Could you leave your children?

Could you leave your children?

This question pops into my mind after I met someone, then found out from a relative that eight years ago she walked out on her husband and four-year-old son. Now, after almost a decade of wanting barely anything to do with him, she has asked the child to move in with her, leaving the father who has raised him (and sadly recently suffered a near-fatal accident) alone.

The same relative also knows another woman who fourteen years ago walked out on her husband and four children following an affair...three weeks before Christmas.

Could you do it?

I don't think I could. I don't think I would ever want to. I know I couldn't.

Yes, the pair of them at times are enough to turn me to the bottle and yes, I'll admit, sometimes I wish to lump about my home alone for a couple of hours...but the thought of waking to a morning without them, coming home to a house void of Moo's shrieking and Bear's chattering, is more than I can stand.

What makes a mother abandon her babies?

I know it crops up every now and then; on chat shows, documentaries, real-life magazines...but why? 

I'm sad to say that it's often because of a man. I will hold my hands up and say that I have done a lot of crazy (read sometimes stupid) things in the name of love but I will never walk away from my children...and if I do, you have my total permission to hunt me down and slap me. Hard. Because clearly I'll need it, I know what it's like to not be loved by a parent as a child and it is a sickening, heart-wrenching pain that never, ever goes. Perhaps that's why the thought of ever closing that door with no intent o return o them fills me with so much dread I hug them that little bit tighter.

If ever you feel it gets too much. Stop. Think. Talk to somebody. Please don't ever leave your babies.

Clare