Thursday, April 24, 2014

Borneo post 2

A GRIEVING mother found solace in writing while trying to come to terms with the death of her newborn son.
Her book – Diary Of A Bereaved Mother: Goodbye My Baby – has touched the lives of many mothers who have gone through the same agonising ordeal.
It was the first written work of Sibu-born writer Ann Chin who produced it in 2010, specially as a birthday gift to her son Andrew who would have turned 21 that year had he lived.
Andrew was Ann’s third child whom she lost 55 days after birth. The book was a compilation of the letters she wrote during that traumatic period.
“The initial manuscripts were written when I was in the hospital. Andrew was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and I sat there for 55 days, writing letters for families which I have kept till today,” she said.
Penned with such raw honesty, the book soon became a message of hope for mothers who have lost their babies.
Ann, who now lives in New Zealand and teaches TESL (Teaching English As Second Language) in Auckland, has written many materials, including short stories and poetry.
However, by her own admission, the amount of energy she spent writing them paled in comparison with that she spent writing the Diary of a Bereaved Mother. It was the most difficult to write, she remembered.
The reason was not that it was her first ever book but rather that having to revisit that painful period was “just too overwhelming.”
“I actually sat on the documents for three days. The first and second day, I was too distraught and didn’t do anything at all. The third day, I finally decided to revisit those times – and I cried.
“But once I got through them – on the fourth day – I started writing,” she said, adding that what made it easier for her to start the opening paragraph was that she had the letters in proper order.

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