Secondborn

She is a war baby, born during the Croatian war, under the sensitive Cancer starsign. Svetislava* arrived as a huge blessing to our grief-stricken family, a tiny beacon of light to enter this world during those heavy times. Before she arrived, she experienced both the grief through the umbilical cord linking her tiny being to her mother and a high dose of nicotine because of her pregnant mother’s huge emotional pain finding a refuge in cigarettes. Many sleepless nights my precious baby girl spent crying due to the nicotine withdrawal; luckily, she never took on smoking herself beyond a brief period of teenage experimentation.