I didn’t see the years tumbling by. There we were, 17 years ago, reeling from the trauma of childlessness. Then those two souls fell into our lives, and a decade and a half flew by. Suddenly, I glance in the mirror and find grey in my beard. One minute I was thirty, and then…
On our way back from tuition on the eve of his mocks, our lad declares, “I don’t need GCSES. I’m getting an iPhone anyway.” The promise of a shiny smartphone was supposed to serve as motivation, to give him something to aim for. This worked for his sister, as the promise of a HiFi or …
It’s true: we cannot be fair, caught in the middle of these sibling rivalries. If we try to encourage one of them, we are unfair to the other. If we tell one off, we are unfair again. On and on it goes. He said, she said. She did, he did. If that was me… Yes, …
It’s our fault, for settling so far away from our families. We could have stayed Up North, I suppose, to have grandparents near at hand. But then, they too moved to the South West in recent years, near to my sister. A few years back, my parents would take the children for a couple of …
All night long, my heart pounds in my chest, nausea pulsating through my veins. The monitor has already revealed we both have very high blood pressure. We believe it’s stress-induced. All night long, I lay awake, watchful of my beloved’s breathing, intervening whenever it seems her dreams may take her back to those moments of …
You know it’s bad when we say to one another, “If anything happens to me, carry on with your life…” That was with palpitations racing through our chest, shocked by the violent rage that exploded from nowhere. It’s hard to deal with the insults, abuse, and threats that nowadays cascade into our lives, obliterating any …
We can fix a broken window, broken furniture, broken crockery, broken tech. It’s not so easy to fix a broken heart. Who knows if that will ever now mend?
I tend not to have spiritual dreams. But on the verge of nearly every major test, I have had perturbing dreams that seemed to foreshadow all that was to come. Alas, I had one of those dreams not long ago. To my horror, it seems it is all now coming to pass. Audhubillah.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that you should never judge another until you’ve walked in their shoes. Before we had children, I said many noble things about raising a family. But they were all founded on complete ignorance and informed by naïve idealism. I judged men in unimaginably hard situations for walking out …
If you’re a manager and you don’t like your colleagues, team, or job — you’re lucky, you can quit. But being a parent: the one job you’re stuck with, even when you feel like shouting, “I resign!” It’s a job without perks. You’re always on duty, working antisocial hours, for zero pay. Your appraisal comes …
Increasingly, we discover that the adolescents in our midst — though by no means all of them — have some kind of empathy deficit. They do not seem to understand the kindness of others. Indeed, the softest, kindest suggestion is often rebuffed with an inexplicable rage that doesn’t seem to suit the situation at all. …
Though it may upset us, we can neither force our children to believe nor to go through the motions of religious practice. Indeed, it would be quite hypocritical for us to do so, having gone through such phases in our own lives. In my case, I had boldly proclaimed my disbelief at their age, moderating …
He wrote this about a relationship, but this is honestly how it feels raising kids, most of the time… just holding on, despite feeling like you’re failing… trying to do what’s right.
World Childless Week is approaching, supposed to raise awareness of those childless not by choice. In my head, I was planning a post exploring my experience of childlessness, infertility, and adoption. Visit the official website, and you’d get the distinct impression that this is a woman’s issue alone, which barely impacts men at all. However, that …
