floating…

honouring my birth mum this mother’s day…

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers everywhere! Today, i wish to honour my birth mum, Marlene. I was reunited with her back in the early ’90s, when the BC Government finally opened up the Adoption Reunion Registry from a passive one to an active one.

When i met her, only the one time, she told me that at my birth, she wasn’t able to hold me at all, because it was just too hard for her. Her own mother had forced her to give me up. I can’t imagine how hard that must of been for her. She swore she’d never give up another child ever again. And so, a year after my birth she married and went on to have four more girls in a row. Yup, i have four half sisters! (RIP dear Deb).

When we were reunited, i know a huge weight had been lifted from both of us… and at last, i knew who i looked like! 😏

So, below, a poem… and, below that, a couple of photos from our reunion…

Rest in peace dear Marlene Beatrice McKay, 1939–1999

‘floating’… snippet from my sketchbook…

floating…

my body learned absence way
   before i even learned how to breathe.

i’ll never know her.

my skin is cold without her memory
   of ever being held nor nourished or
     being named by her warmth like
i was supposed to.

she’ll never know me.

my sensorium paused mid-reach
   frozen to the edge of any touch, though 
      i’m always observing, watching intently as
         if love were taking place in some other room, 
            or being wary of some weird trap door
that abruptly steals any trust.

i didn’t get to feel you skin-to-skin.

forever
   i’ve known this lifelong ache, a phantom
      pain, a slow dull, never loud, though i
         think i can sense a low, almost tidal thrum
            rattling inside my ribs, as if my chest
was built around something lost or missing.

oh, our dear hearts.

i feel it most in the empty hollow
   where my mother’s pulsing womb should
      have echoed her love visceral back to me.

this knowing throb offers some tender
   blue-grey space that flickers and sputters
      with her.

“where are you, where have you gone?”
   her arms aching for, weeping with no sense
of me, no warmth, no contact, none.

a blur of an embrace that never, ever lands.

i was ousted long before i even arrived, my
   body knows this even when my head forgets and
      it keeps a record, in small contractions
         in the way i hover and float just outside belonging
like an earth gravity that never fully chose me.

and still deep
   inside this open alien place, this unheld
      chamber resounding rather distant, listens intently as
         well, something vast and perhaps patient?
it turns this endless, aimless body ache into some
   kind of hearing as if, as if, this, our forced wound
      itself was always an open doorway and

all this time, i have been the
   one floating at its edge, learning how
      to knock and as i enter,
within love
   i do forgive you.

—weaver © 2026

Back in the early 90s reuniting with my birth mum, Marlene (RIP dear soul)…x (((💜)))

i think i’ve got her nose! x

Fiona Davidson, teller of the sacred legends of the Gael, a singer, poet and harper with… ‘Low Hang the Leaves’… enjoy… x (((💜))) 🍃