Posts Tagged "Save the Children"

Writing Workshop: One Year – On me, Cybermummy and Blogging

Posted by Josie on Jun 27, 2011 in Blogging, Charity Organisations and Awareness Raising, Me, Save the Children, Writing, Writing Workshop | 47 comments

This is the bracelet I wore to Cybermummy this weekend. In case you don’t recognise the symbol, it’s a Save the Children one, and on the back is engraved “Every Child Born To Shine”.

I lay in my hotel room the following morning, ribs aching from laughing, heart aching from unexpected feeling, and head a little numb from thinking, and rubbed the red token with my thumb in the sunshine coming through the blind. And I thought back on the last year.

Thinking about last year’s Cybermummy I suddenly realised how much I’d changed, and how much those changes have affected the way I approach and experience things. Not just things like Cybermummy, everything really, but comparing myself at the two events really hit home.

Last year’s saw me full of self-doubt, feeling like I had something to prove, feeling like I needed to convince everyone that I had something to say that was worth listening – brands as well as people. In a room full of mostly strangers I felt small. Standing up to deliver my talk about blogging and authenticity and voice as part of the main panel session, something I had anxiously worried over long before-hand, I felt like a fraud, like I didn’t deserve to be there and I worried that everyone else thought it, too. This meant I tried a bit too hard, I think. It certainly meant I worried more, a bundle of self-concious nerves with a slightly forced face of confidence and a ‘I belong here’ attitude to try and convince myself.

But by the end of the weekend I wasn’t in a room full of strangers any more, and my voice had reached people that I never would have expected, prompting an email a couple of weeks later from Save the Children and the beginning of that amazing journey and all the changes that followed.

A #PassitOn News Update!

Posted by Josie on May 27, 2011 in Blogging, Charity Organisations and Awareness Raising, Save the Children | 3 comments

It’s been nearly two weeks since Save the Children’s Pass it On campaign launched and, blow me down with an industrial-strength rotary fan, you lot have been AMAZING!

Via tweets alone using the #passiton hashtag, the campaign is calculated to have had a reach of (updated!) five and half million people already, and we’re only just getting started.

For those of you yet to hear about it, on Monday Save the Children are flying three bloggers out to Mozambique. There they will follow the journey of a life-saving vaccine from cold-storage all the way to the front line, to learn what a profound difference it can make to children in a developing country, and how vital it is that world leaders pledge to increase funding for vaccinations when they meet in the UK in June – a four hour meeting during which they hold the power to make a decision that could save millions of children’s lives.

Pass it On! A world-changing meme

Posted by Josie on May 17, 2011 in Art, Charity Organisations and Awareness Raising, Save the Children | 1 comment

I’m delighted this morning to be helping to launch a new meme on behalf of Save the Children, along with the fabulous Red Ted Art Blog, combining a healthy dollop of potentially world-changing charity action with a bit of a challenge and crafty fun.

As you’ll know, art plays a big part in mine and Kai’s lives and is a huge part of how we both express ourselves. Encouraging Kai to paint and draw as a way of compensating for some of his communication difficulties has been really rewarding.

Since coming back from Bangladesh last year I have been so aware of how lucky Kai is to have been born where he was. Kai can sit with me and draw a picture of himself while I imagine a future for him and I know that there is every chance that he will get one, the chance to shine in whatever it is that he chooses. Here he has easy access to excellent healthcare and readily-available life-saving immunisations, but for many of the children and mothers I met when out visiting Save the Children’s work, that promising future was far from certain, with children often facing seemingly insurmountable barriers of poverty and disease. What’s most frustrating is that many of these barriers ARE preventable, with vaccines costing pence and just a few trained health workers within a community able to make an extraordinary difference.

Writing Workshop: Pull and Stretch

Posted by Josie on Jan 27, 2011 in Creative Writing, Parenting, Writing, Writing Workshop | 13 comments

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.

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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.

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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.