Oh, no! I’ve let March pass without a word, and now almost April too! I’m sorry to be so neglectful, no excuses…just ‘life’! I seem to write a blog when I’ve been turning things over in my mind and come to some sort of conclusion, or at least a point in which I think whatever it is can be articulated. Obviously, this thing has taken some digesting!

This morning, I’m thinking about how differently we can construe the same thing, presenting a very different interpretation to an event or scene. I may have mentioned one of these things before, I can’t be sure. But some time ago, I was driving one of our boys to school along a busy main road into the city and we hit a traffic jam. The car in front of us took a right side road, leading to a more scenic route to the city, thus avoiding the blocked road. I turned too and remained behind this car until reaching a T junction. The driver indicated right, which is the wrong way for the city. This really threw me, and I declared to my son that maybe they knew something I didn’t, and that the country road would have traffic problems too. So convinced was I that I knew this driver’s intentions, that I very nearly turned right myself and was only saved by my son’s discerning comment that the driver in front might need to go right and not be going into the city at all. I found this interesting to reflect on. So often I’m at logger heads with my youngest son and this realisation that we could both be completely unable to ‘see’ the other person’s intention, so convinced of our own, was insightful.

I’ve mentioned before that this same son sadly is dominated at school, by a well-established and known bully. Having recently submitted our formal complaint forms, and often feeling very baffled on leaving meetings regarding the same, the school’s responses helped me understand where some of the ‘fog’ may be coming from. What we record as clear bullying (our son has never made a false allegation or one that the bully has denied), the school turn into a vulnerable situation for the bully. This ‘belief’ is further supported for the school, in that they now interpret that the bully could be victimised as several children have now spoken up in support of our son, and to report that they too have been impacted by the bully’s continual dominant behaviour. The school seemed to reprimand the bully temporarily, by making him use a different toilet to his classmates (the area where his bullying overtly manifests). However, they reported in their response to our formal complaints that the bully now feels safer from our son’s allegations. Wow! No allegations made, unless you’re bullying, Mate! I think this is considered as ‘Gaslighting’, although I dislike this term as I struggle to visualise the relevance of the word and it’s still so currently in vogue.

Another example of the vastly different way we can conceive things was provided when holding one of my recent creative writing workshops with the adoptive mums. I thought it could be fun to look at two Picasso paintings, both of which denote a mother holding a baby, Mother and Child and  Motherhood (La Maternite), and to share our interpretations. I hadn’t anticipated there would be much variety in what we saw in each particular one, as, to me, they depicted quite opposing views on motherhood. How wrong I was! In Motherhood, what I saw as nurturing and close, quite a few of us interpreted as suffocating and intense and in the other, where I saw an uninterested mother (so unavailable that her child looked about to roll off her lap), others saw an attentive and loving mother, delighting in her infant. Interestingly, I later did this exercise for fun with our eldest daughter and her partner. In Motherhood, her partner saw past the mother and child completely, and instead he focused on the colours used and the distant figure of the farm worker. It was really fascinating, and we all enjoyed having such a visual demonstration of the unintended outcome.

So, with all the best intentions, I’ll still go on seeing things much more my way than I should! But it has been interesting to have these reflections recently and to take them on board, whether healthy and helpful or, at least, giving some appreciation as to why something seemingly black & white has been really grey.

As I mentioned a change in road earlier, I must remember to let you know that I unfortunately need to change the host I keep my blog with. This means, for some months perhaps, I’m not going to be able to use my domain name and this site will no longer be available to me. It’s hard to see who subscribes to my blog and so maybe you could drop me a quick email to jenineillauthor@gmail.com, and just mention if you’d would like me to contact you, once I get this technical headache sorted.

In the meantime, I’ll miss our ‘chats’ and hope you have a warm and good summer ahead of you all,

Love Jen x