After nine months of pregnancy, and ten hours of labour, I will never forget the moment when I felt our daughter crown and we knew she was finally coming.

Life was peering.

And when she arrived she cried and cried and cried and cried!

And cried!

Of course. Who wouldn’t?! The womb had been her reality, it was all she had known, and then suddenly she is thrust into a world where nothing is familiar and very little makes any sense. It was sensory overload and every single part of her was figuring out how to be. In fact there was a lot of figuring it out from all of us. There still is and she is three and a half now.

Shakespeare gives us so many moments where life seems to have been stopped for a time: Hero, Helena, Hermione, Thaisa, Imogen/Innogen…. And as they re-emerge, whilst the play may end, a new journey is just beginning.

Right now, life is peering.

It may not look how we thought it would. Very little is recognisable or controllable or predictable, and like a frustrated toddler we wish we could talk, walk and run faster than we are able to at the moment. Learning how to be again will not be easy or without pain, and it will take time. And like a baby, we can’t do it alone. But at the very least….

I spy life peering

— Richard II