Hannah's Gift By Maria Housden

The extended text ‘Hannah’s Gift’ by Maria Housden paints the readers a picture of what it’s like having a child living with cancer. It shows how the author comes to terms with her daughter's diagnosis and also, the long road to accepting her daughter's sickness and inevitable death, while making changes in her own life.

Hannah’s Gift portrays a message that is very relevant to every single reader's life. This is because, like Housden, we may all experience something devastating in our lives which will be unexpected and quite difficult to cope with. For Housden, this was learning of her daughter's diagnosis of leukemia and then losing her to it. For readers, it could be something similar such as losing a loved one or something completely different. This text demonstrates that despite the prevailing circumstances, we must always focus on positivity, make the most of every situation and,

In the novel, when Housden’s daughter is initially diagnosed with Leukemia, she is faced with an array of regrets. Why did she let herself believe that Hannah was just being a typical, manipulative toddler who didn’t want to go to bed when she knew in her gut that something was very wrong? Why did she allow herself to believe that she was just the inadequate mother of an over indulged child and feel too embarrassed to bring Hannah back to the doctors when every bone in her body was telling her that something was seriously wrong? Despite the regrets the author was dealing with, she realised that what she done at the time was to the best of her knowledge, in the best interest of Hannah. At this stage of the text, the theme of “never let yourself regret something, instead, see it as an opportunity” is shown. This was