I was reading Dr Kinouani’s piece on deprivation in it she mentions her internal narrative and it got me thinking about what is mine and I guess my narrative would be money doesn’t buy happiness. I think that comes from a belief that health is much more important than wealth or is in fact wealth. I guess that’s easy for me to say not having ever needed to worry too much about money but having experienced what it is like to not have my health. Interesting that link between happiness and wealth.
Yet not having enough money for food is so tied to health so I guess on reflection they are inextricably linked, particularly if the worry of where the next meal is coming from is the dominant one. In the article Dr Kinouani invites us to look at the intersection between material abundance and maternal abundance.
I would say for me I had material abundance but maternal deprivation. A pattern hard to not repeat, after all here I am writing this and we’re on half term…
In our community group we were talking about state sanctioned separation, for example boarding schools, for some reason that takes my mind to state sanctioned violence, individuation that leads to isolation. I shared a story in which the family expectation was that the children would go to boarding school. Despite experiencing such distress that the child was given Kaolin and morphine KAOLIN WITH MORPHINE | Drug | BNF content published by NICE to combat home sickness as a new boarding school child at 11 there was still an initial keenness to keep this family tradition. Does that speak to that fear of missing out that we’ve spoken of before? Is that real or imagined if the system is a meritocracy as we like to pretend?
Do we talk about that significant parental deprivation? I wonder what it did to the child who boarded from the age of 7. We reflected with him when our children were that age. He was very matter of fact about it as you would perhaps expect, that split off side of himself seen. His parents were advised by his Doctor to send him away “for the air” after nearly drowning in the pond that used to be at Vista Road recreation ground. A sentence that doesn’t make sense given that we live by the sea. But things were different then A Brief History of Boarding School: UK and Canada (ourkids.net). It’s interesting that this article doesn’t mention home sickness, bullying and the requirement to assimilate.
We talked about the non touch of whiteness. How it requires assimilation at all costs to the self and I’m reminded again of my own story, my own assimilation and brought back to the writings of Dr Turner, how our internal supremacy comes to the top and I witnessed how that happened in our discussion with our concerns being about boarding school or more broadly speaking life assimilation or annihilation. That sense of entitlement to be in all spaces. We talked about having a place, how hard it is to speak up when comfort lays in staying quiet.
Why did we spend more time talking about assimilation with only late attention to the annihilation that that brings with it? Fears of being killed expressed. We talked about how hope and hopelessness exist in the same space.
Where is the space for grief? That needed, necessary space? That overwhelming pain?
During the discussion containment of grief was mentioned. I suggest that containment is unnecessary, it’s part of the process to feel uncontained. It’s brutal. It’s a raging storm and feels overwhelming, it hurts physically, emotionally, spiritually. But that’s ok because as painful as it is it will pass. It does pass. And in those moments it’s enough that your next breath comes, anything more is unrealistic. It might hit again unexpectedly from apparently nowhere, and that’s ok, it will come and go, it’s not a one off event but a lived with journey that changes over time, an enduring, changing love. Triggered by something that only in retrospect can be seen for what it truly is. I’m no expert. That’s just how I’ve experienced grief over time. Coping with grief | Cruse Bereavement Care
Grief is tiring. It’s exhausting. It makes you awake when you want to sleep and sleep when you want to be awake.
And so we come to privilege. Privilege to speak out, privilege to have the space to wait for that next breath to come. How will you use yours to give that space to others?
In my dream there was a gate. An old ramshackle familiar gate. A gate that I know leads only to a small space, a small garden, I could see the garden, it’s familiar, it’s home. I considered in the dream changing the gate, perhaps buying a new gate rather than repairing it. The gate belongs to me but in the dream of the gate I wasn’t the owner, just stuck with this old rotting gate, I wonder what that means…
In the next dream there were people falling over, I was trying to catch them. I was taking them to a Dr. Being there.
Most definitely time to play with the children.
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