My daughter had ‘odd socks day’ at her nursery last Monday, symbolising support for difference, which marked the first day of an anti-bullying week. All students, from nursery through to year 6, had a brief to complete, and ours was a poster. This ignited a process of reflection on this theme (for me) and brief questions and exercises (for my children) to discuss the meaning of ‘bullying’ and how can we resource ourselves to respond to a bully, to ally with those being bullied.
I’ve been pondering the myriad of forms ‘bullying’ can take, from discrimination and institutional racism to workplace intimidation, and more manifestations in domestic abuse, like gas lighting, shaming and punitive punishments for children, whether at home or school. What’s the line between abuse and bullying? The cliche of the playground bully is limited, when we know of cyber bullying, and the impact of social media on us, particularly children and adolescents. Maybe all abuse involves a bully, though not all bullies are abusive; can you bully someone without abusing them in the process?
I am also with how wider families, friends, neighbours, even health professionals, often resist calling-out abuse, for fear of breaking-up a couple and families. Or worse, that this abuse rears its ugly head in their direction. Often, abusive patterns that are anchored in power imbalances are so much part of a culture- be this any family’s unique ‘culture’, wider regional, national or religious cultures- that even well-meaning people struggle to recognise potential injustices at play. It is part of a ’normal’ spectrum that can leave individuals, families and communities complacent in their silence. This is enough to turn a blind eye, to swallow down your intuition and to assume it is none of your business.
Someone being bullied and abused, particularly by a loved one, may struggle to see this as such and will assume that they, the victim, is somehow deserving of this mistreatment and often find ways to excuse their partner/ parent/ school mate/ aunty or family friend. Fear of being punished, shame and even embarrassment that they are ‘making a fuss’ can all muddy the waters, so a respectful, firm and holding intervention becomes a necessary resource for them. This can take the form of simply making a private, quiet space to ask how the person you are concerned about is doing, listening to their experience, holding back on judgement and sharing your concerns. Finding words to affirm their experiences and emotions can help them validate their diminished sense of self, which often is the first element that takes the biggest bashing. If this is an adult, then it is more complicated, though not unreasonable to be direct in your confrontation, if you have witnessed what you know (in your heart) is not acceptable. I’d like to believe, if tested, I’d take the risk of getting it wrong, be corrected, even told off, then risk allowing a husband to bully and shame his wife. If it’s a child, then it absolutely is your duty to call this out.
Even professionals, like nurses, health visitors, doctors, child and couples therapists are often misinformed on abuse and what it entails. Maybe they are afraid on a deeper level, to name what they suspect. I know, from experience, couple therapists who will do all they can to avoid sharing their opinion, so as not to be called in to bear witness in court, risk being sued or worse, risk placing their professional reputation at the stake. In fact, some believe that couples therapy can do more harm than good as the premise is grounded in mutuality, which has systemically fallen apart in abusive patterns. The Family Courts are rife with silenced abuse, protecting an abusive parent’s right to see their children (changes are slow but imminent here), known cases where rape victims face their perpetrators to give evidence in court. To me, this is forms of bullying on a wider, structural level, that leaves us all, as a society, complacent.
Child abuse cases where social workers, teachers, emergency care nurses and doctors assumed the incident was an accident, assumed the child went to school, chose to assume the parent or ‘auntie’ is benign at best. No one wants to cause trouble, to ruffle features, to stir the water, to risk a backlash… and sometimes it is our duty, as a fellow human beings, to check-out if someone is really OK. On a smaller scale, if a mother has to consistently manage emotional abuse from her partner, to meet his anger when her infant cries or justifying herself to his reprimands, to live with perpetual anxiety and fear, how can she be fully present for her children?
A bully doesn’t need to use bad language, to physically hit or even to raise their voice. Some bullies actively derive their power from their anonymity and invisibility, in the case of cyber bullying, or from skilfully masquerading a warm, charming persona to all, except a reserved few. Often, cold, manipulative anger is a dish the more refined bully likes to serve his chosen victim/s. If these victims have an Allyship to help hold them when they are more vulnerable then they will survive to better recognise and call-out bullying.
I ran into a neighbour yesterday, and when I enquired after their niece, the reply was that she is coming home from school hungry, as she doesn’t seem to be getting enough to eat at the meals the school provides. I said I often pack a little snack-box in my daughter’s nursery bag, in case she gets peckish, and the response was that’s against the school policy. Why don’t the girl’s parents feed this experience back to the school? The response was that they- first generation immigrants from a country with a long history of government oppression- were afraid to criticise the school for fear of alienating their child, and instigating some sort of backlash reaction towards her. They did not want to risk their daughter’s safety. My neighbour then shared a little of their own fear of police officers, and other forms of authority, which stems from direct experiences in their country of origin.
I’ve been reflecting on my own attitude in approaching conflict, and how I manage my need to take action. I’ve recently been criticised at being indirect in my approach, particularly in confronting differences of opinion. Instead of openly meeting a challenge head on, allowing anger to be openly expressed, I tiptoe around direct action, in an attempt to find a way to appease, to quell, to make the situation safe, before tackling the issue at hand. I am aware that I’m not easily roused into anger, which is of immense value in being responsive and not reactive; and also lacking as the implication is a disconnect, an inauthentic response to a given situation.
There is value in meeting difference here-and-now, taking action in-the-moment, which can mark a line between a healthy response from an unhealthy one. A neurotic pattern is for someone to freeze in the moment, only to think back on what he should have said or could have done. This can imply something unresolved, unprocessed trauma somewhere in their lifetime, or even, generational trauma from decades of suppressing anger and avoiding confrontation- until it is repressed out-of-awareness- for fear that it would lead to persecution and danger. So I keep myself safe, small and quiet, and get what I need to get done without ruffling any metaphorical feathers. Equally, another pattern is for someone to be easily triggered into reacting with anger, then be left to deal with the damage, which leaves ‘anger’ with a dangerous reputation. Healthy expression, for me, is spontaneous yet contained with awareness, articulated simply and directly, it’s hot enough to take action and change the situation, but not so hot as to burn the house down. This takes practice and trust, and I believe, a lot of unpacking of the generational elements at play, not simply the personal, individual ones.
I recognise the anger I feel when I hear cases of child abuse or when I’ve worked with people in hideously disadvantaged situations, like a refugee camp in a banana field in south Lebanon or working children in a refuse site in Basra, Iraq. The anger at the injustice sits in the pit of my stomach, like a lead weight. However, this ‘anger’ is contained and productive, where I can articulate myself, hold my self aside from the people and situation I am working in, in order to meet them. I still need to vent (boxing works wonders!), which often reveals the kernel of my intense emotion as deep sadness. I learned to recognise my anger in my first therapy training in 2013, and in group process, had a few opportunities to practise expressing myself with others. I found that the majority were able to take me, and that I often wasn’t received quite as strongly as imagined I would be. I wasn’t the raging hulk figure my anger represented for me. Still, my instinct, my deeply ingrained habit, is to avoid real head-to-head confrontation, and in that moment, to step away from my anger, until it’s safely contained and productively packaged. The problem arises when I confront someone who has a very different relationship with their anger, and I struggle to meet them in that place. Some people’s anger clears their thinking, drives them forward, helps them resolve relational issues whilst all is open and in the air. Left to cool, like oil in a baking tray, it can turn to a stale and congealed mess.
Being part of a diversity student group at my therapy training school, I notice my difference in response to others in the group, and I wonder if/ and how a generational impact of authoritarian abuse of power has impacted my experience of meeting challenges associated with differences. If I’m unaware of quietly redirecting someone’s anger or consistently quelling a call for action, then I can impede growth, whether personally for me and others, or/ and for a group as a whole. A group that is, ironically, exploring difference. Difference is often pathologised, in the context of institutional marginalisation, where tokenism and the lighter/ more fun forms of multiculturalism is paraded to distract from meeting at the boundary. I don’t have answers. I do believe that differences in ways-of-being in-the-world need to be held, side-by-side, and honoured, in order for something unique and spontaneously to emerge.
“We bequeath to our children not only what we honor in ourselves and in our parents; each generation also passes much of its own negative experiences on to the next, quite without wishing to do so. We need not be helpless in deciding how the story of our families will continue in the future, but first we have to recognize the themes and events that have shaped our present.
“Blame becomes a meaningless concept if one understands how family history stretches back through the generations. “Recognition of this quickly dispels any disposition to see the parent as villain,” wrote John Bowlby, the British psychiatrist who showed the decisive importance of attachment in infancy and childhood. Who should we end up pointing the accusing finger at? At Adam and Eve, or perhaps at some poor anthropoid ape ancestor digging at the earth, a crudely sharpened stick held between palm and prehensile thumb.”
From Gabor Maté
The above Quote is from Gabor Maté’s Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I was originally looking for another one of his books, but downloaded a Kindle Sample and got hooked! I don’t think the thinking is exclusive to ADD, as he talks of the generational impact of unprocessed trauma, as well as the links between child development and neurological plasticity with emotional wellbeing and our environment.
I sit on the stair case of a local church, whilst two steps down, a mother helps her young son read a storybook. Three primary school age girls run up the stairs to the church, then tiptoe inside, whispering and quietly giggling. Their mother calls them, and threatens with: ‘come down or I’ll start counting!’ On the pavement below, two boys and a girl run up the side of the church, whilst some 9 mothers mull around chatting. I check my watch, it’s nearly time, then notice the little boy is looking back at me: ‘he says his friend has the same watch as yours’, the mother says by means of an explanation. I smile: ‘it’s my son’s watch.’ I collect my things and get up to join the other mothers, who ask if my daughter is starting reception this year. Then one by one, mini ballerinas in baby pink ensembles appear at a side door, hopefully searching for their connection. As each name is called out by the assistant teacher, there’s a brief excited reunion, a reconnection. Mine appears in her new ballet outfit her grandfather bought her last week. Her old one grew too small in lockdown. A lot seems to have grown too small since lockdown. Life seems to have shrunk, become more localised and tight knit. Human-to-human classes, the congregation of locals, sprawling into the outdoors, kids allowed to play, run, be noisy, on the streets… the sheer physicality of it all. The fact that we needed to bid farewell to our children outside, rather than all cram inside (a la pre-lockdown), awkwardly and silently, glued to personalised screens, meant that we took the space to be alongside one another outside. I felt catapulted in time to an imagined moment in London’s past, with kids playing on the streets, life pulsing out in the open. It’s as if lockdown has sharpened an appetite for human connections, for the local and neighbourly, and for a sense of ‘normality’. Whilst so much is happening in the world, and when much switched off not long ago, the ordinary has become precious.
Below quote is a conversation between a 7 year old daughter and her mother, from Diana Evans’ ‘Ordinary People’, a delicious novel I’m currently reading:
“‘ I’m half English, a quarter Jamaican and a quarter Nigerian.’
‘No, you’re a quarter Nigerian, a quarter English and half Jamaican.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m half Nigerian and half English, and Daddy’s completely Jamaican.’
‘But I want to be completely Jamaican too,’ Ria said. ‘I want to be all of them.’
‘You can’t be all of them and only one of them at the same time. You can either be just one thing or a mixture of things. Anyway, you’re British as well.’
‘So I’m four things?’”
I’m reminded at how I did something similar in dissecting my identity, and how a core weekend tutor/ facilitator at the Gestalt Centre, said: ‘you are not a quarter this and a quarter that… you are not halves and quarters. You are everything that you are. You are all Kurdish. All Arab. All Iranian. All British. You are all of you.’ I was gripped, though I didn’t comprehend the depth of her message. Still, it stayed with me, and I come back to this image of wholeness whenever I find myself fragmenting with the differences within.
Ending with another quote from Lebanese Amin Maalouf’s book ‘In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong’:
“What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself?”
Asked to do a self-portrait at art class, when I was 11 years old and freshly arrived into the UK from Iraq, I enthusiastically drew myself as pink skinned with pale green eyes and bright yellow hair. Classmates sniggered at my picture in break time, and I wasn’t sure if I’d inadvertently walked into another opportunity to be bullied (I was an easy target in those early months) or another case of lost-in-translation— Art and Arabic were the only group classes I attended, as I was learning the language. Turns out it was a bit of both, but more, a culture clash that I continue to excavate deeper layers into.
In Iraq, I was a relative minority in how I presented physically: I was indeed ‘blonde’ compared to the standard black, my hazel eyes relatively ‘green’ compared with the average dark brown, and my skin ‘white’ in relation to the warmer, olive skin tones.
I’m setting aside for a moment the European ideals of beauty, which often grade beauty in a hierarchical colour palette. Setting that hefty piece of the puzzle aside for now.
Even amongst my international schoolmates, my colourings had shifted with the change of country. I was now olive skinned with mousy brown hair and brown eyes. The variation I experienced in my youth transposed into a monolithic non-European/ non-white category. Not only that, as I didn’t have a Middle Eastern ‘Fro’ or silky mane to proudly exhibit or the big black almonds to peer through, I teetered precariously on an edge.
At 21, when my first white hairs prematurely came out of their closet, I began to colour my hair darker than mere mousy, even at one point, dying my brows and lashes to match. I didn’t fit my own image of myself anymore, so I attempted to fit the image others seemed to hold of me. At university, I was mostly with white English friends and a sprinkle of Brits of South Asian origin, but I was firmly, the only foreigner.
A foreigner who lived in a diaspora bubble. I proudly ate baked beans (an English national dish!), served cold (it’s surely sweet and intended as a salad side dish!). I enjoyed various privileges like being left out of the South-North England divide or Public-State school prejudices. Spared by virtue of being on the periphery and in a box all of my own. Even my religion was left alone, possibly with a potent mix of fear and ignorance.
And when talk inevitably shifted to childhood references, I stayed quiet, inwardly recalling the Ba’ithist propaganda songs and dances I took part in as a child, the school trips visiting ‘war heroes’ in hospitals, namely, dismembered and traumatised soldiers returning from the battlefields. TV programmes proudly exhibiting those with lost limbs still managing to survive daily tasks like brushing teeth and fixing lunch… no Magic Roundabouts or Where’s Wally.
In London, I’m a Londoner. Simple. In my therapy training course, I’m again a minority. Not just me as an individual, but ‘me’ on an institutional, and systemic, level. My college is not an exception in this, although other organisations have been more forthright in exploring both the minority position and ‘whiteness’. Black and Asian networks (BAATN), Irish communities (iCap), those working with gender and sexuality (Pink Therapy), others getting uncomfortable with discussions on ‘race’, ethnicities, culture and power (Aashna and Minster Centre).
The mental health professional field is contradictory. On the one hand, the intention is to heal, strengthen and support clients to live more fully, with integrity. On the other, the profession’s history has some pretty harsh realities of suppressing, even creating scientific justification for Othering those who are different; often dehumanising an ‘entire’ race or community, justifying and enabling atrocities from slavery to pathologising homosexuality, to putting many women in mental asylums for not acquiescing to the male figures in their lives.
I’ve been part of a student-initiative looking at our experience and relationship with diversity and difference, both personally and professionally, and although I’ve done a fair amount of work on this theme, I find it’s (I am) an evolving process. I only woke up to the historical element with Rose Cameron’s book, which covers marginalisation on an individual, institutional and systemic levels.
I’ve always been clear: I’m not white. I may look white to some, but that doesn’t matter, because I am not ethnically ‘white’ or European. I know what it is to be exoticised, Orientalised and objectified based on what I look and sound like. The frozen fear I experience, when the whiff of persecution sways in the air connects me as much to childhood experiences of war to my great grandparents’ stories of migration as refuge. Black Earth Rising is as much my region’s turmoil as it is Africa’s, from the draws of the colonial powers and corruption to genocides and survival guilt.
And I am white. I am visibly not black or brown. That reality, and privilege, of that reality, is something I’m choosing to be with. In the past, I’ve been frustrated at not fitting into any one category, of being an ‘invisible Muslim’, questioned on my Iraqi-ness by other Iraqis etc that I’ve often refused to accept the privilege that comes with that same facade.
I can relate to both explorations into whiteness and those from ethnic minority perspectives. And I’m not sure how I fit into any one of the organisations listed above. Beyond my individuality, my entire country is a misfit of ethnicities, religious, colonial influences (from Ottoman to British) and languages and tastes and smells, and I am still more white than the majority of my own family. When I don’t want to stick out, I can better hide under the umbrella of my relative invisibility. That’s my reality.
A sleeveless top and exposed hair as telling as my pasty olive tones.
I’m sitting with the privilege of not having my race thrust upon me at every turn by those unaware of theirs.
And I feel a nonverbal affinity with those of ethnic minorities groups, which I sensed without any cognitive understanding, when I chose my first psychotherapist in 2013, the start of my therapy training; I didn’t care where they were from, as long as they were ‘ethnic’, and basically, not white or European. I had experienced different colours of objectification that frankly, I was less interested in exploring their colour blindness than my own baggage. It’s not my job to educate my therapist, that’s their responsibility (and their training college).
However, the affinity I felt with ‘minorities’ also blinded me. I was unable to feel provoked when my formidable mixed race trainer/ teacher pushed me for a year, possibly in an attempt to explore transferences, yet was triggered at the first push from their white, male colleague. The same-ness I felt towards them and their race blinded me to their power, their hierarchy, essentially, them. My heritage of safety in same-ness needs to shift to truly accept- on a body and spiritual level- the beauty and richness of difference.
‘No, I’m not fasting.’
Hard words for me to say. An admission of not practising my faith in this Holy Month.
I want to say this first week has had a considerable impact on my life; a delicate veil of listening more deeply, a silent dhikr/ a remembrance of God’s infinite wisdom, of prayer and reflection, modelling rituals to my children, sharing these with my mother, who thanks to COVID is stuck here with us!
This would have been my first Ramadan when I’m not pregnant or breastfeeding (both of which exempted me from this part of the practice), and so far, strictly speaking, I’ve not been ‘clean’ to fast (thanks to my intense monthly cycle). And regardless, I do not, right now, feel in the right place to truly slow down, to turn my gaze inwards, to switch off and float, as I’ve enjoyed doing during this Month for most of my adult years. By the time I graduated from university, my family had all left the UK, so fasting become a solitary practise for me, my eccentric way of tuning inwards, of letting go (physically and spirituality) of basic needs. I’d practise Kundalini yoga, alongside silent dhikr at home, a Sufi circle or the occasional tarawee7 in the mosque. I also made sure that at least a handful of times, I invited friends over for Iftar, regardless of whether they shared my faith or practise, to share in the spirit of Ramadan. This was my past practise, when I had my support system in place, when my responsibilities were different, and life felt more steady and stable.
Right now, I need my strength, my clarity of mind, my feet strongly rooted to the ground, to anchor myself, to be present to my current reality. I have a myriad of reasons, beyond COVID, to say that I do not want my faith to be a burden, but a support. How can I support myself with God firmly in my heart?
Ramadan is not simply about eating, or not, it’s generally agreed that the practice is deeper than the physical, but why is variations on fasting disregarded so quickly by other Muslims? Any variance is viewed, at best, a joke, at worse, an insult. A taboo at both ends. This judgement is subtle and familiar.
‘Fasting’ as far as Muslims are concerned is not eating or drinking from sunrise to sunset. Simple. If you choose to have water, that’s not fasting. If you smoke, that’s definitely not fasting- and I have personally silently judged smokers who claim they are only ingesting air! But I’ve admired those who say they will only drink water but not eat, or have a banana with their medications in the morning and continue until sunset, fast half the day, like we did as children… these creative modifications strike me as people choosing to find a way into their faith, fitting themselves into a practice that can otherwise seem unattainable. Can they not say they are ‘fasting’?
Similarly with reciting the Qur’an. A woman is not to recite to a mixed audience. Anyone reciting has strict rules to adhere to, like which vowels to elongate and how to clip particular consonants. Do not make the recitation akin to singing! Although musical, this is not music. This is the word of God. No one is to recite with any mistakes. A mistake is near blasphemy, an insult on what is perfection and inimitable.
I recently recorded a short chapter from the Holy Book, and when I played the recording to my mother, she looked concerned: ‘There are two mistakes!’ I was aware of one of the mistakes, but I was glad to have recorded something in-the-moment, that’s alive and connected. I wanted to share with friends, the unconventional way I choose to vocalise God’s words to my children every night at bedtime. There will be mistakes, because I learned these chapters by heart as a child, and to my ears, this is music, because to me that is not an insult, but the highest praise.
‘The same archangel Gabriel who visited our Prophet (Peace be Upon him)’, my grandfather used to say, ‘visited Mozart and Verdi, because their music is divinely inspired.’
A blasphemous statement to many Muslims, but to me, this was an enlightened man, whose love for God was echoed in all that he loved and what enriched his soul, from nature to music.
My experience last Ramadan was torturous attempts to connect with a man who attended Friday prayers and did not eat from sunrise to sunset, but who chose to punish and deny me the pleasure of sharing iftar with him, to leave our home ten minutes before his first and final meal of the day, knowing the peace and pleasure I have in cooking for those I love. Alas, how we adhere to our faith is not in his or my judgment, but in God’s infinite wisdom, His ability to see beyond the surface, into our heart and soul.
When I questioned my grandfather as a child, asking why all our household fasted except my grandmother, he immediately defended her:
‘Whether your grandmother fasts or not is between her and her Creator. Besides, your grandmother looks after you, she prepares a sumptuous meal for us, puts up with our low energy and short temper, even our stinking breath! Perhaps to God, her actions have more value than our fasting, because we fast for ourselves, but her actions are for us all.’
Islam places a lot of value on niyya, or intention, as that is the essence of our thoughts and actions. Practise without intention is misguided, but to those following the petrified shell of religion, rules are paramount.
To those of us who choose the malleable, subtle, inner workings of our faith, we carve our path to the Divine, and do so with music in our soul.
‘People say: we are all in this together. Whilst some families enjoy quality time together, playing in a big garden, walking in nearby forests… others are locked in a high rise, with a mentally ill or violent parent. We are not in this together.’
Paraphrasing a speaker from an impromptu talk by TISUK, focused at therapists and counsellors working remotely with children and adolescents.
Before Covid, the work was done in schools, but now, setting-up a Zoom meeting with the parent/s and school, ensuring there’s a safe space to run the confidential session, that there’s a computer available and the tech know-how etc. is not an easy feat. Some have resorted to postcards or letters. Anything to preserve that connection. Sometimes the therapist is the only emotionally available adult in the child’s life, and the only person who has the potential to provide this young person a resource in themselves to get them through this extraordinary time.
We listened to case studies of children and young adults coping under Covid, and how working remotely can be challenging, but also, how we can maximise that work.
A 7 year old boy:
‘Daddy is like an earthquake, when he gets angry, I feel everything shake… but I run and hide under my bed, and guess what I have under my bed? Biscuits!’
The angst, the anger, the rage that has nowhere to escape, is locked into a pressure cooker. A ticking bomb.
‘Women will be beaten in their homes.’
The above line jumped at me from an article in the Guardian weeks ago, and has embedded itself beneath my skin. Locked in with the person you fear most. Women beaten, their children witnessing. Children beaten, and no one to witness.
I have felt challenged, frustrated and lost, alongside deep feelings of gratitude, moments of pure joy and relief, to simply be with my children, to play more, to lounge, to get messy and creative. So many privileges I take for granted.
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Some simple ways TISUK suggested for practitioners that I feel can help children in general to better connect to loved ones online:
Maintain eye contact- not eye balling, but also not checking your watch or being distracted.
Invite them to hug a cushion, as you do the same, to help them feel more embodied in an otherwise disembodied, remote connection.
Help prepare them for the abrupt goodbye of the online connection (or disconnection), share what you might do immediately following your time together, for example, ‘I’m going to sit here and think about the lovely song you just sang to me and try to learn some of the words to sing back to you next time! what will you do?’
Also to help with the abrupt ending, is to find a simple ending for yourself, like counting down together, before you click off.
—————
Sharing photo’s of our day, what resources we are drawing on to help keep our kids (and ourselves) sane indoors; juggling the normal stuff of life, from a full-time job, study or to teach pilates online…
Six mum friends on a group chat. We met when all our children went to the same nursery. My children have been out of nursery for over two months, but our precious connections have continued to thrive. Our kids are preschoolers and younger, so we don’t have the extra challenge of actual homeschooling just yet!
We share images of activities, sometimes creating pendants from homemade play dough, a dress-up with face paints, a dance competition, mother-and-daughter pilates at home or just an extra long bath time with more toys than usual.
One mum made s a smiley face for when her daughter is allowed in the room, and a frowning face for when mum is cramming in some work time.
And yes, a screen is a lifesaver for those more desperate moments when you need to take a work call, and don’t want to have your child loudly announce that they have just taken a massive poop, whilst your boss politely pretends he didn’t hear.
Looking at everyone’s sharing of their day, I feel moved. We are in this together.
Even with me, as someone who’s kids no longer go to nursery and I’m pretty much with them full-time, I’m feeling this extra pressure. Our days were punctuated by playgroups, classes, a Family event at the Science Museum, a puppet show at Little Angel Theatre, swimming class on Mondays, ballet Tuesdays, Chickenshed drama workshops Wednesdays at our local library, Thursday morning is ours to explore somewhere new, or maybe just chill at the library…
Before kids, I loved being home alone, but with kids, I got cabin fever if we are not out by 9:30am!
I’m finding this is shifting our pace of life. After making some play dough yesterday, I lay down on the living room sofa to read a key text for my course, whilst my two monkeys happily cooked themselves a feast (in their toy kitchen) and had a picnic with all their stuffed toys. This was a total of maybe 20 minutes. A first for me. Just to sit, read and do something independently of them and mothering, whilst being in their presence. Granted, I read five pages, and yes, I tasted most of the culinary feasts being conjured, and this was a milestone for us.
Challenging times, and interesting too, in terms of how we, individually and collectively, manage our response to the unknown and to imposed change. We have seen what happens in other countries, but like children who refuse to heed what their parents warn them of, we mostly refused to act responsibly, even sensibly, as we ourselves have not experienced this before.
It’s not just my mum group, it’s my course peer group, my single parent support group, my smaller group of three friends across the globe, individual friends and family, we are pulling our resources together. Gathering ourselves. I pray that this will leave us more integrated and working in synch with one another, and dare I say, nature.
‘I am against reductionism of any kind, because, satisfying as any ‘nothing-but’ explanation may be, it does violence to the complexity of inner life.’
Ellen Siegelman
In the preface to her book Metaphor & Meaning, published in 1990, she talks of her background in literature, as well as her extensive experience in clinical psychology and child development. She draws similarities between her patients and poets, who she believes share ‘an underlying imaginative process’. I’m just in the Preface, in an attempt to begin reading for an essay, and already struck by Siegelman’s beautiful and complex use of language!
starakin 