#(they have been together from before Enoch's grandparents were even born)

[v1ckymult1fand0m]

I've been placed on this world to push the Fiona-Enoch best friends agenda and nothing more

[imherongraystairstrash]

Defender of Men

Alex Lightwood birth storyyy!! I’m finally publishing it because someone sent me an ask on it, but it became too long, so here’s part one:

“Cecily, are sure you’ll be alright?” Gabriel asked. 

“Jiw jiw, for the millionth time, I’ll be fine.” she said, pushing Gabriel out the door. “Now go do something useful.”

Anna was already outside, leaning against a tree, frowning down at her dress. 

“Anna, gwnewch yn siŵr bod eich tad yn stopio poeni.” Cecily said.

Gabriel looked at her, annoyed. “I speak Welsh, Cecy.”

Cecily kissed his cheek, “Then make sure you do well on what I said.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes and hugged her with one of his arms.

“I’ll be back soon.”

“No, Gabriel.” She said, putting a hand on his chest. “Just have fun sledding with Anna, your nieces and Gideon. Sophie is right next door, if I need anything—which, I won’t—I’ll just call her.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not made of glass, love. I’ll be fine. Now go before our poor Anna gets stuck frozen to that tree.” 

Gabriel dropped a kiss on the top of her head before letting her go.

Cecily watched as he walked to Anna, who made a show of pretending to be asleep. He ruffled her hair, stealing her hat in the process and running down the street. Anna laughed and chased after him.

…

“Kit, bach, are you sure you don’t want to go sledding with Anna and your father? I’m sure it will be loads of fun,” Cecily said, once she was back inside. 

Kit furrowed his eyebrows and cast a hesitant look outside. “I think I’d rather stay with you, Mam.”

Cecily smiled, knowing perfectly well Kit didn’t like the cold. “Alright then, fy ngalon bapur i.” (A/N: my paper heart)

Cecily walked to the kitchen and pulled out two mugs from the cupboard and filled them with tea. Before she picked them up, she grabbed a pocket watch that was on the counter and hung it on her neck so she could time her contractions.

When she got back to the drawing room, she tried to set the mugs on the table, but she couldn’t bend down that far. Christopher shot to his feet and helped her put them down, and lowered her to the couch.

“Thank you, darling.” Cecily said, bracing a hand of her belly. She felt like she was at the verge of giving birth, which is never a good thing, as a mother’s instinct is rarely wrong. The first stage of labour takes around fourteen hours, hence Gabriel’s hesitation to leave her at home. Cecily had thought he was being dramatic, but that was before she realized that she was maybe closer to birth than she had thought. Had fourteen hours already gone by?

“What book are you reading?” Cecily said, looking over her son’s shoulder, distracting herself. 

“The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Cecily scrunched up her nose. She had never read the book herself, but from what she’d heard of, it didn’t seem like a book Christopher would be interested in.

“What a peculiar choice of literature, cyw.”

“Matthew recently read it and said it was at utmost importance I read it as well. I don’t understand much of it, though. I’m also not very fond of the characters. I’d prefer your company over that of this book.” 

Cecily smiled. “As do I, bach.”

Having children was a strange experience for Cecily. She was apprehensive at first, afraid she wouldn’t be a good mother and her children would end up resenting her. When she got pregnant with her first child, she was so happy. 

And when she lost it, she had been so incredibly grief-stricken.

She had felt like she’d already failed as a mother, even though the Silent Brothers confirmed there was nothing that there was nothing that could have been done differently to have saved it, that it wasn’t uncommon to lose a child in the early stages of pregnancy.

That was the cruel irony, wasn’t it? To feel so much regret, to have your child die inside of you, and not know what went wrong. 

They’d tried again, and then she was pregnant with Anna. The whole time she had been so horribly sick, she was terrified of losing another child. This time, however, she’d been pregnant long enough that she’d have to give birth to the child, whether it was alive or dead.

Those months had been the worst in Cecily’s entire life. Not even when her father had gambled away their home in Wales, the one she had memories of running with Will and Ella down valleys, had she felt such despair.

“Mam?”

Cecily shook her head, bringing herself back to the drawing room sofa, beside Kit.

“What is it, bach?”

“Does the baby have a name yet?”

Cecily rubbed her belly. “Not yet. Why do you ask?”

Kit shrugged. 

Cecily suddenly felt a contraction. She started the pocket watch timer and sat forward and breathed deeply to try to relieve the pain. This one felt longer than the rest had been. 

Kit looked at her from over his book, his eyebrows together. 

Once it had passed, Cecily stopped the timer. After a couple of seconds of recovering from the contraction, she looked at the time, and swallowed.

“Kit,” she said as calmly as she could. “Bach, I need you to ring for the Silent Brothers.”

…

Brother Enoch, Zachariah and another brother Cecily couldn’t remember were preparing for the birth. Christopher had helped her up the stairs, before the brothers had come, and was now standing in a far corner of the room, at loss for what he should do.

“Christopher.” She said, motioning for him to come.

“You needn’t be here. I’ll be fine and your father will soon be here. I already asked Sophie to send him here once he stops by after sledding. You can wait outside until then.” 

“But Mam, I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I’m with the Silent Brothers.”

Christopher looked over his shoulder at the Brothers.

Cecily put a hand under his chin and turned his face to face her own. She smiled at him.

“Go, Kit. It’s alright. I’ve done this before.” She said with a smile.

“I want to stay here. With you.”

Cecily tried to rub away a smudge on Christopher’s face, perhaps something to do with his most recent experiment.

“I don’t think you do, bach. When people say birth is a natural process, it’s because they’re trying to glorify a process that’s ghastly.” 

Cecily looked deep into his lavender eyes and smiled. “Now go, before I start crowning. Trust me when I say you’ll wish you’d have gone.”

Christopher made to move, but didn’t get up.

“I want to help you. I want to stay with you the way you stayed when I got my first rune.”

Cecily wanted to argue that this was different but she suddenly got a contraction that was long enough she knew she’d have to push at any moment.

Sure enough, Brother Enoch said, you must begin pushing soon, Cecily Lightwood.

“You have to be sure, Christopher.” She said through her teeth. “One-hundred percent sure. And you must stay on this side of the bed, because I don’t want you to see the birthing process. I’ll only let you stay because if not I’m afraid you’ll ‘stress experiment’ and blow up the house.”

Kit nodded quickly.

“Alright then.” She said.

Are you ready to push?

“Yes. Let’s finish what we started, Enoch.” Cecily said, taking Christopher’s hand in her own and bracing herself for the birth. 

…

Congratulations, Cecily Lightwood, it’s a boy. Enoch said in her head, less than half an hour later.

Cecily fell back on the pillows, exhausted. Birth never really got easier over the years. 

Jem came around with the baby in his arms and gave him to Cecily. She swore she saw him stroke the baby’s hair as he walked to her. She smiled up at him. 

“Thank you, Jem.” She said, quietly.

He inclined his head at her and walked away. 

Cecily looked down at her youngest son for the first time. She’d helped other women give birth when she was younger, and had always thought newborn babies ugly, but whenever she looked down at her own, they were the most beautiful and perfect little things in the entire world. She smiled and offered the little baby her finger to hold. 

Like with all of her other children, she felt her eyes sting. There was something about holding her child for the first time that always brought chills to Cecily’s body. It’s not like when she held Anna for the first time, the feeling she felt that her life would forever be changed, but it was more like when Christopher was born; she didn’t feel any fear, just happiness. She kissed the baby’s forehead.

“I wish you could have met your grandparents.” She whispered.

Edmund and Linette had passed away four months ago, and it had been difficult for Cecily not having been able to visit them when they were still alive. Since she was pregnant, she and the baby would be at high risk of death, if she caught the influenza disease. 

She tried to shake off the memory. Right now, she only wanted to focus on the good things in life, not the bad.

She looked up and saw Christopher a distance away from where she was. He must have moved away from her once the baby was out and the Silent Brothers began moving about, preparing the child to be held and checking to make sure everything was alright. Christopher looked at the baby in wonder, one of the first babies he’d ever seen. 

“Come meet your brother, Kit.” She said, holding a hand out.

She motioned for Christopher to sit next to her on the bed and, resting the baby on her chest momentarily, demonstrated how to position his arms.

“That’s right, bach.” She said, lifting the baby to put in Kit's arms.

“Mam,” he said nervously. “What if I drop him?”

Cecily smiled. “You won’t. I have faith in you.” 

She gently placed the baby in his brother’s arms, Christopher looking like he was holding his breath.

“Breathe, darling. It’s just your brother. Look at how much he likes you. He’s already reaching out to you.” The baby’s hands were indeed opening and closing slowly. Cecily helped Christopher adjust his arms, so that he was supporting the baby’s head better, and when she sat back, she felt a pang in her chest at seeing her two sons together. Christopher had a soft smile on his lips, the smile that many people had told her is the same as her own. 

Sometime after she’d put the baby in Kit’s arms, a Silent Brother told her she needed to push out the placenta, so that they could begin healing the tears induced by the birth. She nodded and when she began pushing again, Kit looked up, confused. 

“Is there another one?” He asked, surprised, his eyes wide with curiosity.

“Heavens, no. Thank the Angel. It’s just the placenta.” 

Christopher still looked confused. 

“It’s nothing you need to worry about, bach.” She reassured him.

…

The Silent Brothers were gone by the time Gabriel and Anna got home.

Cecily had been feeding the baby, and Christopher was reading a book on his back, keeping her company. He’d given up on reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, had switched it for a book on science. Cecily had tried to read a couple of sentences, but was deeply confused by them, not being able to understand a thing. 

“I don’t know how you can read that, Christopher. I can’t follow a single sentence, much less the entire book.”

Kit looked up at her. “It’s not that hard, it’s just that Biology is interconnected, so you have to understand the previous concepts to understand this one.”

Cecily laughed. “You put a lot of faith in me, Kit.” 

Christopher tilted his head to the side. 

“What are you reading about now?”

“Genetics. Why children come out looking like their parents.”

“There’s an explanation behind that?” She asked.

“Yes! We all inherit half of our genes from our mother and half from our father.”

“Are you sure? I can’t imagine your father inheriting anything from Benedict.”

“It’s more so to do with physical traits.” Kit explained. “Like blue eyes or green eyes.”

“That’s quite interesting, bach.” she said.

And that’s how Cecily got a lesson on genetics. She was happy to listen to her son talk happily about science and to have her new baby in her arms and be able to kiss his tiny, soft nose and occasionally ruffle Christopher’s hair.

…

“By the Angel, Cecy.” Gabriel said, coming inside, worried. Both Anna and Gabriel had a lot of snow on their coats. They must have come home running after hearing the news. “Are you alright? Is the baby?”

“Yes, yes. Stop worrying.” Cecily said, holding up the bundle of blankets they’d hidden the baby inside of.

Anna’s eyes widened as her eyes landed on the bundle in Cecily’s arms. “Is that the baby? It’s so small.”

Cecily nodded and Anna walked quickly to kneel beside the bed and smiled at the baby. 

“Hello.” She whispered, touching his cheek lightly.

“This is your new brother,” Cecily said, smiling at Anna.

Gabriel leaned in over Cecily’s shoulder, close enough that she could see his face as he smiled down at his youngest child. He put a hand on her shoulder, and kissed her temple lightly while Anna cooed at the baby. 

…

A few moments later, Anna was sitting on the armchair across the room, holding the baby for the first time, Christopher standing to the side, letting the baby hold his finger.

Gabriel leaned close to her and whispered, “what do you think about Alexander?”

Cecily turned to look at him and smiled. “Alexander?”

Gabriel shrugged, brushing her hair away from her face. “I was thinking about names while I took Anna sledding. I tried to come up with names for each letter of the alphabet and I got to ‘Maxwell’ before I thought of Alexander.”

Cecily looked back at her children, interlacing her hand with Gabriel’s. “What made you think of Alexander?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe the letter ‘X’ that they have in common.” 

Cecily felt her smile grow wider. “I love it. Alexander.”

She felt Gabriel put his arms around her and she rested her head on his warm chest. 

“The birth wasn’t that bad, was it?” Gabriel said, his voice lightly amused.

“Go to hell.” Cecily mumbled against his shirt.

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[cristinablackthornkingson]

Shadowhunter’s Short Story #29.

The year was 2016 and all of The Blackthorns were gathered together to celebrate an extremely important event, the birth of the newest member.

 Back in 2012, Helen and Aline had decided they wanted to have a baby. Just a few months after becoming Consul, Alec passed a law that allowed Shadowhunters to seek mundane medical treatment for certain things such as transitioning and fertility treatment, provided they had help from someone who could hide their angel blood and other things that marked them as Nephilim. 

At first, Helen and Aline tried to adopt but even after waiting two years, they were never matched with a baby or expectant mother, so they turned to fertility treatment. Helen wanted to be the one to carry their child, and Aline was more than happy with that, she had no desire to be pregnant, she wanted a child very much, but she didn’t want to carry a child.

 Catarina helped them cover up their angel blood and such, as she had helped Jocelyn and Diana before. 

Their first cycle of IVF failed, it was heartbreaking and disheartening for them, but they decided to try another round, they just about had enough money. They tried desperately not to get their hopes up, but it was very difficult not to

A few weeks after the second round, after a blood test at the fertility clinic, Helen found out she was pregnant. She didn’t think she’d ever been so happy and neither had Aline, they were excited beyond words to be parents and simply couldn’t wait to meet their baby. Their families were thrilled for them, Jia and Patrick were very excited to become grandparents and Helen’s bothers and sisters were extremely excited to become aunts and uncles, especially Mark, who was extremely protective of his sister while she was pregnant, he and Aline were constantly at her beck and call and very protective of her the whole time. 

Helen was very grateful to have a smooth, uncomplicated pregnancy, she suffered some back pain, sickness and fatigue, but nothing extreme. She and Aline had decided not to find out the sex of the baby, but they had chosen names. If they had a girl they would name her Eleanor Livia Blackthorn-Pennhallow. If they had a boy they would name him Andrew Patrick Blackthorn-Pennhallow. 

Just a few hours ago, Helen had woke up in the early hours of the morning with moderate pains in her stomach, which only continued to get stronger, she knew without a doubt she was in labor. She woke Aline, who then summoned The Clave Medic and a Silent Brother, sent her parents a fire message to let them know that the baby was coming, and woke everyone else in The Institute. 

Helen’s labor was long and painful and she thought it would never end, but now that she was listening to her baby crying, Helen knew that every second of that pain was worth it. 

“Helen you did it! Oh I’m so proud of you, I love you so much.”Aline says in a tone of disbelief and joy, stroking Helen’s damp hair back from her face. She had never been so proud of her wife, she had no idea how she had managed to do it, she was the strongest person she had ever met. 

“Aline, do we have a girl or a boy?” Helen breathlessly asks, straining to glimpse what was happening at the end of the bed. She was so tried and sore but she was also beyond excited, she wanted nothing more than to hold her baby and snuggle up with Aline and their baby, she had waited year and years for this moment, and she could not wait anymore. 

Aline turns her focus to the bottom of the bed where The Clave Medic and Brother Enoch were cleaning the baby off. Looking back to her wife, with tears in her eyes, Aline softly says 

“It’s a girl Helen, we have a daughter.” Helen sobs in delight and pushes herself up in the bed. 

“Is she okay?” Helen asks in a breathless, excited tone. 

She is perfect, as healthy as can be. Brother Enoch tells Helen, as he gently gathers the baby up and lowers her into Helen’s arms. Helen’s breath hitches in her throat as she lays her eyes on her daughter, she was so small and so perfect. She had a few, thin wisps of light blond hair, just like Helen, she had Helen’s eye shape, pallor and mouth shape. 

“Eleanor, hello baby girl, hi, I love you so much baby girl.” Helen softly says, softly tracing Eleanor’s little face,with the tips of her fingers. Little Eleanor snuggles closer to her mother, her cries dying down to soft whimpers and soon ceasing altogether. 

“Helen, she’s perfect, and she looks just like you.” Aline softly says, tentatively reaching out and stroking the baby’s cheek.  Eleanor reaches a hand out of the blankets and grips onto Aline’s finger. 

“I can’t believe she’s here.” Helen says in a tight tone of voice, pressing a kiss to Eleanor’s forehead. She had waited years and years to hold her baby in her arms, and now that she was, she had absolutely no doubt that it was all worth it, she would go through all that hardship and pain again to have Eleanor .

After Helen and Aline have bonded with Eleanor for a few hours and Helen has had a chance to rest a bit, they feel ready to introduce Eleanor to her family. In order not to crowd Helen and the baby, Aline ordered that they all come up two or three at a time, first to meet little Eleanor are Julian and Emma. 

“Helen you did so well, she’s amazing.” Julian softly says, gazing down at his niece, peacefully sleeping in his arms. He is unbelievably proud of his sister, she went through so much to become mother, but never gave up, and now she had a beautiful little girl, he knew she and Aline would be fantastic mothers and he was so excited to be an uncle. 

“She really is, she looks just like you.” Emma quietly says, gently stroking Eleanor’s soft, flushed cheek. Ever since Jem and Tessa’s daughter Cordelia had been born, just a few years ago, Emma had really begun to enjoy spending time around babies and toddlers, she adored spending time with her little cousin and now she was thrilled to have a beautiful little niece.

“Thank you, I’m just so happy she’s here.” Helen says in a tired, hoarse voice. 

“I can’t imagine how happy you are, you went through so much to have her, it must feel unbelievable to finally have her here.” Julian quietly says. He had no idea how Helen and Aline had done it, if it were him and Emma who were struggling to have a baby, he would’ve given up hope a long time ago, but Helen and Aline never did and now they had their perfect baby. 

Once Emma and Jules have spent some time with Eleanor, Dru, Ty and Kit come up to meet her. Kit had come from Devon to meet the newest addition, since Eleanor would be like a niece to him, considering he and Ty had been dating for a few years now and he and Dru were the absolute best of friends. Kit was extremely protective of Dru, almost as protective as he was of Cordelia, who he considered his sister.

“She is just so sweet! You’re going to grow up to be just like your aunty, aren’t you sweet girl? I’m going to teach you how to pick locks and all the others things your moms won’t approve of!” Dru coos to her niece, who she has cradled in her arms. She was thrilled to be an aunt, and she knew Helen and Aline would be fantastic mothers, little Eleanor was very lucky to have them as parents. 

“Dru! Don’t you dare!” Aline firmly says. 

“I was kidding!” Dru defensively says. “No I wasn’t.” She then whispers to Eleanor. Aline rolls her eyes, having heard Dru whispering to the baby, but deciding to let it go. 

“She’s cute, but not as cute as Cordelia.” Kit non-nonchalantly says, leaning over to peer into the bundle of blankets in Dru’s arms. In his eyes, there was no child cuter than his sister, it just wan’t possible. 

“Kit! You can’t say that!” Dru says in an exasperated tone.

“Why not? That’s what he thinks.” Ty calmly asks from Dru’s other side, leaning toward his sister to get a closer look at his niece. 

“It’s rude, that’s why!” Dru exclaims. 

“It’s alright Dru, to us there’s no sweeter, cuter baby than Eleanor, but that’s how Kit feels about his sister, I felt like that about you and all the others when you were born.” Helen softly tells her sister. She knew Kit meant no harm. 

“She looks like Livvy.” Ty softly says, running his hand over Eleanor’s wispy hair. “Her eyes, they’re the same shape as Livvy’s.” He softly adds. 

“You’re right, she does.” Helen says. She had noticed that herself, and was delighted to see some of her sister in her daughter, but she knew it could be painful for Ty. 

“I wish she was still here, she would have loved Eleanor.” Ty says in a tight tone. Kit gets up and sits next to his boyfriend, putting an arm around his shoulder and leaning his head against his. Ty was still in a lot of pain over loosing Livvy, he always would be, but Kit made things so much easier for him, being with someone he loved so much and who loved him that much, made Ty feel so much better, he just wished Livvy could be here to meet her niece and see how happy Ty was now. 

After Dru, Kit and Ty leave, Tavvy comes up on his own to meet the baby. 

Tavvy was extremely excited to become an uncle, he was mostly excited not to be the baby anymore, as at 11 he saw himself as extremely grown up. Helen and Aline knew he would be a wonderful help with little Eleanor, just as Dru and Ty would be, the youngest three children are the only ones still living in The Institute, Emma and Julian have a place of their own, as do Mark and Cristina (and of course they have the cottage between the mortal world and Faerie, where they meet with Kieran as often as they can).

“What do you think Tavvy, are you so happy not to be the baby anymore?” Helen softly asks her little brother, as he peers at his niece laid in his arms. He lifts his head and smiles brightly at his sister and nods. 

“Yes I am! She’s really cute, she looks just like you.” He says. 

“Yeah she sure does, we’re going to need your help over the next few weeks, while I recover and we get use to having a baby.” Helen says. She had no plans to leave her bed for the next week or so, she needed to rest and recover and bond with Eleanor. 

“I don’t mind, I want to help with her, but I won’t change any dirty diapers!” Tavvy says. He was willing to do anything else, but he wouldn’t go near a dirty diaper, though no one really blamed him, Helen hated changing her sibling’s diapers when they were younger, but she got use to it over time, still it’s not her favorite task.

Helen softly kisses his forehead and gently says

“Thank you, Tavs, I really don’t know what I would do without you.” 

Last to meet Eleanor were Mark, Cristina and Kieran. Mark and Kieran were so excited to become uncles, Mark had been a huge support to his sister through the whole pregnancy, he was always at her beck and call and would do anything she wanted, no matter what. He was possibly the most excited out of the whole family. He had been a rock for Helen through the process of trying to have a child, every time they got bad news from the adoption agency, and when that first round of IVF failed, Mark had been there to comfort her and support her, he didn’t force her to talk, but Helen knew she could talk to him if she wanted to. She really appreciated how wonderful he was to her and was thrilled to see him with Eleanor. He and Kieran were absolutely infatuated with her, Helen, Aline and Cristina were happy to just sit back and watch them fuss over the baby. 

“Ellie, you love your Uncle Mark the most don’t you?” Mark coos to his niece. 

“No, you love your Uncle Kieran the most, little bright one, don’t you?” Kieran softly says, smiling smugly when Eleanor grips his finger in her tiny hand. 

“That doesn’t mean she likes you more, it was just a reflex!” Mark defensively says. 

“You’re just jealous, isn’t he sweet Eleanor?” Kieran lightly says, bending to kiss Eleanor’s little hand, wrapped tightly around his finger. 

“You’re such big children, come to aunty Cristina Ellie, your uncles are so silly.” Cristina says a in joyful tone, approaching Mark and holding her arms out for the baby. If anyone else had asked to hold the baby, Mark would have said no, but he could not say no to his beautiful Cristina.

Cristina holds the baby close to her chest and kisses her little head full of fuzzy blonde hair. She was the sweetest little thing she had ever seen, and she adored seeing Mark and Kieran with her, they were absolutely wonderful and naturals, she couldn’t wait to have children of her own with them, some day. 

“Oh! I think someone needs a diaper change.” Cristina says, a few minutes later, wrinkling her nose as she gets whiff of the terrible smell coming from Eleanor. 

“I’ll change her!” Mark says, jumping up from his spot by his sister’s bed and rushing to his girlfriend’s side.

 “No I will!” Kieran exclaims, following Mark to Cristina’s side. 

“I don’t trust just one of you with her, both of you change her.” Helen lightly says. Mark gathers little Eleanor into his arms and takes her next door to the nursery, to change her diaper. 

The minute Mark opens Eleanor’s onsie, and the cold air hits her skin, she begins wailing loudly. 

“Oh Ellie, don’t cry, it’s alright.” Mark gently says, hurrying to get her diaper changed. 

“Don’t worry bright, shinning one, it’s alright, almost done.” Kieran softly coos to Eleanor, trying to calm his niece down. Eleanor simply continues to wail and wail as Mark fumbles with the straps on her diaper. 

“It’s okay Ellie, I know this isn’t nice but we have to change you.” Mark coos. Just as he takes her diaper off and is about to put a fresh one on her, he is hit with a stream of pee, right in the middle of his chest. For a moment, he just stands there totally in shock, while Kieran tries to refrain his laughter. 

“Ellie... that wasn’t very nice.” Mark says in a tone of surprise, looking from the stain on his shirt, to his niece. 

“You go change your shirt, I will finish changing this little one.” Kieran says in an amused tone. Mark sighs and leans in to kiss Kieran in appreciation, but Kieran lightly pushes him away. “Mark I love you, but I am not kissing you when you smell like pee.” He says. 

When Mark leaves and Kieran puts a fresh diaper on Eleanor, he grins at her and quietly says

“You did that to show Uncle Mark that I’m your favorite Uncle, didn’t you?” 

Little Eleanor, just like her namesakes, was one of the most loved babies in the world, both her mothers adored her beyond words, all her aunts and uncles loved her more than anything, her grandparents were infatuated with her, Jia and Patrick adored their granddaughter and were extremely proud of her and her mothers.

Helen had never been happier than she is now she is a mother at long last, everything felt perfect for the first time in a long time, she just wished her parents and sister could be around to meet the daughter she longed for and fought for. Secretly, she liked to think Eleanor was a gift from her parents and sister. 

[soccernetghana]

BYU-Hawaii soccer player fighting ‘national disgrace’ of child trafficking in Ghana

[caption id="attachment_805354" align="alignnone" width="767"] Lillian Martino-Bradley escaped horror in Ghana as a child and now is helping others do the same.[/caption] The most impressive person in college sports this school year may not be the football player who wins the next Heisman or the teenager who becomes the next No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. It may be an athlete from a team you’ll never see on television with a story that has nothing to do with winning a national championship of any sort. That’s because you have to look pretty far and pretty deep to find this story: halfway across the Pacific Ocean, to a Division II women’s soccer team in Hawaii. It’s a story of survival and of faith, of getting out of a hopeless situation and then of returning to that place in order to save others. It’s a story that’ll make you feel like you’ve accomplished very, very little in your own life but also one that’ll inspire you to do more. Lillian Martino-Bradley is a 19-year-old sophomore soccer player for the BYU-Hawaii Seasiders. She’s a pretty good player, quick on the pitch, technically sound and with a high soccer IQ. Her coach says that she would have been a surefire Division I talent if not for a slew of knee injuries in high school. But that will be the last mention of athletics in this story. Because the most impressive story in college sports isn’t really a sports story at all. After all, the soccer exploits of a young woman battling for a starting job on a team that finished 4-13 last year isn’t exactly something that’ll make your ears perk up. Instead, listen to the story of what brought Lillian to this Mormon university, where she majors in intercultural peacebuilding and aims toward fixing the atrocities committed against children just like her in her homeland of Ghana. It’s a story about the worldwide fight against human trafficking, which – if this Division II soccer player hadn’t been rescued from Ghana at age 3 – would have enveloped her own life. “It’s hard for even me as her coach to understand what she’s gone through let alone for other 18-year-old girls to understand it,” said her soccer coach, Mark Davis. “Just the amount of faith she has. She never complains. It’s so contagious with the girls. She’s just so stinking impressive.” ****** Lillian was born in a field. There were no doctors on hand. Her uncle helped her mother deliver Lillian, born amidst tall grasses and to a future that seemed doomed. At best, Lillian would have the same life as her mother, a life of selling goods along the dirt roads in order to buy food for her family. At worst? At worst it would have been a life that you and I could never even imagine. Lillian’s mother died from childbirth complications. She never met her biological father; he was from another tribe, and it was taboo to marry a woman from another tribe. Her uncle raised her, but they were desperately poor. Her uncle would leave her at home when he went to work, and when he came back her body would be covered with ants. She’d walk miles with him just to get their mail. When she got a rare treat, it was a boiled egg. “I don’t remember any of it,” she said recently. “I was adopted really young.” Meanwhile, in Heber City, Utah, some friends of Lois Martino had just come back from a two-year Mormon mission to Ghana. In Ghana, they had met Lillian’s uncle. They knew he wasn’t capable of raising her – and they worried that she could be sold into slavery. Human trafficking is a huge problem in Ghana, especially in coastal towns where boys are sold into slavery as young as age 4 to work in the fishing industry. Estimates for the number of boys enslaved at the country’s largest lake range from 1,000 to 10,000. As recently as 1997, an estimated 5,000 young girls and women were sex slaves in the country. In the capital of Accra, an estimated 30,000 children are enslaved to work as porters, according to the U.S. Association for International Migration, which runs an anti-trafficking campaign in Ghana. Another international non-profit described Ghana’s human trafficking industry as “a national disgrace.” “Trafficking in Ghana is very, very ingrained in society,” said Maria Moreno of the International Organization for Migration. “It’s selling your children because you cannot afford to take care of them.” At the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ward where Lillian’s future family belonged, the couple came back from their Ghana mission and told the ward, “This little girl needs to be adopted.” Lois Martino and her husband, who owned a chemical company, had three sons. The youngest was in kindergarten. They made up their minds that this was something they were supposed to do. They traveled to Ghana, and at Lillian’s uncle’s tin hut in their tiny village, they met the girl they would adopt. She didn’t have a birth certificate. She was small and malnourished, her stomach protruding from a lack of food. When they took her to breakfast, she’d eat one grain of rice at a time, as if she were savoring every bite. “Then she’d look at us, and say, ‘More?’ ” Lois Martino recalled. “And she was so surprised when we said yes.” In Utah, Lillian acclimated surprisingly well. Classmates loved playing with her braided hair. She never experienced racism even though the town was virtually all white. The hardest part was food, but slowly, she began eating more: from strictly pineapple and rice to pasta to meat sauce to bread. At age 13 the family decided it was time for Lillian to visit her old home. She had no memories of the place. They boarded a plane to Ghana. As they were landing, Lois gave her adopted daughter a warning: When you get off the plane, she said, it will be overwhelming. The heat. The humidity. The noise. And most of all, the smell. Lois thought it smelled like sewage. “I walked off the plane, I breathed it in, and I was home,” Lillian said. “It was such a natural thing for me. It was a powerful feeling of connection, just so connected to who I was. Even smelling that air – it was kind of musky and different, but it was me. It was my home. My body remembered that.” “It was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen,” her mother recalled. The trip changed her life. Not just seeing her uncle, or meeting both sets of grandparents, or visiting the orphanage and school that her adoptive parents had funded in Ghana after adopting Lillian. It was because when she visited Ghana, Lillian learned a family secret: That when she was born, Lillian had been promised to a man in another tribe to become his sex slave in order to settle a tribal dispute. And it was because she befriended a boy who was about her age and who was living in her old village. And after Lillian returned to the United States, she learned that the boy – a boy she’d spent time with just months before – had been sold into slavery. This is how a 19-year-old college sophomore comes to start an international non-profit that has so far raised more than $20,000 through fundraisers and has opened a safe house in Accra for victims of human trafficking who are in the midst of court cases against perpetrators. The boy’s name was Enoch. His grandmother accepted money from a man who said he would put the boy to work. “This grandmother, they have nothing, and she doesn’t know how to feed her family,” said Lillian’s mother. “Someone came to her and said, ‘This is the oldest and strongest of your grandsons. I’ll put him to work on a farm and send the money home.’ It’s a matter of sacrificing one for everyone.” When Lillian and her mother learned he’d been sold, they knew they had to do something. But what? It’s not like she could just fly back to Ghana, pluck Enoch from his captor and set him free. The money never came home. The Martinos hired a private detective in Ghana. He tracked Enoch to a remote plantation miles into the bush, where he was doing farm work. Somehow – Lillian doesn’t know how – the private detective was able to wrest Enoch away from his captors. The captors were in the midst of sending a busload of children to Nigeria to be sent to a different plantation, the private detective told the Martinos. The private detective called the Martinos after rescuing Enoch, and here’s what Enoch told them: “I thought I would be lost forever.” Now he was free, but he didn’t have money for food or education or housing. Back in Utah, Lillian held a fundraiser. She put up fliers around town. At the rec center in Heber City, she held a benefit dance for Enoch. The money she raised became the seed of something much bigger. “From that moment on I realized how much I could help, how much everyone can help,” Lillian said. “You get people together. You have passion for a cause. And you can really make a special, significant impact in people’s lives.” Since then, Lillian and her mother have visited Ghana a few times. They set up the safe house in Accra, which has so far helped 19 children who are dealing with the legal system after having been victims of human trafficking. They found a local man to run the safe house; Enoch works there, too. They have raised more than $20,000 for the non-profit – it’s called Fahodie for Friends; “fahodie” means “freedom” in Lillian’s native dialect – but need more. The majority of the funding has come from friends and from Lillian’s adoptive father’s estate. (He passed away when she was in high school.) Lillian has spoken out against human trafficking here in the United States – at her school, in her hometown – as well as in West Africa, where she has given speeches to hundreds of young adults in Liberia and in two Ghanaian cities. This summer she got married, to a Mormon young man from her hometown who had spent his two-year mission in Ghana. She knows millions of children worldwide are sold into slavery, and she knows she could have easily become one of those forgotten numbers. Where will her non-profit go from here? She’s not sure. But she’s had conversations with her husband about possibly moving back to Ghana together to fight this issue first-hand. She was saved from tragedy when she was adopted from Ghana and came to the United States. But she knows Ghana is part of her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she moves back,” her mother said. “She knows this was why she was saved. She knows this was why she was adopted. She was put on this earth for a reason, and this may be the reason.” By Reid Forgrave   Foxsports.com source: https://ghanasoccernet.com/

[footballghana]

FEATURE: BYU-Hawaii soccer player fighting ‘national disgrace’ of child trafficking in Ghana

The most impressive person in college sports this school year may not be the football player who wins the next Heisman or the teenager who becomes the next No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. It may be an athlete from a team you’ll never see on television with a story that has nothing to do with winning a national championship of any sort.

That’s because you have to look pretty far and pretty deep to find this story: halfway across the Pacific Ocean, to a Division II women’s soccer team in Hawaii. It’s a story of survival and of faith, of getting out of a hopeless situation and then of returning to that place in order to save others. It’s a story that’ll make you feel like you’ve accomplished very, very little in your own life but also one that’ll inspire you to do more.

Lillian Martino-Bradley is a 19-year-old sophomore soccer player for the BYU-Hawaii Seasiders. She’s a pretty good player, quick on the pitch, technically sound and with a high soccer IQ. Her coach says that she would have been a surefire Division I talent if not for a slew of knee injuries in high school.

But that will be the last mention of athletics in this story. Because the most impressive story in college sports isn’t really a sports story at all. After all, the soccer exploits of a young woman battling for a starting job on a team that finished 4-13 last year isn’t exactly something that’ll make your ears perk up.

Instead, listen to the story of what brought Lillian to this Mormon university, where she majors in intercultural peacebuilding and aims toward fixing the atrocities committed against children just like her in her homeland of Ghana. It’s a story about the worldwide fight against human trafficking, which – if this Division

II soccer player hadn’t been rescued from Ghana at age 3 – would have enveloped her own life.

“It’s hard for even me as her coach to understand what she’s gone through let alone for other 18-year-old girls to understand it,” said her soccer coach, Mark Davis. “Just the amount of faith she has. She never complains. It’s so contagious with the girls. She’s just so stinking impressive.”

Lillian was born in a field. There were no doctors on hand. Her uncle helped her mother deliver Lillian, born amidst tall grasses and to a future that seemed doomed. At best, Lillian would have the same life as her mother, a life of selling goods along the dirt roads in order to buy food for her family. At worst? At worst it would have been a life that you and I could never even imagine.

Lillian’s mother died from childbirth complications. She never met her biological father; he was from another tribe, and it was taboo to marry a woman from another tribe.

Her uncle raised her, but they were desperately poor. Her uncle would leave her at home when he went to work, and when he came back her body would be covered with ants. She’d walk miles with him just to get their mail. When she got a rare treat, it was a boiled egg.

“I don’t remember any of it,” she said recently. “I was adopted really young.”

Meanwhile, in Heber City, Utah, some friends of Lois Martino had just come back from a two-year Mormon mission to Ghana. In Ghana, they had met Lillian’s uncle. They knew he wasn’t capable of raising her – and they worried that she could be sold into slavery. Human trafficking is a huge problem in Ghana, especially in coastal towns where boys are sold into slavery as young as age 4 to work in the fishing industry. Estimates for the number of boys enslaved at the country’s largest lake range from 1,000 to 10,000. As recently as 1997, an estimated 5,000 young girls and women were sex slaves in the country. In the capital of Accra, an estimated 30,000 children are enslaved to work as porters, according to the U.S. Association for International Migration, which runs an anti-trafficking campaign in Ghana. Another international non-profit described Ghana’s human trafficking industry as “a national disgrace.”

"Trafficking in Ghana is very, very ingrained in society. It’s selling your children because you cannot afford to take care of them" - Maria Moreno, International Organization for Migration.

“Trafficking in Ghana is very, very ingrained in society,” said Maria Moreno of the International Organization for Migration. “It’s selling your children because you cannot afford to take care of them.”

At the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ward where Lillian’s future family belonged, the couple came back from their Ghana mission and told the ward, “This little girl needs to be adopted.”

Lois Martino and her husband, who owned a chemical company, had three sons. The youngest was in kindergarten. They made up their minds that this was something they were supposed to do. They traveled to Ghana, and at Lillian’s uncle’s tin hut in their tiny village, they met the girl they would adopt. She didn’t have a birth certificate. She was small and malnourished, her stomach protruding from a lack of food. When they took her to breakfast, she’d eat one grain of rice at a time, as if she were savoring every bite.

“Then she’d look at us, and say, ‘More?’ ” Lois Martino recalled. “And she was so surprised when we said yes.”

In Utah, Lillian acclimated surprisingly well. Classmates loved playing with her braided hair. She never experienced racism even though the town was virtually all white. The hardest part was food, but slowly, she began eating more: from strictly pineapple and rice to pasta to meat sauce to bread.

At age 13 the family decided it was time for Lillian to visit her old home. She had no memories of the place. They boarded a plane to Ghana. As they were landing, Lois gave her adopted daughter a warning: When you get off the plane, she said, it will be overwhelming. The heat. The humidity. The noise. And most of all, the smell. Lois thought it smelled like sewage.

“I walked off the plane, I breathed it in, and I was home,” Lillian said. “It was such a natural thing for me. It was a powerful feeling of connection, just so connected to who I was. Even smelling that air – it was kind of musky and different, but it was me. It was my home. My body remembered that.”

“It was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen,” her mother recalled.

[caption id="attachment_751585" align="alignnone" width="200"] Lillian Martino-Bradley escaped horror in Ghana as a child and now is helping others do the same.[/caption]

The trip changed her life. Not just seeing her uncle, or meeting both sets of grandparents, or visiting the orphanage and school that her adoptive parents had funded in Ghana after adopting Lillian.

It was because when she visited Ghana, Lillian learned a family secret: That when she was born, Lillian had been promised to a man in another tribe to become his sex slave in order to settle a tribal dispute.

And it was because she befriended a boy who was about her age and who was living in her old village.

And after Lillian returned to the United States, she learned that the boy – a boy she’d spent time with just months before – had been sold into slavery.

This is how a 19-year-old college sophomore comes to start an international non-profit that has so far raised more than $20,000 through fundraisers and has opened a safe house in Accra for victims of human trafficking who are in the midst of court cases against perpetrators.

The boy’s name was Enoch. His grandmother accepted money from a man who said he would put the boy to work.

“This grandmother, they have nothing, and she doesn’t know how to feed her family,” said Lillian’s mother. “Someone came to her and said, ‘This is the oldest and strongest of your grandsons. I’ll put him to work on a farm and send the money home.’ It’s a matter of sacrificing one for everyone.”

When Lillian and her mother learned he’d been sold, they knew they had to do something.

But what?

It’s not like she could just fly back to Ghana, pluck Enoch from his captor and set him free.

The money never came home. The Martinos hired a private detective in Ghana. He tracked Enoch to a remote plantation miles into the bush, where he was doing farm work. Somehow – Lillian doesn’t know how – the private detective was able to wrest Enoch away from his captors. The captors were in the midst of sending a busload of children to Nigeria to be sent to a different plantation, the private detective told the Martinos.

The private detective called the Martinos after rescuing Enoch, and here’s what Enoch told them: “I thought I would be lost forever.”

Now he was free, but he didn’t have money for food or education or housing. Back in Utah, Lillian held a fundraiser. She put up fliers around town. At the rec center in Heber City, she held a benefit dance for Enoch. The money she raised became the seed of something much bigger.

You get people together. You have passion for a cause. And you can really make a special, significant impact in people’s lives.

Lillian Martino-Bradley

“From that moment on I realized how much I could help, how much everyone can help,” Lillian said. “You get people together. You have passion for a cause. And you can really make a special, significant impact in people’s lives.”

Since then, Lillian and her mother have visited Ghana a few times. They set up the safe house in Accra, which has so far helped 19 children who are dealing with the legal system after having been victims of human trafficking. They found a local man to run the safe house; Enoch works there, too. They have raised more than $20,000 for the non-profit – it’s called Fahodie for Friends; “fahodie” means “freedom” in Lillian’s native dialect – but need more. The majority of the funding has come from friends and from Lillian’s adoptive father’s estate. (He passed away when she was in high school.)

Lillian has spoken out against human trafficking here in the United States – at her school, in her hometown – as well as in West Africa, where she has given speeches to hundreds of young adults in Liberia and in two Ghanaian cities. This summer she got married, to a Mormon young man from her hometown who had spent his two-year mission in Ghana. She knows millions of children worldwide are sold into slavery, and she knows she could have easily become one of those forgotten numbers.

Where will her non-profit go from here? She’s not sure. But she’s had conversations with her husband about possibly moving back to Ghana together to fight this issue first-hand. She was saved from tragedy when she was adopted from Ghana and came to the United States. But she knows Ghana is part of her.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she moves back,” her mother said. “She knows this was why she was saved. She knows this was why she was adopted. She was put on this earth for a reason, and this may be the reason.”

  Source: www.Foxsports.com//Reid Forgrave

source: https://footballghana.com/