My naked heart

Today as I walked Ari to the health centre for his weigh-in (8.4kg and 71cm for anyone who's interested), we passed a primary school.
It was lunchtime and the playground was full of kids doing their thing. I was transfixed by a little boy who sat alone at the edge of the playground, under a tree, just watching all the other kids play. He looked so sad, it almost made me cry.
Even now, 8 hours later, I'm still thinking about it and it makes me hurt inside. Why?
I wrestled with it all day until I realised: that could be my boy out there. That's why it hurts so much.
When you don't have children, a TV image of an emaciated child in the Sudan, a movie about the death of a child or even a little boy sitting alone in a playground is sad, but you move on pretty quick.
When you have a child, it affects you physically. Your heart hurts, your insides go all churny, you cry uncontrollably (as I did watching Claudia Karvan's mourning in the TV series Love My Way recently).
I once read a fabulous description of motherhood by TV personality Amanda Keller. She said that once you become a parent, you pretty much hand over your heart - anything and anyone can hurt you. It's true.
Recently I decided to sponsor a child - my sister Lauren and I are splitting the cost of sponsoring Liliane, a girl from Rwanda.
I'd been wanting to for years, of course (haven't we all), to stave off some of that middle-class guilt.
But the impetus to actually do it came from another place - that part of me that is a mother now who just can't bear the thought that there are millions of children in the world who have no food and no home, let alone any love or happiness.