whose ‘right’ – Relay shun ships

Every Picture…..

When does the virtual world cross paths with our real world,? I think, more often than we care to think.

At my mother’s house, I came across some old photos, of me, my brothers, mum, dad and many other family members.

As I flicked through them, it brought back so many memories. Good ones, sad ones, fun ones and cringe ones and plenty in between.

It occurred to me though, as I looked at some of the old ones of me, and some of the most recent ones, that my smile was not reflective of how I was actually feeling at the time that the snap was taken.

In the world of social media which we now live in, we often give out about people living in a virtual reality, only posting positive photos, lifestyles etc. I am one of those people.

I post my life on social media…… well, in the main, the perception of my positive life. I mainly post my photos because I once had my camera stolen with 5 weeks worth of holiday snaps on it, of my children and I. I was heartbroken, so from then on, I upload to facebook, to preserve the moment!

The thing is, we are all probably guilty of living or portraying a virtual reality ,pre and post social media.

In the collage of me above, at different ages and stages of my life, my smile seems almost the same giving the impression that I am happy, yet my reality of when some of the pictures were taken, couldn’t be further from the truth.

There was loss, significant loss in some of the photo’s, a miscarriage, a marital separation and the most recent being taken 11 days after my mother died.

Every day we go about our business, we smile and we say we are ‘doing fine’. For the most part I know I can pretend that I am fine for my ‘outside face’ but that is because it is important to have a break from it, from the sadness, the pain, hurt, grief or whatever it is that makes us ‘not fine’. We need distraction…well I do. That is how I cope.

I allow all my feelings to live in me, sometimes they consume me, they niggle at me, and I push them back and sometimes I let them break free. I do not or try not to let them define me, because each day, they are different, more intense, less intense, more manageable, more tolerable, less tolerable etc and as the days, weeks and months pass, we learn to live with our pain, our loss, our hurt and our wounds.

It is important to feel all the emotions, just as it is important to try to escape them, be distracted from them, and talk about them, even when we think we can’t, and when we can’t talk, we need to find a place, a person a friend, who we can trust enough, love enough, that we can sit in our silence or our turbulence and they will allow us to just sit…. and sit with us.

So, yes every picture really does tell a story, but it is really only the subject person, in the picture, that knows the whole story….. the rest is just a virtual reality.

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels”
Gustave Flaubert

Two sides ?

Never judge a book by it’s cover is what they say and there are always two sides to a story, right? Or is it that it only begins with two sides ?

‘You don’t look old enough’ is generally what people say when I tell them I have 4 grand children. People are kind or say what they think you would like to hear. We do it all the time, it just trips off the tongue, usually to make the receiver feel good, flattered and the giver feel appreciated, liked. Sometimes, its just true!

I am certainly not too young to be a grandmother, being a 53 year old, but I do try to keep myself looking as well as possible. I was married at 23 and had my first child at 24. That was considerably old, if you compare it to when my own mother got married or indeed my grand mother. In their day, 18 was a general ‘good age’ to be married by, and have a baby within the first year.

These days lots of women are having careers before marriage and babies and lots are having babies from age 18, but without the marriage part. My eldest was almost 19 having her first, not far off my mother’s age, when she had her first. My mother was married, my daughter was not. My daughter since married her childhood sweetheart and went on to have two further children with him and they are happy……. most of the time.

Can we be happy all of the time? I think not. I am married to my second husband for 23 years, love him dearly but at times could quite happily commit murder. We have, however, endured our ups and downs, swam rivers, climbed mountains and gotten over every bump in the road to arrive at a happy place together having raised our children.

Why couldn’t I have ‘endured’ my first marriage too? Met him aged 21, married him at 23, baby at 24, separated at 26. We didn’t even get to a 7 year itch stage. We had a grand total of 5 years, and did it all the right way round…. Met, bought house, got married, had baby and it all went wrong and no, no one else was involved, we just grew apart. There was no real good cop bad cop, it just wasn’t ‘right’ and I guess I knew it never would be, so it was best all round, to walk away.

He will have his side, I will have my side, but then my daughter will have her side. There can not be just two sides, can there? What we do, as adults, will of course impact on the child, right? It has to, it can’t but not impact, one way or another. It will however, be up to the adults on whether that will be a good or bad impact, or a somewhere in between.

With all the best intentions in the world, there were times it was difficult. Some of the times it was amicable, others, it was a battle of the wills. I tried to never let it get in the way of her relationship with her father, no matter what I thought about him. I always encouraged her to have a good relationship with him. He loved her, as I did, and she loved him and she loved me. She was entitled to that. I reasoned I wished her to grow up with two happy parents living apart, rather than two miserable parents living together.

The worst thing I could ever have said to him was that I was taking her away, to live, in another country. I knew it would cut him in pieces as it would me if the shoe was on the other foot. I cried at the thoughts of telling him, knowing how he would feel. When I actually told him, I cried even more, after he had left my house. She was 7 years old. She wanted to ‘move’. Did she know her mind well enough to know this, you might ask. I asked myself the same question over and over again.

Of course, he took me to Court to try to stop it, as I knew he would and of course I couldn’t blame him. I would have done the same if it were the other way round. The funny thing about that was when I first ‘thought’ about moving to Ireland, I didn’t actually think I would, but because it was a thought, I felt he ought to know.

Things of course turned fairly nasty, he was understandably upset, hurt and bitter. I knew and understood that, but that all had an impact on our child and for the first time we found ourselves needing the courts to ‘intervene’ . I wanted to have the ‘choice’ to go back to my family in Ireland if I so chose in the future, even if it meant taking my child away from her father, as she too had expressed a wish live in Ireland.

She was 8 and a half when we moved and right up to the day of moving I asked her if she wanted to stay in the UK, so she could see her dad, as always, I would unpack all the boxes and we would stay. She said she loved him but wanted to move.

She is 29 now and though it was a very difficult time for her father, and of course I did feel a certain amount of guilt, I knew ultimately, it was the right thing to do for us as a family. What further made my mind up to actually move, was the amount of conflict between us that was generated from my first telling him of the ‘thought’ to go to finally being granted consent to go. I was not trying to stop their relationship, indeed I still encouraged it and did so from the time we came, in that she saw her father for half of all the holidays, and he could come see her whenever he wished,and ring her whenever he wished, which he did on a daily basis.

The distance between us turned out to be a good thing because the impact on our child was a positive one, in that she did not have to be caught between any crossfire. She has loved living in Ireland and has had a nice life here. She has continued to love her father and has never regretted moving here. We will never know how things would have been had we stayed in the UK, but for our family, this had a positive impact.

The thing is with separation and family break down, even with the best will in the world, it is a very difficult road to navigate and know if you are doing the right thing. A child, however, must always be at the center of the situation. If one or both of the parents cannot reasonably agree then of course, the courts will have to decide and in the meantime be very mindful of any impact and upset you are putting on the child in the middle of it all.

International Women’s Day

celebrating women’s achievements……. Acknowledging and aspiring to effect gender equality?

Today, all over the world women are celebrating ‘International Women’s day’. It has only been 109 years, since the first one, and at that time it was for better pay and voting rights, more parity with the men of this world. Indeed there are many many women, celebrating and protesting all over the world about many inequalities or injustices that are still going on.

I, for one, thank god that I was born on this side of the world (in the west), rather than being born in the East. Not that injustices only happen in the Eastern part of the world, but the fact that you are born female there, can definitely have a severe disadvantage and detriment to rights and equality, more so than just equal pay.

I am not going to go through individual cases or scenarios of what ‘women, girls, females’ have to ‘put up with’. We all know, too well the injustices and fights that we have to endure because of the fact that we are indeed ‘female’.

In a previous blog I have spoken about Emmeline Pankhurst and her movement, the Suffragettes, Vera Twomey and her quest as a mother to fight for the right for her child to have medicinal cannabis, to reduce her seizures and enhance her quality of life. There are many great women whom I admire for their sheer determination to overcome the injustices and powers of men. What about Malalal Yousafzai, the courage that girl had, to fight for the rights of girls to have an education. Edith Eger, an Auschwitz survivor who held on to the words her mother had said to her, minutes prior to their separation, ‘They can never take what is in your mind’. She chose to use her ‘mind’ to escape from the horrors she was subjected to.

Joan of Arc, a crusader, a woman who was key in turning the tide in the 100 years war and was later canonized as a saint. Mother Theresa, Erin Brokovich, , Rosa Parks, to name but a few more – strong women who despite adversity, effected change.

I am a mother, and have been to a total of 14 children (biological and non biological). Some of them were with me for a short time, others a much longer time. I have been consistently parenting 5 girls for the past 28 years to the present day. My message to them, and my parenting to them, has been to try to make them strong independent women. Why? Because they have to leave home and go into the world and stand on their own two feet. They have to form relationships, outside of the home, whether it is at school or at work. They will meet partners and may be become mothers themselves (2 already have). They will face challenges, up’s, down’s and injustices along the way and when they do, I want them to be able to face their challenge, to deal with it and to move on from it, whatever it may be. I also want them to be able to stand up for them selves and for others who are been treated unjustly. I want them to have a good sense of self and a good sense of right and wrong and fight for it and do whatever it takes, to make a difference. I want them to value themselves, to demonstrate and role model that value, that self worth to their own off spring or to others. Ultimately, I want them to be happy.

At the end of the day there is one thing women can do which men cannot and that is to carry a baby, and no matter what, that primal bond is unique and unbreakable. Yes we can love equally, care for a child equally, but whether the parenting is good, bad or indifferent, something more is created in the carrying of the child that only a mother can feel, but not adequately explain. We give birth to both male and female, and me personally, I want them to be equal, in their rights. No question about it and if they are being treated ‘differently’ I absolutely would want them to stand up and shout out and be proud of the fact that they are doing so. They need to Relay what they want, Shun and ship what they don’t…. It may not be easy, it may seem impossible, but nothing will be done if you do not try!

To all the females out there who are striving to achieve and to ‘do’, keep achieving and keep doing, because at the end of the day you are absolutely worth it!