Day 359

A little boy and a little girl sang with me :

“Twinkle Twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.”

My crazy diamond! Isn’t it strange how everything I hear and see, speak and sing, smell and touch, has relevance to my love for him and the connection between us? My life is a string of memories of him and blessings to him. The kids now know as do I, that whenever they look up at the night sky, the brightest star they see, is he.

The mind shouts at me,” YOU let him down!”
Time after time. Again and again.
I listen.
Trying not to agree or disagree.
Just listen.
Not add or take away anything from it.
Just listen.
Do my damndest hard to ignore the bark of a mad dog.
Stand back from it.
Just watch it like sound waves coming off drum membranes.
Observe the noise without joining in.
No defence. No attack. No judgement. No advise.
With no desire to fix anything. Or change anything.
Just listen.
Wait for the noise to fade, giving in to compassion ….. for myself.
Not absolving or blaming myself.
Just being.
With what is.

Knowing this to be an opportunity to extend my love not just to one person but through him to the entire universe – the stars, the sea and the clouds.
That is what this is about.
It is certainly not about me. I just happen to be.
I am incidental. In this place.
I am nothing, yet my nature is vast!
I am just a hollow and empty space.
At this point in time. In the here and now.

Day 352

Posted by kidsaregifts20

By midmorning I had replayed yesterdays proceedings in my head a few times over. I could feel the anger rise inside me every minute and by afternoon it was an absolute torrent. The assimilation into my system of the facts revealed at the inquest resulted in feelings of absolute pointlessness and hopelessness. Nothing is ever going to change. One of his treating doctors said it in so many words, “Suicide is unpredictable and unpreventable”. I felt furious at the people who had allowed my son to suffer for weeks and weeks before he gave up on everything. He wanted to live. He followed every instruction given to him. He wanted to get better. He communicated how he felt the best he could. No one got it!

Luckily I had an appointment to see my homeopath this afternoon. It was a lifesaver. She was willing to listen to me and give me the space I desperately needed to express that terrible rage. She understood. She was there for me in body, mind and heart. After spending an hour with her, I felt relatively unburdened.

Allopathy doesn’t allow for that kind of therapy. It is defensive and supposedly “evidence based”, dry and prescriptive. It undermines other forms of treatment that offer the compassion that it is incapable of. I am sure there is no ‘scientific’ explanation why my arthritis is flaring up. Just as there is no ‘scientific’ explanation why my son died.

Whatever the inquest finds, I still have to work my way to being ok with settling for lighting a candle in front of my beautiful son’s picture every evening for the rest of my life.

Day 347

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Through various conversations over the past 15 months or so, I have come to understand the difference between empathy and sympathy. So, how are they different?

Empathy fuels connection whereas sympathy drives disconnection. There are 4 qualities of empathy:

Perspective taking: really putting oneself in someone else’s shoes and seeing the world from where they are standing.
Staying out of judgement: really difficult given how much some of us enjoy the ‘judging’ without even knowing it.
Recognising emotion in other people and then communicating it.
Feeling with people: Empathy is a sacred space. Like someone is in a deep dark hole, saying, ”I am stuck and overwhelmed.” It’s about me jumping into that dark hole, standing beside them and saying, “Hey, you are not alone. I am right here with you. I know what it’s like.”

Sympathy is, saying from afar – Ooooh! It’s bad! Is it? Can I get you an ice cream?

Empathy is a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something within myself that knows that feeling. Rarely does an empathic response begin with ‘At least….’.

“I lost my son.”
“At least you got to experience motherhood.”

Putting a silver lining on it when something painful is shared is most unhelpful and un-empathic.

We often try to make things better. But rarely can a response make something better. When someone says, “I just feel so bad, I don’t know what to say”, it seems like they get it.

What makes something better is connection.

( Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw )

Day 344

Posted by kidsaregifts20

His Holiness The Dalai Lama was in London a few days ago.

He spoke about ‘Action for Happiness’, which is a hot topic these days. It has 10 points with the acronym: GREAT DREAM.

G – Giving / doing things for others

R – Relatedness or connection with people

E – Exercising

A – Appreciating and noticing the world around us.

T – Trying out and keep on learning new things

D – Direction or having goals/something to look forward to.

R – Resilience

E – Emotion – Taking a positive approach

A – Acceptance – Being comfortable with who you are.

M – Meaning – Being a part of something bigger

At least three of these are about having a sense of belonging. The “belongingness hypothesis” states that people have a basic psychological need to feel closely connected to others, and that caring, affectionate bonds from close relationships form a major part of having a sense of wellbeing.

Mental illness is remarkably on the rise, especially in the young. Some of the ways in which we can protect the young is by helping them develop social skills despite technology which is unavoidable in the present times. Creating positive social networks with peers, teachers and neighbours and participation in community, sports and leisure activities lends a sense of self-worth. Positive relationships with immediate and extended family provide a safety net too.

Nomads such as gypsies and travellers have a life expectancy of nearly 10% less than the national average. More than 40% of them have long term illnesses compared with 18% of settled community.

“I don’t like the house I’m in. I am fed up of looking at it. I don’t meet my own people here. I don’t see no one and I don’t mix with the other kids round here well.”

An 18 year old Romany gypsy boy.

No belongingness, no wellbeing.

Day 338

Posted by kidsaregifts20

“What makes cyber bullying so dangerous … is that anyone can practice it without having to confront the victim. You don’t have to be strong or fast, simply equipped with a cell phone or computer and a willingness to terrorize. (King, 2006)

Bullying creates memories that often last a lifetime. Simply hearing the name of a person who bullied them, even years or decades after the bullying occurred, may be enough to send shivers up the spines of many people.

When most adults think of bullying, they conjure up the image of a big thug who terrorized kids on the playground at school. The horrible encounters with this bully luckily came to an end as the victim left school and went home.

This is not the case with cyber bullying which, in the age of smartphones and social media, is relentless. It sometimes claims lives as the link below illustrates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZ0a4lzsZA

Here are some more facts:

4 in 10 kids have been bullied online, 1 in 4 has had it happen more than once.
70% of students report seeing frequent bullying online. Most teens use a cell phone regularly, making it the most common medium for cyber bullying.
7 in 10 teens agree that cyber bullying is a serious problem, while 8 in 10 think bullying online is easier to get away with than bullying in person.
90% of teens who have seen social-media bullying say they have ignored it. 84% have seen others tell cyber bullies to stop.
Only 1 in 10 victims will inform a parent or trusted adult of their abuse.
Girls are about twice as likely as boys to be victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying.
Bullying victims are at least twice as likely to consider ending their lives.

Low self-esteem, suicidal ideation, anger, frustration, and a variety of other emotional and psychological problems result from this huge and relentless insult. The pity of it is that parents are often the last ones to find out as illustrated by these links:

https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-cyber-bullying
http://nobullying.com/facts-about-cyber-bullying/

Cyberbullying Facts

Such isolation and victimization in the midst of immense connectivity is a terrible tragedy.
Young people who want social change have set up this website https://uk.dosomething.org/

Let’s all do something and not passively accept this as an unchangeable reality of the present times.