Mothers day is fast approaching. A day to be filled with burnt toast, sticky kisses and hand-drawn cards. A day to let my own mother and grandmother know how much I love them. A day for hearts bursting and hearts aching. My middle son will be in my thoughts more often than he usually is. He always will be on days like this.
My head and my heart will will be full of him but I will be thinking about other women too. On days like this I always do. Read more
It was the coughing that brought me back from the edge of a dream. “Hush, hush little one,” I said softly. Selfishly wishing my two year old back to sleep so that I could return to my own.
But the coughs didn’t subside. They became hoarser and louder. And then I heard the panic in my baby boy’s cries as he struggled to catch his breath between dry coughs. Read more
The knife is slack in my hand. The vegetables I was cutting, forgotten. Terror grips my chest and I am struggling to breathe. I am paralysed.
The family dinner is now beyond my reach. I have stopped. My body has simply stopped. My mind is racing for reasons why.
This has happened once before. Years ago. Three weeks after my son died, I collapsed to my knees, unable to continue. Raw grief, emerging from shock, forcing me to floor. Demanding that I pay my dues. Telling me to pay attention to my grief. Read more
For a long time I was convinced the only real difference between men and women was anatomy and up-bringing. That we were conditionally brought up to expect and act within certain norms according to gender. For me, that idea fell away once I had sons. They act like boys. They act nothing like their little girl peers. Nature is, it seems, stronger than nurture. I got to wondering how those innate differences play in the way women and men value themselves. And how that impacts inequality between the sexes.
Some posts write themselves. Others take longer. Untangling difficult thoughts. Trying to persuade them onto the page in an orderly manner. This post is one of the latter.
This is me trying to find sense in the senseless, understand the world we live in and, above all, wanting to change things for the better. So much has happened lately that makes me doubt the good, that horrifies me, that makes me fearful for the kind of world my boys will grow up in.
