more serious baby? Would you have been easy going and a joy to take everywhere or would we have struggled to keep a schedule that works for you? The list of things I wonder is endless. What I know and never need to wonder is that I would have loved and appreciated you, I would have accepted you for whoever you wanted to be, I would have supported you in any and all of your dreams and would have provided you with all the tools to become the man you wanted to be.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. . . Tomorrow I will celebrate being blessed with three boys. I will celebrate having the honour to Mother each one in their own personal journeys. Your journey is one I wouldn’t have chosen for you, and I am sure in many ways this is preparing me for journeys Jack and Patrick may take one day that I too wouldn’t have chosen and yet will support. You have given me the hardest job a Mother can ever have and that is to mother a child I no longer hold anywhere but in my heart.

I love you, I know you have been with me this morning and I know this is why I couldn’t sleep. Thank you for choosing me to be your Mom. It is an honour to hold you in my heart and to know with the millions of woman you could have chosen, it was me you wanted. I am blessed and grateful.

Loving you is easy, living with you only in my heart is hard.

It is now 5:55am, thank you for waking me up to spend this time together.

Your forever loving Mommy

Layer by Layer 

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment
2002 Thailand – a much older version of me captured this picture.

My Dearest Theo,

My journey with you has been one of transformation. I am never sure what is around the corner or what the next layer will reveal once pealed back. You have given me the gift of being able to see myself for who I really am, and realizing what I am not.

Piece by piece, layer by layer, and step by step I see me. I see what my heart wants, who I am, and the gaps in between. I see old wounds and how they have formed a hard shell over that soft spot to protect itself. This experience left me at a crossroads, I could either walk the path that allows me to form a hard shell over this shattered heart or to become open, vulnerable and honest. Knowing this path would be harder, but so much more rewarding I chose the later. To me it felt like it was the only option as my heart wants to be open and welcome all that this journey will offer me.

I am now like an onion, with all the layers being peeled back exposing all parts of me I no longer care for. These parts were always there, I was aware of them but they simply didn’t bother me. Now they feel different, there is a nagging sense that tells me “you are better than that” when I find myself being judgmental and falling into old patterns. It no longer serves me and no longer feels like me. The new version of me truly wants to live a life of purpose, to fearlessly walk with an open heart, to offer empathy and give grace for situations I can’t understand.

I was asked if it is easy to me. It isn’t, and I am not sure it ever has been. I wonder if it was easy to be you? We all have stuff that makes our lives more challenging than others. You live what seems to me a short and uncomplicated life, but maybe many would have said that about me as they made assumptions from afar. I always felt so close to you, yet I still don’t know if it was easy for you. I can’t imagine being you, knowing you had a wide spread of family and friends eagerly waiting your arrival, those who madly loved you from day one and you knew you would never get to experience all they envisioned for you. You came and left like a gentle breeze on a beautiful sunny day. Was that easy? It wasn’t for me, but I wish for you that it happened with ease.

I see these gifts our journey has given me and I am so grateful. I wonder about the gifts you have been given, do you look back with feelings of gratitude and sense you were given exactly what you needed? As hard as this journey of becoming the better version of me is, I feel so privileged to have been chosen for such an awakening. I thank you.

To say I miss you is an understatement. Yet I feel so conflicted, I am so grateful for all I have been given and yet I would give it all back to have you in my arms. . .

I love you. This love will be yours forever, it is a love my heart didn’t know existed until you.

Your fearlessly loving Mommy.

The Ending will be Beautiful 🐘

~ Allyson Williams ~ Leave a comment


My dearest Theodore

Summer is on the way. I am thinking about how much you would have loved spending time at Papineau Lake this year and how much you loved it last year. I am looking forward to the memories we will make but knowing you won’t be included in them makes me feel like they will be incomplete.

You never got to feel the wind on your face or the sun at your back. You will never wish upon a star or pull apart a dandelion wondering if she loves you or not. How could your life be so beautiful and fulfilled, yet there are so many things I wished for you. How do I let go of all I wanted for you and accept you received all you needed? I know this to be true but I can’t help to long for more for you. For you, I wish it all. . .

Yet I know you had it all. You experienced something many of us never have the opportunity. Through this I was blessed to be the one to learn how to love unconditionally. Maybe that is all we ever need. Maybe if we were all blessed to be loved so deeply, so truly and purely that no matter what we did, thought or felt the other would do nothing but love us through it and for us to love all other beings in such a way as well and then we too would feel completely fulfilled.

You said you wanted me to let go. You want my heart to heal. I have thought long and hard about our love story. I know how I want the ending to look like. I want the last chapter to describe how I did let go, and how I am able to love you wholeheartedly and how the profound pain and sadness is replaced with peace. I will simply love you, our experience and accept this is all it was supposed to be, and no longer long for more and to be grateful for all I have.

Our story has been beautiful, it can’t end with me forever hurting. . . This couldn’t have been the plan.

I know when things feel hard it is a time of growth. This has been the biggest personal growth transformation I have experienced. I am far from reaching our last chapter. I frankly have no clue how to arrive there but I do know it is how it has to end. I love you too much to allow myself to feel a lifetime of profound sadness. You have been my greatest teacher, I am confident you will guide me down the path to reach our destination of loving, remembering and accepting of all that is with pure peace in my heart.

I am not there. I have haven’t arrived, I am so far from the end but at least I have a destination to navigate towards and with you as my compass I have no doubt one day I will arrive and be so grateful as I look back at the journey we took together to find pure unconditional love and peace in our hearts.

Thank you. My love for you is and has always been unconditional. I now need to learn to find my way to loving all beings in the same manner. Maybe then it will truly feel like peace on earth.

Your forever loving Mommy.