The Playground Bully

This year has been kind of tough. I've lost my job, my dad has terminal cancer, I've had two car crashes which have left me having anxiety attacks and now the girl's dad is showing signs that point towards being bipolar. The kind of stuff that X-Factor Journeys are made of. I've tried to hide it, but it's been tough.

Then someone else threw their lot in the mix: the playground bully. It started with excuses, always doing something else that put a stop to playdates. Not coming to birthday parties without explanation. It moved up a gear to Facebook blocking and then being totally ignored on the first day of school, looked through as if you weren't even there. With no explanation. Top it all off with a sprinkling of social exclusion, and there you have it, bullying complete.

Mum's are great, aren't they?

Difficult Conversations

It was the first day back as a P2 for Abigail this week. When I picked her up on the first day we had a chat about things went. Fine, said Abigail. I did some playing and Grace Long's mummy died; not the sort of thing I was expecting. Once we'd established this was real (there was a note) and not a misunderstanding, the questions came.

When are you going to die, mummy?

What happens when you die, mummy?

I don't want you to die. I'm scared of dying....

Difficult questions. But important ones. We had a talk through what had happened and headed home for some quiet time. Abigail headed straight for the book case and pulled out a couple of books she wanted to read: The Heart in the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers, and the Gift by Carol Ann Duffy. I have to admit to feeling a little relief that we had books that did help understand the more difficult things in life.

The Heart and the Bottle, if you've never come across it, is the tale of a girl who spends time with her Grandpa, learning and asking impossible questions. Then one day, his chair is empty. In order to protect her heart the girl takes it out and puts it in a bottle. Her heart is safe, but she loses all her joy in life and grows up missing a part of herself. One day she meets a small girl on the beach who helps her break her heart out of the bottle and help her deal with her grief and bring back her curiosity about the world. Abigail was able to take her own meaning and comfort from the illustrations and there was plenty for us to talk about and try to make sense of together.

The Gift is a book that before this week, I had read once and not really understood. In fact, I was quite shocked by the way mortality was approached and wasn't sure if I would ever read it again. But this time I found a new meaning it. At some point we all have to face our own mortality, and it's usually the death of a grandparent that a child experiences first. What Carol Ann Duffy does so cleverly here is to introduce death as part of the fulfilment of life; death is not something to be seen in isolation and feared, rather to be embraced as part of the circle of life. Death is never easy, but it doesn't have to be hidden. 

A Little Update

Well, it's been a bit quiet around here post wise, so I'd like to say thankyou to everyone who has taken the time to visit the blog. Life has been up in the air here for a while, with my dad's illness, unemployment and setting up a new business. I did think that redundancy would give me LOADS more time for blogging, but as it turns out I seem to find myself cleaning and folding clothes a lot of the time...
The good news for me is that I can now take a breath as my business is now up and running, and my dad is feeling well enough to read a lot of books (I pray it stays that way). The bad news for the blog is that I'm reading a lot of books that I sell at the moment. I don't think it's right that I review books that I sell so that's why it's been so quiet.

PS if you click on the link and wonder 'where's evie?' I should come clean that she's the girl, and I'm the mummy!