How Two Peuterspeelzaal Teachers Changed How I Parent My Sons

I am the mother of three highly sensitive sons. I myself am highly sensitive. I learnt this fact because of amazing teachers at my eldest son's peuterspeelzaal. They recognised traits and behaviours in him at the age of three that are consistent with being highly sensitive.

Goodbyes in school were heart wrenching for him from day one. It took months for him to get used to being left in school. And because it was such an emotional hurdle for him, it was incredibly upsetting for me too. No parent likes to leave a child anywhere when they are crying, kicking out and obviously feeling lost.

However, as the weeks went by it took my son less and less time to 'recover' from me leaving him in the peuterspeelzaal. I had immense faith in his teachers that he would be okay once I was gone. And if he wasn't they would call me.

One day, when my husband picked my son up from school, everything changed for my little family because two Dutch teachers did their job exceptionally and they took the time to really see my son. They uttered the words 'highly sensitive'.  It was the start of a parenting journey that I am still on. It's the reason why Happy Sensitive Kids was born. The reason why the peuterspeelzaal will always have a place in my heart, even though all my boys are now in primary school.

"The term ‘highly sensitive’ meant nothing to me six years ago, back when I was the bewildered mother of a three-year-old boy who seemed unable to tolerate the world around him."

You can read the whole story over on Mamalode: The Day I Became the Mother My Sons Need Me to Be.

5 Expat Life Lessons From 'Global Mom'

Melissa Dalton-Bradford has lived in more countries than most of us would even dare to think about moving to - eight to be precise, and has had twice as many addresses. Her memoir, Global Mom, published by Familius, starts in Paris with a beautiful pine Norwegian table that proves to be a family anchor during twenty years on the move, two decades during which her family grows, as does Melissa, as am individual, a wife and as a mother.

From a typical Norwegian barnepark (a word and a concept I will never forget) to desperate poverty on Tonle Sap Lake in Singapore, Dalton-Bradford takes us on an unforgettable journey.

Global Mom is the story of one family physically moving from one country to another, about Dalton-Bradford's journey as a mother, about how a family grows and moulds together. It's a book about community and about home. It's about thriving with no roots. It's about loss and living and surviving in the frightening, dark land of grief. And it's about everything in-between.

(Amazon UK link)

Here are five life lessons I took away from reading Global Mom:

1. Expats Need to Adapt to Thrive 

What resonated with me more than anything else was the fact that living overseas is a story of adaptation. Dalton-Bradford illustrates beautifully that thriving abroad is about resilience, about going with the host country flow. It's about accepting an alternative culture, learning the local language, and fitting in as best you can - embracing the local way of life rather than shunning it and trying to live like you would in your base country.

This is no better highlighted than when Melissa's family move from Norway to France. From a Norwegian barnepark where a child's independence is a priority, where people co-exist with the dominating force of Mother Nature and where no-nonsense and practical goes above appearance, the Bradford family suddenly finds themselves immersed in a school system where restrictions, bureaucracy, rules, regulations and traditions are everything, where the imperfect loops a child makes when learning to write is cause for more teacher concern than it should be.

A fiery Norwegian winter dawn - where Mother Nature rules
Photo Credit: Grethe Boe

Melissa's experiences of child birth in the two countries also serve as a mirror for the contrast between the Norwegian lifestyle and the French way of doing things. Describing her natural birth in Norway with the assistance of her earth mother to her French friends made them "slap their foreheads and drag their hands over their eyes in disbelief" she recounts.

"Those poor Nordic women are too naive to know they have modern options. Right?" said one French friend.

Two worlds - set apart by culture, yet the Bradford family adapt to both, Paris in fact transforming into a haven for the family, a place they could later picture themselves permanently living.

2. Living Globally is Not Easy

To be able to travel around the world and set up home in several countries, to live globally, is an honour. However, it is no bed of roses when a family has to pack up and relocate time after time. Melissa sums it up wonderfully (P168),

"Every time I built something - established myself and our family in Norway, penetrated Versailles with my children in local activities, or renovated our first home ever and buttressed and held up my children - in the very instant I'd gotten to that spot, this international job track levelled what I'd built."

Saying goodbye to friends that have accumulated over the years, feeling rootless, the stress of organising a move and re-establishing a life. Melissa dealt with stress-induced depression on more than one occasion. A global life is about falling and then picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and trying all over again.

3. Retaining Your Personal Identity Needs Work

A life on the move means putting a tremendous amount of energy into setting up the day to day every few years - and then building on those foundations. As a mother of three, Melissa was busy setting up a home, helping her children establish themselves, emotionally and physically, getting the practical things organised in each new country they moved to. She orchestrated re-building a life from the ground up with every new address; she was the driving force behind reshaping their lives to adapt to their new surroundings.

That takes a lot out of a person, but Melissa, once the basics were in place, learnt to look after herself too. Eventually. She reached out to those around her, busied herself with the local church community, continued with her singing where she could (having left a stage career behind in the US when the family first moved overseas). She embraced her musical talents wherever she lived, and used them to build up a community around her. Melissa put herself out there, even when she didn't have the heart or energy to do so. And by doing so it felt whilst reading that she retained her identity - albeit reshaped and adapted. 'Be true to yourself' I hear her whisper from the pages of her memoir.

4. We Make a Home Wherever We Go

A home is more than bricks and mortar
Photo Credit: vannmarie

Melissa reminds me, in a poetic way, that the extraordinary lies in the ordinary. She reminds us how important it is to appreciate the beauty of where we are at this point in our lives. The memorable moments of life lie in our struggles to get through the day to day, particularly when you are doing it in in an unknown culture, in a foreign tongue, in a country you don't know well.

And every time we leave a place we take a little of that place with us, and we leave our mark on the place we left. 'Global Mom' reminds us that home is a place we create in the most unexpected of circumstances. It is so much more than the bricks and mortar that give us a place to shelter. Home is about family, about people, about cultures and history, about traditions - about coming together to grow and learn. Home is the place we are surrounded by those we love, no matter where on the globe that physical address may be.

5. Tragedy Takes You to a New Land

When a family tragedy strikes it takes you to a new unchartered land, to the land of grief. Once entered, life is never the same again. This book is not a light read, it is heartbreaking. You will cry, but it is an integral part of the journey that this beautifully written memoir takes the reader on. It is a brave and courageous account of a mother's loss, of a family torn apart.

Melissa tells us how grieving whilst on the move means travelling on a lonely road - surrounded by new faces that do not know or understand what you have been through, who did not live through your life stopping tragedy with you. The grieving process knows even more complications because of a life lived in different countries. The memories are based elsewhere, the connections to your loss in another country.

"The nomadic lifestyle, with all its pluses has one glaring lacuna: community. You are again and again ripped up, ripped out, and replanted amid strangers. There is little if any continuous community. Now, as never before in our life. our family needed people who had more than a vague inkling of our story....." (P236 Global Mom)

To end, for me,  'Global Mom' is how you write a memoir. It is set apart by the weight it carries, by the emotions it instills in the reader - from smirks and giggles to floods of tears.

There is a sense of history, culture, and a feeling of the sights and sounds of every country the Bradford family lives in. There is the reality check that a nomadic lifestyle is a double edged sword, and a life lived well overseas takes work, emotional resilience and a lot of adapting. There is friendship, community, family and most of all, love.

This book is a great read for expats, wannabe expats, global nomads, parents and those with a curiosity for the power of the human spirit.

You can get a copy of Global Mom from the following outlets:

The Year 2015: Finding My Place Again in the Snow Globe

2015. What will it bring? I actually just reread a post I write a year ago called "What does 2014 hold?" and I can honestly say that I could rewrite that post but change the names around a bit. 2015 will be a huge change for me personally, but not until October. October is the month that Mr O, the baby of the family (I need to stop calling him that - he's three for goodness sake), will turn four and then start at primary school too. In October 2015 I will have three school going children. For the first time in nearly nine years there will be no children at home during the school day (apart from lunchtime then). Just me. 

Part of me is dancing a very energetic happy dance at the thought. Part of me is a little mournful. How fast they grow. However, I have another nine months with my youngest at home before those child free hours are upon me. And I plan to make the most of them with him.

There are some other things I plan to do in 2015 too, and when I stumbled across this "Imagining the New Year" blog link up I decided to put those plans down on virtual paper. I also created a Pinterest board called the Year 2015 to keep me motivated. So here goes! Three main things to focus on in 2015.

1. Be More Comfortable in My Own Skin

The last eight years have been a collage of new motherhood, sleepless nights, pregnancies, breastfeeding, weaning, applauding firsts three times around - like crawling, talking and walking, nursery school starts, first school days, learning how to parent a highly sensitive child and parenting as a highly sensitive person and going through a huge career change. It's been an intense time.

From the moment we welcomed our first child to the world it was like a giant hand was shaking a snow globe around me - and it feels like it is only now that the snow is beginning to settle. Things feel stable around me. But I feel out of sorts. Like I have been left hanging a little off kilter in my snow globe world. I'm not quite where I should be. And this year I want to work on changing that.

I want to feel more comfortable being me again. That's both physically and mentally. More mindful eating. Eat breakfast (a small tweak that will apparently change my year). More physical movement, but something that works for me instead of another failed gym membership. A wardrobe overhaul. More sleep. More time with my husband, letting him know just how important he is. Our marriage was put on the back-burner whilst we learnt the parenting ropes. It was put low down on the priority list whilst we struggled with the ups and downs of parenthood. We have more time and the chance to change focus now.

2. Calm My Mind

I saw this gem about a woman's mind being like an internet browser with a whole host of pages open at the same time and it summed up perfectly for me how my mind is constantly busy. I'm always thinking about all the things that I 'need' to do. If the children are at school and my youngest is napping, I am always doing something - and that has been the way it has been since I became a mother. I remember a friend saying how wonderful her son's nap times were because she could read her magazines in peace and I was perplexed as to why I could never consider that to be something I could do without feeling guilty, without feeling I should be doing something else more 'worthwhile'.

A few weeks ago, in the height of the December madness, I sat down one morning, whilst all three children were in school, and I watched an episode of Downton Abbey. And I switched off. Ignored the nagging in my mind that I should be doing one of the things on my bullet journal list. Or cleaning some part of the house, which was quite frankly way overdue. I stuck two fingers up to my own thoughts, drank coffee and slobbered over watched the lovely Hugh Bonneville instead. I can count on one hand how many times I have taken this kind of time alone since my first son was born in 2007. And now I know I need to give myself permission to take time for myself. Just to do nothing. To switch off. To calm my mind. To read. To watch something. Just because.

2015 is a year I vow to invite less stress into my life. Instead, there will be more calm and I will have more patience - with myself, and with my children.

I plan to calm my mind with more creative journalling, by emptying my thoughts onto blank pages. I plan to breathe more consciously - be more mindful of my own breathing. To practice what I preach to my sons. To calm it down. To nurture my inner calm. To enjoy the little moments more instead of constantly planning for the bigger ones. A happiness jar will help with that.

I want to close some of these internet pages that are constantly open in my mind. Open one page at a time, deal with it and then close it down. More focus. Less energy wasted. Less chaos. More calm in my mind.

3. Explore My Home

A few years ago, I had a vision board and one of the items was about exploring the Netherlands. The plan was to see something new in the country I call home every month. And then two more children came along and the good intention fell by the wayside. This year, I am breathing new life into it.

Last weekend we headed to the Veluwe for a walk, instead of going to one of our usual walking destinations. My husband suggested it, and usually on the Sunday before the kids are due back at school after a holiday I would have dismissed the idea of venturing out a little further. This time I embraced the idea, let my husband lead the way and I just followed.

I'm planning a list of things I want to see in the Netherlands. I made a Dutch bucket list last year, but this is a real places to see list. What should be on it? What is a must see in the Netherlands?

And another little thing that I really want to get under my belt is driving. I wrote about this before and even made some progress taking lessons as a refresher, but then I fell down the stairs and was out of action for a while. This morning I drove a little in our car for the first time. Hopefully I'll keep building on that...... keep asking me!

So that's my 2015 plan in a nutshell.

What does 2015 hold for you? What one thing are you determined to do this year?

Expat Life Means Throwing Your Plans Out the Window

It won't be news to anyone but life doesn't always turn out like you expect it to. If someone had told my seventeen year old self that I would end up living in the Netherlands with a Dutch husband and three children who are way more Dutch than they ever will be British, I would never have believed them. I would have been intrigued, but convinced? I don't think so.

Whilst I was making plans for my future, fresh out of university with a degree in European Studies, someone, somewhere was sniggering saying, "Well, I doubt you'll be needing any of that - maybe you should have tried learning Dutch. That's a language you will be using daily when you are 27." But how was I to know?

Expat life is planned for some, it sneaks up on others. Either way, it probably means life as you envisioned it doesn't quite become a reality. Expat life changes things - and sometimes that means a huge adjustment. Expat life can throw a spanner in the works. All the things you imagined for yourself in life can turn out so differently, in the blink of an expat eye.

It's a feeling I touched upon in a chapter I wrote about my Dutch wedding in the Dutched Up!: Rocking the Clogs Expat Style anthology. I had visions when I was younger of me trying on wedding dresses with my best friend at my side. I always figured my mother would also be a part of that build up to my wedding day. Together we'd be sipping bubbly while trawling through a range of dresses to find the perfect one for my big day.

My final choice of wedding dress

The reality was very different. Both my best friend and my mother were in England and I was here in the Netherlands. I actually put off looking for a dress for a while, and I guess it should have been one of the first things on my mind. At the time it wasn't a conscious decision to keep putting the visit to the bridal shop off, but looking back, I understand why I was more reluctant than I should have been to try wedding dresses on. It's the little things that suddenly slap you in the face and make you realise that expat life means sacrificing some things to gain others.

Having my first child was another reminder of how expat life changes things. In a non-expat life I had visions of my mother waiting outside the delivery room, eager to see her grandchild. I guess I figured I would have her to lean on, as the voice of experience, whilst I was pregnant in a different country. The reality was a million miles from the ideal. If I look back now I can't say whether there would have been more interest in my children from my mother had I not left England. It's a question I will never have the answer to, but I do know that my expat life changed our relationship for the worse. And I can't change that.

When you opt for an expat life things change. It is inevitable. I wouldn't change my decision to move overseas for all the tea in China, or all the fish 'n' chips back in England. But maybe, I could have been more prepared for the changes that expat life brings about. I don't mean the daily, practical things; I had envisaged those. I mean how expat life changes how the little things turn out, how it challenges the plans and visions you had for yourself, how it strains relationships with those left behind. How it puts turns in the road you hadn't seen coming.

To thrive as an expat I've needed to throw everything I saw for my future self out the window, and start with a clean slate. Make my plans from scratch. I've had to deal with the unexpected, and recover from being blindsided many times. Expat life means a pay off. That is the only certainty.

But I'm glad I've had the chance to find my way through my expat life. The journey was worth it.

That's Not Branston Pickle: The Dangers of Sandwich Making and Motherhood

The dangers of motherhood and sandwich making
Photo Credit: Pedro Simao

As a result of my blog post about all the things I never dreamed I would say before I became a parent I was reminded of a Branston pickle incident many years ago that I think I'm finally ready to share.

Picture the scene. My kitchen, just over seven years ago. My eldest son was just a few months old. He was a mere baby. Our little family comprised then only of the three of us. I was a new parent and I was sleep deprived. Bewildered. Operating on auto pilot. And I was making sandwiches for a long road trip we were about to make.

To be more precise, I was making cheese and Branston pickle sandwiches whilst my baby son lay in the play pen. Screaming. Screaming like he was being savagely attacked by rabid dogs. So I picked him up, gave him a cuddle and he stopped crying. I continued to make sandwiches with my one free hand, baby nestled in my other arm.

Drawing to the end of the 'tricky with one hand' sandwich packing process my husband took our son from me and I noticed I had pickle on my non-sandwich making arm. Strange, how on earth did that get there I wondered. So I licked it off my arm. It didn't taste much like pickle. I wrapped the last sandwich in cling film and cleared away.

"Ohhhhhhhhhh!" cried out my husband suddenly. "Nappy explosion!"

"Gadverdamme," I uttered. "That wasn't Branson pickle on my arm."

I know I'm not alone - go ahead, feel free to share your gross poop stories with us........

Lessons from a Highly Sensitive Mother: Empty Your Bucket

I was asked by Leila of Sensitive and Extraordinary Kids to write a guest post and I was more than happy to oblige.

One of the things I have been wanting to write about for a while, but hadn't quite got round to, was about how it feels to be a highly sensitive person launched into motherhood. Particularly when your first born is a highly sensitive child. 

What has been amazing is that the journey I have been on discovering that my eldest son is highly sensitive has led to more understanding of myself, and my needs. Unfortunately, seven years ago when I first became a mother, I had not started that particular journey and it felt like maybe I wasn't cut out for motherhood. 

"When my first son was born he cried a lot. Every evening around six o’clock for four or five hours, unless he was being held in exactly the right position. You could set your watch by it. And he wasn’t exactly a quiet baby during the day either."

Head over to Sensitive and Extraordinary Kids to read the whole post - and know that if you are a HS mother wondering how to cope you are certainly NOT alone.

You can read more about parenting a highly sensitive child on this blog here and last year I set up a Facebook group called Happy Sensitive Kids for parents just like me who are raising a HSC. It's a great group offering lots of support, ideas and well needed back slapping when things go right. 

Home Births: Let Pregnant Women Decide

 One of the things I loved about being pregnant in the Netherlands was the fact that I was not treated like I had a medical condition. I went to the hospital during my first pregnancy only for scans (and in subsequent pregnancies even these were done in the midwife practice) a blood test in the first trimester and a rush visit in the last trimester when my baby's heartbeat was deemed to be too fast by my midwife.

The rest of the time I saw only a group of midwives in their practice. Hospitals, as great as they are when you actually need them, are not places I need to spend a lot of time in.

What I also loved was the fact that I could make a considered judgement about where I wanted to give birth. I had the option of a home or a hospital birth. If I had been pregnant in England I am 99% sure a home birth would not have even been a topic of conversation.

In the UK only 2.4% of births happen at home compared to nearly 20% in the Netherlands. The cost of a hospital birth in the Netherlands is only fully covered by medical insurance if there is a medical reason for it. Plus the Dutch first line care (midwives) advocate natural births. At least in 2006, they certainly did.

I'm an expat, and the first thing that crossed my mind was how culturally different a birth in the UK was (or in the US for that matter), where all my friends seemed to be talking about epidurals and gas and air. However, I decided that if I could, I would opt for a home birth. What could be more comfortable than not having to pack up a case and head off to an unknown, sterile environment surrounded by strange faces to give birth?

But when it came down to it I had to go to hospital. There was meconium in the embryonic fluid and I had no choice. The midwife was with me at home, and made it clear that we had to transfer as quickly as we could to the hospital. No panic, no stress, just matter of factly, "Let's move it".

I was devastated. I hadn't prepared myself for Plan B. Everything was ready for a home birth, not a hospital birth (it turned out that I seemed to have absentmindedly forgotten to complete the packing of my hospital case).

A typical delivery suite at a Dutch hospital
(ball not included!)

The details of the birth I will save for a rainy day (or a book) but suffice to say that because the maternity ward was working at maximum capacity and there was not enough staff to attend to all the women in labour as it was needed I had a difficult, stressful delivery. No woman should have to go through a traumatic labour and birth because of staff shortages. My husband and I were left alone for large chunks of time in the delivery room - feeling helpless, clueless and upset. My baby also became distressed.

So no one will ever convince me that a hospital room is always the best place for a woman to give birth, because it is safer, because of 'just in case', that it should be the first choice of every woman, regardless of situation.

A doula and a whole lot of personal experience made the difference for me the second and third births around - also in a hospital.

And so to last week. Dutch News.nl translated an article that appeared in De Volkskrant on 29 April (if you can read Dutch be sure to read the original article, and particularly the comments it evoked - including from gynaecologists themselves) called "Home Births: Let the Gynaecologists Decide".  In the article the two authors (Kenneth Watson and Rob Kottenhagen) are advocating that gynaecologists should decide whether women can safely give birth at home or not. It's an opinion piece. And this in turn is my opinion piece about the article.

The first line already riled me; translated from the original article, the piece starts like this.

"It is irresponsible to keep home births as the cornerstone of midwifery care."

And it riles me because just over 80% of women in the Netherlands give birth in the hospital. The cornerstone of midwifery care is not home birth.

It goes on to state,

"The German poet Heinrich Heine once said that if the end of the world came he would go to the Netherlands because there everything happened fifty years later. This comment seems a fitting one for another anachronistic Dutch phenomenon: the home birth. Everywhere in the affluent West the safety of mother and child is paramount and hospital births are the norm." Dutch News 2 May 2014

It goes on to talk about midwives playing Russian Roulette with the lives of mothers and babies, that midwives make woefully inadequate risk assessments.

By the time I got to the end of the piece my blood was boiling. And I don't even think it was because of the message in the article, more the tone. I can well imagine how any midwife felt reading the article. The authors imply that the priority of the midwife is not the mother, nor the baby. And how insulting must that be to such a profession?

I miss the part in the article where it states around the time that the worrying baby death figures were published that part of the discussion was that gynaecologists, doctors and anaesthetists weren't always around at night in hospitals. That their absence put women in danger.

I miss the part that admits that many women who were successfully able to have a home birth had a wonderful experience. I gave birth three times in a hospital, and not one time could I say it was a pleasant experience. It got the job done - I took three healthy baby boys home with me, but pleasant? No. Absolutely not. I am envious of the many positive home birth stories I have heard.

I miss the acknowledgement of the research that indicates that hospital births increase the chances of intervention being necessary (caesarian sections, vacuum pump and so on). That labour is lasting longer and longer as women lie around in hospital beds.

I welcome any proper discussion on the topic of child birth, whether that be about the Netherlands or elsewhere. Childbirth should be safe, no matter where you give birth. Women should have a choice. Women should make the decisions, based on facts and risks with the help of the professionals (I'm not alone thinking this see: http://www.knov.nl/actueel-overzicht/nieuws-overzicht/detail/keuze-vrouw-centraal-in-reacties-opiniestuk/1386).

I believe all women should have the right to a safe environment and professional care for labour and birth. But the truth is that sometimes things go wrong; they go wrong in a maternity ward in a hospital, they go wrong at home. Midwives are human. Gynaecologists are human. Labour is unpredictable. Births do not follow a script.

I feel strongly that demonising midwives is just wrong. That's my opinion. Instead of the eternal battle that rages on in the Netherlands between midwifes and gynaecologists about who is best to lead pregnancies, labour and births, it would be nice to see more collaboration. Instead of one camp against another I would rather see more unity, seamless co-operation, specialists working together in the interest of mothers-to-be and their unborn children. Less emphasis on who gets the money for delivery, more emphasis on safety, but also comfort! The comfort of the mother, a relaxed mother, a contented mother, which is proven to aid the labour process, seems to have been forgotten along the way.

The only positive thing I can say about this article is that, despite its dismissive, condescending tone, it has of course sparked discussion. I am, after all, writing about it. Many are talking about it. Many have commented on it. It's a topic that will always spark controversy, that will evoke the most primal of emotions. I believe women should have a choice where they give birth.

But lastly, when all is said and done, I believe child birth is a topic that should be treated respectfully, which I missed in this article.

A Mother's Hands

Photo Credit: Leroy Skalstad

Growing up I often looked at my mum's hands and vowed my hands would not look the same when I was older. Despite regular lashings of hand cream, strong stuff at that, her hands remained dry, chapped, worn out.

It's only now, with three children of my own, now that I've been bestowed with the special title of mama, that I understand why her hands always looked so overused, so tired.

It was from helping us wash our tiny hands, washing our muddy or dinner stained clothes, soaking our trousers, the ones with the grass stained knees, from bathing us, washing our hair after a day playing out in the garden, from the endless, thankless task of cleaning the home we lived in, washing the dishes after dinner, from cooking and baking.

Hands in water. Hands immersed in detergent, hands covered in dough, constantly dipped in and out of dirty dishwater, wringing out sodden wet clothes, hanging damp clothes on the washing line. Hands in constant use. For years. Day in, day out. From sun up to sun down. No breaks or respite from the work she did, even when we were on holiday. No thought, time or money for a manicure. 

When we started school, my brother and I, my mum started working in school meals, to fit her working hours in with us. All day in a kitchen: cooking, hands in water, hands covered in food, cleaning, clearing, creating. Then she went home and started all over again. I understand now that her hands took a battering from her daily tasks, the ones she never complained about doing. Her hands took a battering from motherhood. 

No amount of handcream could keep the cracks at bay. Handcream never got the chance to soak in, let alone had time to work its promised magic.

I look down now at my own hands. They are tired, aged hands. And I'm proud that my hands look just like my mum's did. They make be dry, chapped, tired but I am consoled by the fact that is is all in the name of motherhood.

Today is Mother's Day in the Netherlands. This is for my own mother, my own way of thanking her for everything she did for us growing up, but who is more distant now than I would ever wish. Let your mother know today, even through you are all grown up, that you know what she has done for you. That you are grateful that her hands are worn by the years of motherhood. That her hands are worn for you.

An Expat Book Review: Harvesting Stones by Paula Lucas

 

I have just finished reading the expat memoir 'Harvesting Stones' written by Paula Lucas. It's an autobiographical expat tale like no other I have read. 

The story begins slowly, almost too slowly, on a farm in California with the rather uneventful childhood days of Paula. The relationship between her parents is functional, and Lucas' upbringing is Catholic and rather dull. With every page that I turned the tale snowballed into an even bigger, more unreal story. Only it is far from unreal - it is an honest, brutal account of real life events. And that is why as each chapter progressed my sense of urgency to reach the end of the book grew, I wanted out of the nightmare that Paula Lucas was living. I couldn't sleep another night without reaching an ending, that whilst not exactly happy, was at least an exit. 

Paula met a man, like so many of us have, and the relationship went from wining and dining to living together, from San Francisco to a life in the Middle East. There were signs early on that Ty (not his real name) was somewhat of a social chameleon, that he was hellbent on moulding Paula into his vision of a wife. I found myself willing her to get out whilst she could, say no to his plans for the future. I screamed in my head at her. But Paula got caught in the spiral of their relationship, like a whirlpool that whisked her helplessly deeper and deeper into a bottomless hell. They married and after their first child was born, Paula began to see the true beast unleashed upon her. 

As the years went by, and with two more sons to protect, Paula went through a living nightmare. She was physically and mentally abused. She was locked in her house, locked out of her house, her children punished for hugging her, she was beaten, financially paralysed. Her three children were physically, sexually and mentally abused. Her life was threatened on more than one occasion, once in a car accident and another time with a knife whilst her son was forced to look on. 

He told her, "I will hunt you down and slaughter you like animals no matter where you are in the world."

Her American passport, as well as those of her sons, were hidden by Ty. The American Embassy could not issue new ones without the consent of both parents. Her husband's family turned a blind eye. Nobody could or would help. She was trapped, convinced the only way out was in a body bag.

It took a superhuman burst of courage and determination to get out. And a thief in Germany. Paula got her three boys to the United States, but the battle didn't stop there. Thousands of dollars of legal fees later, after numerous court hearings and evaluations, restraining orders, a temporary life on the move and in shelters Paula and her boys finally started afresh. She was lucky to have the help, love and support of good family and friends. Not all victims of domestic violence are as lucky as Paula (and yes I know how ironic that sounds) so Lucas made a covenant with God that if she should escape the hell that was her life in the Middle East with her tyrant husband she would help other Americans overseas in a similar situation. 

And that is exactly what this remarkable woman did. Whilst living in a women's shelter, she founded the Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center (AODVC). Last year she set up the Sexual Assault Support & Help For Americans Abroad Program (SASHAA). She wrote this book, put her own story out there, to highlight a little known or cared about issue. And this is not an issue that is constrained to the Middle East, American women in Europe can also find themselves trapped, in the impossible situation of needing permission from a child's abusive father to take them back to the safety of the United States.

I have gasped, held my breath and shed tears whilst reading this book. It is harrowing. I can only imagine the daily terror that Lucas went endured to keep herself and her three sons alive. This book is a chilling account of life as the victim of an abuser. It is a tale of extreme bravery, courage and the love of a mother for her innocent children. It is written in a wonderful style that makes it very readable but this book is by no means an easy read. It is a memoir that will continue haunting, long after the last page is turned. 

You can learn more about Paula Lucas and her memoir on her Facebook Page and website. Furthermore you can read the first chapter here.

There Are No Words

Imagine waking one morning to hear the news that your children are missing. Suddenly. Without a trace. No one knows where they are. For two weeks you cling to a thread of hope that your little boys are unharmed and waiting to be found. Waiting for you to bring them home. The only thing you can think of is to hold them in your arms again, keep them safe for ever more. Your community goes out en masse to help with searches of anywhere the police think the boys may be. Complete strangers unite to scour woody terrain for any clues of life. The police and military are out in force to bring your boys home to you. Hundreds of thousands of unknown faces say prayers each night, hoping that their minuscule action plays some part helping in the safe return of two young boys to their mother. As days go by hope turns to dread. Everyone thinks it but daren't say it.

Two weeks of an agony that no mother should ever feel. A fortnight of frantic worry. A fortnight of panic. Two weeks of emptiness.Two weeks of hope. Hope suddenly extinguished on a Sunday afternoon as two small bodies are found by a passerby.

The mayor of Zeist described the family's grief as immeasurable. Immeasurable. An end so unspeakable. The emptiness of a mother without her children. Immeasurable. The tears for her lost children. Immeasurable.

I don't think there is a parent in the Netherlands who has not been touched in some way by the family drama that has unfolded over the last twenty days. It is incomprehensible. It is sickening. It is heartbreaking. There are no words.

The family of brothers Ruben (9) and Julian (7) do not want a "stille tocht" (silent procession) to mark the loss of the boys but recognising that so many would like an outlet for their feelings and so many want to pay tribute to two lives cut so short, they have asked people to light candles and place them in their windows between 7pm and 8pm on Sunday 26th May. There is also a national condolence register available online.

There are messages of 'sterkte' coming in from around the country for Iris, the mother of these precious boys and the rest of their family, but that doesn't convey how we all feel. Wishing her strength and courage and our deepest sympathy doesn't touch the surface of our feelings. As parents, we know there are no words for a mother who has lost her reason for being. For a mother whose grief is immeasurable now, and for all time. I pray she learns how to put one foot in front of the other again, finds a way to live with her loss and hold memories of her boys in her heart.

May Julian and Ruben rest in peace.