Emma Sylvie - born 12:41am (MST) January 1, 2000

I feel somewhat like a proud father in writing this. I see so much hope and potential bundled up in a little person we call Emma.

I'll leave it to others to chronicle the events of her creation... I would rather focus on the future.

I really wonder what the future has in store for our new Emma (and all those of us so closely connected to her). She has a chance denied most of the rest of us. Where we were created out of trauma and a need for survival she has been created out of love and hope.

I have struggled with the idea of creating someone for such a specific purpose. I have worried that she will be somehow less than 'whole'. Will she someday see herself as just a slave? will she wish we hadn't created her at all?

But now that she is here! I see this tiny child full of completely unconditional love and this amazing curiosity and intensity about the world around her (internal and external). She has captured hearts I never would have imagined could be touched, even by a child (I won't mention any names... yet! :) ). I see everyone (or almost everyone) looking back over their own lives and experiences and seeing what they missed and in their own ways trying to make sure Emma gets everything she needs to grow up happy and secure.

I do hope she is able to take on the job we envisioned when we created her... but I am also confidant that she will be SO much more!

I also can't help but look back at where we have been and all the struggle and effort it has taken to get to where we are now. Individually and often as a whole we have contemplated and even wished for death on many occasions. Life seemed too hard and too lonely and too scary to take on. And yet there is at our core this *strength*! I believe it is what caused us to choose multiplicity over surrender or insanity in the first place. We have slowly built on our strengths and tackled our weaknesses to create an internal structure that *works* for us. It isn't perfect and it certainly isn't smooth, but it does allow us to grow out into the world more and to face our fears with confidence and hope.

We have a long way to go... I don't believe anyone who is truly *alive* ever stops growing and learning and changing. And I can finally be excited over what that future holds for us... and confident that whatever it is, we will find the strength and will to face it.

Emma is a physical sign of that growth. We finally have a life and a world worthy of a healthy, new being.

I look forward to seeing her grow and develop! I look forward to a time when she is old enough that she can tell me how she feels and what she thinks about the world she has already added so much to.

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