Posts Tagged "love"
Guest Post – Response to ‘Touch’
I have a guest post for you tonight. Its author emailed me yesterday asking if I’d consider publishing this as a way for her to tell her story anonymously. Of course I said yes.
I’d love if you could give this honest and brave piece of writing the attention and support it deserves. Josie. x
—————————————————————-
“I’ve written this in response to your beautiful blog piece, Touch, just a few of the words and thoughts that spill through my mind.
Never judge a book by its cover, or so they say, but we do. We judge frequently, make snap assumptions, always thinking we know best, so let me tell you a story. When I was 8 my father committed suicide, he shot himself, at home with a rifle, whilst my sister & I were there. He & my mum were getting divorced, he decided it was his only way out, so what happened? Well naturally, people judged. They banned their children from playing with us, they would cross the street to avoid talking to us. My poor mother took an almighty amount of crap from people judging her, that evil woman who had driven her husband to suicide. But you see, what they didn’t know was that my father suffered terribly from mental illness. He would be high as a kite one minute, dark & brutal the next. He drank bottles & bottles of whiskey when down and when he was up he would race fast cars, motorbikes and shag endless streams of women. In this day & age, knowing what we do, my father would probably be diagnosed as bi-polar, given suitable drugs and his life may have been extremely different. Possibly. My mum, fell out of love with him, he was too much to deal with, too crazy in a house of young children, she fell in love with another (wonderful) man, that was her crime.
Read MoreTouch
I think it’s the lack of touch I struggle with most.
I am someone that thrives on it, like a cat rubbing round your ankles. I guess not everyone is like that, but I am. When I think about it, it’s a huge part of how I express myself, not just through human, intimate touch, but through everything else tactile and tangible like that. I am the girl with the softest mattress that swallows you whole, covered in a duvet thick enough and heavy enough to smother a football team, were I (they?) lucky enough to get them under there. I am all about eating with your hands, and fingers smudged with paint or chalk or charcoal. I touch things as I walk, like a curious toddler, scraping my nails along rough walls, risking splinters as I test my fingertips on rough wood fences. Leaves make me pick them up to rub between my fingers. Grass makes me take my shoes off to dig toes in deep. And water, water at every opportunity, heavy or deep and hot. Maybe it’s something to do with having nerves that feel plugged into everything at times, I don’t know.
Read MoreWriting Workshop: Pull and Stretch
Bloggers! Before I introduce the workshop today, I wanted to use this opportunity to announce the exciting writers’ news I promised on Monday. It is an absolute pleasure to reveal details of Save The Children’s very first blogging conference on February 26th – a unique opportunity for people who, like me, love writing. Participation is open to bloggers from all walks of life with workshop sessions running all day. I will be there speaking at one of them, and, most excitingly, best-selling author Melvin Burgess will be presenting our key-note session.
Even better, Melvin will be running a special master-class with eight lucky bloggers, giving you an exclusive chance to learn some writing tips from one of the UK’s top authors.
To find out how to register your interest, and how to apply to win a place at Melvin’s master class, just click through here to find out more. Places at the conference are limited so act fast! I really hope to see lots of you there.
Now, time for our workshop… this week we’ve been going on a word hunt, using the words we see around us to inspire our writing.
__________________________________________
I can never quite get my head round the concept of the human heart. Sure, I get the biology bit, gleefully dissecting a pig’s heart at school to look in fascination at the muscular walls, arteries and ventricles, my hand against my chest to feel it thump, thumping away, something it has done, without pause, since not long after I was conceived.
What I don’t get is how there is obviously more to it than just gristle and blood. It seems to feel, this heart of ours, to have some kind of tie to our emotional self. I guess we don’t really know exactly how it came to be associated with love, but anyone that loves, or has loved, will know well that feeling, that swell, that tight pressure that we feel there, when love brings us joy, or brings us pain. There’s even a recognised medical condition called ‘broken heart syndrome’, where extreme grief and stress has been seen to lead to an actual, physical weakening of the heart muscle. Love really can HURT.
I have had a strange visual image of love lately, that of long lengths of elastic with tight clamps on each end, that join us, heart to heart, to those we care about. Sometimes the intensity of that love means that the elastic can never be short enough, pulling us closer and closer until we think we might die if we are not together. Other times it is long, stretchy, allowing us weeks or even years of separate exploration before it’s time to pull together again, yet still holding strong, still maintaining a connection. Other times what felt like the strongest elastic in the world, gradually frays and pulls until it disintegrates and we have to let somebody go. And sometimes, the worst times, it is wrenched from us, leaving a hole so deep it feels like it will bleed forever.
When Kai was born, he clamped down on my heart with a grip that would not let go, that will never let go. There was a fusing. It wasn’t instantaneous, and the process carried with it its own pain and adjustment as I learnt to get used to my new tether, and one belonging to a fiercely needy little boy that sometimes seemed to need more love that I had to give. To start with our ‘elastic’ was short, barely allowing for movement from arms or breast. Take Kai away from me, or me away from Kai, and quickly that stretch between us would start to hurt. I would feel it in my heart, that ache, that feeling of not-rightness, and Kai would scream and wail. It was physical, and it was exhausting, and it was overwhelming, but it would not be denied.
I think my entire journey as a parent since, and Kai’s journey from babyhood to toddlerhood, as been a process of pull and stretch. Little by little, I have had to learn how to encourage Kai to pull away a little, to stretch that bond. In fact, that’s something we’ve both had to learn, as I have had to learn to let go, too. At times we’ve pulled too hard and sprang back together painfully, but gradually, we’ve learnt to move further apart while still staying connected. Never before have we had to do so as much as we have had to in the last few months. I have had to learn to let him go, for my own sanity, and to encourage his independence, and to facilitate his relationship with his Dad, which is so important to me for Kai’s sake. And Kai has had to learn to rely on his other connections, his other heart-bonds, and to develop the confidence to stand alone sometimes. The separation of our family, the start of nursery for Kai, work trips away, have all meant a great deal of stretching, and it has been painful sometimes, infinitely so.
But the pride I felt yesterday morning, as I watched my beautiful, sensitive, needy boy, bravely walk into his nursery class, with bottom-lip trembling and eyes wet, his favourite toy clutched very firmly as he let go of me without a fight for the first time and wave goodbye… it made my heart ache in the good way, the way that makes the painful bits worth it one hundred times over. I felt that pull and stretch again, but it didn’t hurt, it just reminded me he was there, and made me so thankful that I got to be the one that loved him and watch him grow.
Love DOES hurt. But, God, is it worth it.
__________________________________________
Now it’s your turn. Have you spotted a good word or phrase this week?
Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) If you have the time it would be great if you could try and show your support to other participants by reading and commenting on at least two other entries.
If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got another whole week to take part and enter your link so there’s plenty of time. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! Our next workshop will be in two week’s time, so I hope to see you back soon.
Standing Tall
“If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too:
if you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
or being hated don’t give way to hating,
and yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
if you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same:
if you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
and stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools…”
- From Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’
This last week I have felt more loved, more supported, more respected, than I ever have before.
I am deeply humbled by it and deeply moved.
So for the hundreds of birthday messages, for friends and family worth their weight in gold, and for the honour that was being awarded BMB’s ‘Most Inspirational Blog’ in their Brilliance in Blogging awards this week, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
You are holding me up right now, helping me hold my head up and stand proudly by my shadow in my best mock-superhero stance. And you are making me smile, over and over.
Thank you. Thank you.
To infinity, and all that… 
