Goldilocks and the Three Bares

Goldilocks: I hate some kids books; cars that talk, pigs that dance, caterpillars that eat cake....I have only recently become more aware of kids books since I had a baby and I am not impressed with their quality at all. I think the author missed an opportunity with the caterpillar book in that, they could have taught kids all about the various leaves in the world that the caterpillar might have eaten. Kids could have learned something true and useful while also being captivated by the lovely story and the enchanting illustrations.

Bare Lying: Why do people lie to kids and call it imaginating? Kids can't differentiate between truth and make-believe at such a young age. They believe eveything you tell them until they realise one day that it's not true. You can fantasise without it being factually incorrect. I remember Molly's Farm about the adventures of a cat on a farm. Mog & Bunny about a cat in a family and what they all get up to. Here's a little Baby 123.... about peeking through the window and seeing what the family is up to. There are some seriously lovely books out there without anything stupid in them.

Bare Letdown: What happens when the kid gets older and realises that motor vehicles can't talk. Old toys don't come to life and the princess doesn't always have a 18 inch waist with legs up to her ears! Give them real and then let them use their imagination, don't give them lies and call it something else. Do you think that any of this early information has anything to do with so many teenagers chasing after fame and celebrity? I do, after being fed a diet of make-believe crud when little, they get to adulthood and are not happy with real life? Of course! They want instant make-believe instead of hard work and reality.

Bare Funny: I don't think it would have been an acceptable excuse to tell my teacher that I was late for class or actually didn't turn up because in my fantasy, school started at a different time. She would have had a fit, not praised me for my imagination. Or that I was sailing on my way to Mauritious for a long vacation and had permission from the wicked head teacher who banished me to a land of pink grass and no dogs. Somehow I think her actual detention would have spanked me back to reality.

Anger: "Let it Go....Let it Go..."

We all have the capacity to carry a lot of anger around inside of us because of a parent (or anyone I suppose), that treated us badly. If left unchecked, sooner or later that anger will become part of us...then it will become all of us until it is the first thing others notice about us. Becoming an angry person happens so slow and will infect every other area of our lives without us truly being aware. Then one day we realise it has become too ingrained to change it.

I can't change what my mum did to me. I can't punish her for the rest of her life with my anger because if she was such an abusive parent, would it really vex her any? Doubt it. It would only infect me, my life, my future happiness and the life of my beautiful baby girl.


The reason I could be angry...

My mum clearly didn't have the capacity in her to care for me. She left me without food, without protection and without love. I was one of them babies who used not to cry, like not ever, even when the doctor was examining the fractures I would either scream or shout out in pain but never cry. You get used to it that no one comes to help you so you never learn that crying elicits assistance, loving arms and comfort. How do I know this? Because I read some of my reports from when I was a kid and what those responsible for me wrote and also because of how I am now in adulthood. It is only recently since having a baby of my own that made my heart open to her smile, that I can cry when I feel extreme emotional pain. Someone said to me recently, "Don't cry, you're stronger than that". If they knew how much strength it takes for me to let it out when I am not used to doing that, they wouldn't have instructed me in such a ignorant manner.

Catherine, my mum, let all sorts of dangerous wasters into the flat where we lived with little or no regard to our safety. I remember being picked up off the floor by people I didn't want to be held by and struggling to get down. I remember bad smells everywhere from my environment and from people who came in and out. I can't bear to go into a skanky place now because it makes me feel claustrophobic and I instantly feel like I am a tiny kid. I mean, I can do it and I deal with it so that on the surface no one would know what I'm experiencing, but inside I am not feeling good, like I want to get out real fast, like I can't breathe. I am generally really sensitive to odour, good and bad I can't tolerate strong smells. My shower gel is fragrance-free and even though I love perfume, I have to put it on with a dropper from a bottle because even one spray, sprays too much for me. However, on the flip side, this is all excellent for my job as a HCA of course, as I can detect a (UTI) water infection at 50 meters! Too funny.

According to reports I have read about me, I used to eat anything I could find, raw bacon, old pizza, really anything within reach that was edible and some things that were not. I do recall feeling hungry, really hungry like it makes you feel sick you're so hungry. As I realised later on, eventually that feeling goes away and you get used to not doing anything about it. I have known people to over-eat in adulthood as a result of this similar childhood experience, but it had the opposite effect on me. Consequently, I have to eat now because it's a meal-time, as my feelings of hunger don't remind me to eat, I don't even realise I am feeling hungry until someone alerts me to my stomach rumbling.  The same with fluids, I could go all day without a drink and not realise that I am thirsty at all. The flip side to this is that, I can fast really well!

In the first 5 years of my life, I had old fractures, healed cigarette burns, I was malnourished and otherwise neglected. I, fortunately and unfortunately, landed in the system and subsequently grew up there.


What I learned...

As a result of my husband's family intervening, mum was drug-free and clean from Ramadan 2014 until well after Ramadan 2015 and in that time my relationship with her was total weirdness for me. I mean a big fat puzzle most of the time like I didn't even know what expression to put on my face.

As she detoxed, her usually gaunt-looking face, filled out, she went from being severely under-weight to a healthy size 10, her pale skin cleared up and became rosy, she went to the dentist and her smile looked nice, her naturally blonde hair became shiny because her diet improved and she started to look attractive even. So-much-so, that one day, I calculated that she was much closer to my husband's age group than I was and laughed when I realised why I had done that!

I used to look at her when she was asleep and know her face, speak to her and know her voice but I had no clue at all who she was. I didn't have any affection feelings towards her or any other feelings actually, not even of anger or resentment, just indifference, maybe not even indifference idk. Mum related to me like we were off some ad on TV like nothing bad had ever occurred between us which I wasn't mad about, just curious as to how she got to that place. I asked my husband if I should talk to her about growing up and he said no because it might upset her, haha... I did have quite a big reaction to him saying that but I kept it to myself and decided to mention it gently to her anyway.

I asked her if she remembered very much about me as a baby and all she seemed to remember were funny instances where I had made her laugh either doing or saying something. I probed a little deeper and told her I remembered feeling hungry a lot and she laughed and said I was always a hungry baby. I was slightly irritated by her answers and asked her bluntly if she felt Social Services had done the right thing when they took me off her at aged 5. I regretted asking that one as soon as it shot out my mouth but it was too late. She went quiet and finally said, yes because she couldn't cope with me. I left it before we really went there and changed the subject. She clearly didn't and still doesn't have the capacity. Even without the drugs, I don't know if she ever would have had it.


Why I think I am not angry...

1. The biggest one for me...I don't want to be that person. I decided at age 13 who and how I wanted to be in life and angry wasn't part of it.

2. It is a futile exercise to get into it with someone when the ground is not level to start with. If you do, you are simply exploiting their disadvantage and being abusive to them to make your own self feel better. You don't even feel better anyways...if you behave like this in a unequal situation you just end up feeling like a total c.

3. She is a mother and she is my mother. I don't say that with any loyalty to her. I say it out of respect to the status of motherhood. Islam has taught me this valuable lesson, alhamdulillah!

4. Finally, I used to have an old black leather man's, quite heavy, boot that I carried around with me when I was age 5-6ish I wouldn't let it go and would scream and bite if you took it off me. I remember sucking the laces (I know yuk) and cutting my mouth and hands on the metal hooks down the front. It was skanky and I needed to let it go. When I was first in hospital the nurse put a huge soft brown bear on the end of my cot which was so big I couldn't carry them both. I did try for a while but eventually I let go of the boot. If you choose not to be angry, then you have to put something in its place like kindness, warmth etc. something that you purposely do that actively moves you forward in the situation.

I was both kind and warm to my mum all that year and it allowed me to gain some healing that I wouldn't have got if I had been angry. But I had to jump in with both feet, I couldn't do it half-ass and begrudgingly. I had to decide to BE that person with all my heart. Trust her? No. Be vulnerable to her? No. Be her child and try to get what I didn't have? Nope. It's gone and I'm an adult now, I can only love her as an adult and expect nothing back as she is an addict and always will be, clean or not.

Some people call it 'being the bigger person' but I hate that phrase because it has a condescending air to it like a step to feel superior standing on. It's not a behaviour you employ, it's deeper than that, much deeper. It requires you to let the whole anger/resentment thing go. Seriously, just let it go!

That reminds me of a friend who sang a song...

The M........... Word

A 'brother' implied that I didn't have any modesty (haya) the other day. If he had been in my presence I get the feeling he wouldn't have mustered the courage to voice such an opinion. If he had, he would have experienced something similar to standing too close to Big Ben when it chimed and most certainly would have left with the deafening gong of my response ringing in his ears. He typed it online so, that tells you how big his bells are.

It got me thinking about modesty which is an important theme throughout Islam. I want to highlight some thoughts about modest clothing.


Modesty and Congruence

Modesty is more than just your clothes, modesty first comes from inside and affects your clothes, your behaviour, your opinion of yourself, your general attitude and just about every area of life. I can't dress as a niqabi and call myself modest, there has to be congruence. It has to be a state of being of which my clothing only affirms.

I met this woman recently and I noticed her breasts before I saw her face! Bernadette - a beautiful, curvy, cheerful, lively personality who I had the pleasure of measuring up for a uniform at work...too funny! She told me what size she was but I asked to measure her to double check. Good job I did as her top was two sizes too small and her skirt was too! It was one of those weird situations that makes you do a double take - a niqabi woman totally covered and woman with all her womanliness proudly on display, both alone in the same room - just made me smile. I couldn't let the situation go unremarked so I just laughed and said to her "Look at us!" (makes me laugh even now when I think about it - seriously funny). As I was measuring her up she just kept saying "Sorry about me boobies girl". I liked her a lot immediately.

What I learned from her was that she had more integrity than I did and more congruence. Her personality matched her clothing matched her behaviour matched her lifestyle. She made me think of the last time I was wearing  niqab and screamed an obscenity at some lorry driver bloke for cutting me up.

In general, I think people are way too busy criticising others for where they don't measure up to notice where they, themselves fall down.


Imposed Modesty

If you impose modesty on another person, it will never be anything more than an outward prison that the person circumvents at the first opportunity. I hear stories from elderly residents at work where they used to hitch up their skirts on the way to school after they left home or unbutton their shirts a little lower. Hijabis tell me as teenagers they used to wear hijab but with pretty gold pins, sparkly embellishments, half a bottle of perfume, skinny jeans, the blackest eye liner and the loudest, redest lipstick. Also, Muslim men who wear the tightest of t shirts in the summer and even tighter jeans!

It's better to teach modesty and have a discussion about it. Allow any person to choose it, even a small kid. Making good choices starts from such an early age in life and if you allow it and guide it, instead of imposing it, then they are far more likely to make good choices when you let go of them in adulthood.

I was always quite modest as a teenager because I tried to remain physically safe from paedos and other fkwads who hung around kids homes but as a teen, no way would I have accepted any authoritative imposition on any topic. So what happens when your kid chooses what you consider to be inappropriate clothing for their age? Do you go all Hulk on them or do you play it down, under-react, keep praying, exercise patience and trust Allah (swt). What would happen if you stayed neutral and the moment you see something you like and is modest, praise them and hug them, tell them they look beautiful? It's rents who create conflict with teenagers I swear! Don't make a war about everything, try respecting another person's decision no matter how old they are and work with them. I think it would produce less friction and more mutual respect.

If we are taught and accept the concept of modesty and understand why it's valuable, then that will eventually reflect on our outward appearance and all other areas of life.

Married One Year - Divorced The Next

I thought I had learned so much about the behaviour of abusive people given my physically violent start in life and I felt I had the knowledge and awareness to choose someone who would never smack me up. But somehow I still ended up marrying a physically abusive man.

My husband: quiet, studious, softly spoken, has a well mannered, polite son, respected in his community, does a lot of good work for others, takes care of his parents. For the first year that we spent married, he was calm, polite, respectful, generous, helpful, thoughtful and never hurt me. We didn't even argue and he never raised even his voice not to his son and never to me when I made errors. Always let me know in advance when he 'needed me' if you get me and I was getting used to his routine and making him happy. We were both happy. No idea at all what was around the corner.

Then out of the blue, the first punch that fractured my eye socket, he apologised for and I thought to myself, that doesn't make him an abuser just because he lost it once. Maybe we need some guidance and advice. The second hit a little later, I didn't give him chance to apologise. I knew this would continue and would maybe even get worse. Especially as his first wife had reported him on 3 or 4 occasions for domestic abuse which I found out by accident. That second punch woke me up from la-la-land.

I spent some time trying to figure out how this all happened. How I allowed this to happen. How I became that woman included in the stats of women who follow the cycle of familial abuse. I stumbled upon this article online by Steven Stosny Ph.D, and laughed in disbelief as I read it because some of it described exactly where I had gone wrong.

Hindsight sucks!

"Very Early Warning Sign #1 : A Blamer: Avoid anyone who blames his negative feelings and bad luck on someone else. Special care is necessary here, as blamers can be really seductive in dating."

I didn't date him so I wouldn't know about seduction, he's not the seductive kind anyhow and I didn't think my husband was a blamer. He takes responsibility for himself and expects others to but he did at one time say that his current limited situation was due to the death of his first wife, which I figured was a pretty reasonable statement and understandable given that he might be still grieving. I remember thinking that maybe he just needed the love of a new and very different woman to comfort him. Then I read this below...

"Hearing this kind of thing might make you think that all he really needs is the understanding and love of a good woman to change his luck."

This was the first heart-sink of recognition for me. Thinking you can fix someone. Now I type it out loud, I can see how dumb it is. You can't change anyone, not even to fix them. I should have only looked for a whole person not a broken one but I just felt sympathy because I recognised I wasn't the finished article myself so, how can I offer myself with my flaws and faults and expect the other person not to have any. I just didn't see this as that big of a deal.

"Very Early Warning Sign #3: Entitlement
Driven by high standards..."

He has such high standards and expects others to as well. I knew this going in and figured it would enable me to bring my best game to our marriage. I didn't in any way see this as a precursor of abuse but maybe together with other characteristics in a person, could be unhealthy I guess.

"After the glow of infatuation wears off, the entitled person will regard his feelings and desire as more important than yours. If you agree, you'll get depressed. If you disagree, you'll get abused."

This is exactly what started to happen after that first year. I noticed some tweaks we could make to our relationship and encouraged them. He wasn't happy with my suggestions and set about letting me know. I couldn't understand why he was so bothered by such simple and benign tweaks but I guess looking back on it now, knowing his unusual views...

"Very Early Warning Sign #4 Superiority 
Potential abusers tend to have hierarchical self-esteem, i.e., they need to feel better than someone else to feel okay about themselves. They need to point out ways in which they are smarter, more sensitive, or more talented than others...........A variation on this very early warning sign is self-righteousness. If you dare to disagree with him, you will not only be wrong but immoral!"

I took this to be a high self-esteem, which I liked and was attracted to in him and self confidence is a good thing. What I didn't realise, until I disagreed with him, was that I had become exactly that in his eyes, immoral. After me suggesting that we might be more affectionate to each other, he told me I was either to be his wife or his whore and he asked me... which was it to be? He regarded kissing and other affectionate expressions within a regular day for a regular couple, to be part of the "seductiveness of a whore" (his words not mine). A wife is supposed to be above this carnal need and instead keep herself shy and quiet at all times!

Given that we didn't have a relationship before we got married, I had no idea of his views. I did think our first year was a bit different to how I imagined but the thing is, I so looked up to him and felt so blessed to have married him and got a family....I had a family....my family where I belonged, I didn't want to rock that boat and was just grateful for having that. I know...I know...what you're thinking if you're reading this. It's exactly what I would be thinking too if I was reading.

"A greater sense of your core values will give you more confidence that you can detect the very early warning signs of abuse. Listen compassionately to the faint messages of your hungry heart. Then it won't need to make the kind of desperate outcries that suspend your best judgment, scare off appropriate matches, and attract resentful, angry, or abusive partners."

Thing is, I would have said I had good core values and still believe I do. What I didn't do is recognise and admit that I had a "hungry heart" as Steven Stosny Ph.D, puts it. Pride was an issue for me and to admit needs was a weakness so I didn't ever admit many/any. I did get married quickly maybe because I was scared and possibly did 'suspend my best judgement' and I def would have 'scared off' more appropriate matches with my defensiveness.

22 and soon to be divorced. Totally gave myself to the wrong person.

And if I had any doubts about not getting divorced...my husband gave my mum notice of eviction to leave his other property and I have no idea where she is now. Probably back with her old smack heads getting wrecked. I thought his help in getting her clean was generosity and compassion but I realise now it was simply an extra means of control.

How Much Is That Poppy In The Window...

People are more willing to adopt a puppy than a Poppy!

I know the process of adopting a kid is bare, long effort with so many intrusive questions and when you finally get approved it can be an emotional roller-coaster with a support system that often fails and nominal financial recompense but surely the moral rewards and sense of having done one's societal duty supersede all that?

It's an issue close to me because I was never adopted. I was always a bit to "full of beans" the social worker used to tell me but I knew she meant, trouble ha!

To me, societys' obsession with dogs always made me feel worth less than one of them, so I came to not want to be around any dogs at all. I would go into school mates houses and completely ignore them even when it was clear they were wriggling round my legs for a fuss. I would refuse to be fostered by a dog lover saying they made me sneeze and I think I am allergic. I would stare at them strung up outside shops until they barked at me so bad then I'd cry and make like I was scared until the owner came and yelled at them. I really saw them as direct competition to me for a home. As a kid I remember thinking, I want that affection and love, maybe if I stole their dog away, they might adopt me instead, haha... Who knows where I was going to stash all those yapping, stinky, stolen dogs. The flaw in my logic is that the idiot people would only go get another dam dog!

Ok so that wasn't the only flaw.

So here we are ten years later and majority of people still don't even consider fostering or adopting kids who have been abandoned by their parents or who have been taken away because of neglect or abuse.

I talk to people at length about this at every given opportunity, I try really hard at convincing people to look into it, seriously, what's one more kid? I ask people in their face, with intense eye contact, have they ever considered it....I can see they're uncomfortable and often stumble over their answer.....too funny! I know, maybe too mean as well. But I can't think of a solution to this problem and I try really hard to be an effective advocate but I have never convinced anyone to say yes they will start, or even look into the process.

I could be searching for an answer at the wrong end of the spectrum. What if the solution is in somehow stopping wasters from producing offspring year after year. Like if you are a drug addict then you have to be temporarily prevented from having kids. If you've been convicted of a serious crime or several serious crimes, same. Why should these people have rights to be a mum or dad when they clearly can't be trusted to be one? That should be part of the 'liberty' that is taken from them when they choose a path in life that is incompatible with basic parenting skills, rather than oftentimes irrevocably damaging a life and leaving the rest of society to pick up the pieces.

However, there's not much difference in that position than being vexed at fat people and smokers for overburdening the NHS and I fully reject it when people get all outraged about those with more easily identifiable habits than others with habits more hidden but still as burdensome to our health service.

Maybe I should get together a protest group outside Battersea Dogs Home, like they do outside abortion clinics with all the bad points of getting a dog then give out literature that says..."A kid won't lick it's bum in front of visitors, try to hump their leg or crap on your carpet. They won't bite the postman, give you costly vet bills or eat your expensive shoes!"