#dosomethingyummy - Link Up - Week 2
Welcome to the #dosomethingyummy Writing Prompt Link Up for Week 2 of our CLIC Sargent Do Something Yummy awareness campaign.
Your writing prompt for Week 2 was "What Family Means To You" and you had a choice of three types of post:
- Personal post. What kind of family did you grow up in? Why is family important to you?
- Yummy post. What happens to a family when a child is diagnosed with cancer? How do siblings and parents cope?
- Creative writing. Write about a perfect family moment
So, what did you write? I chose the personal prompt and again you can read it by scrolling past the link widget. If you have written a #dosomethingyummy post please link up below but don't worry if you haven't joined in yet - the linky will be staying open for the whole of February and March. If you are here to read the entries it would be great if you could share this post, or any of the ones linked up, on your social networks.
Click here to add a new link
(linky will not display after one week but is still open)
Rose-Tinted Glasses
It is up to us, as parents, to protect our children. But I have gone through the latter part of my
adult life questioning a lot of my childhood simply because the truth was outed
and people who shaped my life appeared to go against the values that they had
taught me.
We all know that when a couple separate or divorce everyone
worries how the children are going to react and what provisions will be made
for them. But what if those children are
adults, leading their own lives with their own families? Are they supposed to understand, suck it up
and cope? How do you ask questions without
offending anyone or making the atmosphere any more tense?
My childhood was a fabulous one. I had two loving parents who also loved each
other. We had a comfortable life, living
in a beautiful part of the country, surrounded by a close family and fantastic
friends. We went on countless holidays
each year thanks to the joys of caravanning and, looking back, it was
bliss. We weren’t without our usual
family rows and upsets but they can’t have been that bad or I would have
remembered them explicitly, and I don’t.
Dad worked hard, first in important manual positions in
two local factories and then in a white collar position with incredible
responsibilities. Some of his work took
him away from home three days a week but he phoned home diligently each evening. Mum suffered from bronchiectasis all her life
but tried not to let it affect normal family life and certainly didn’t let it
become a burden for me and my sister.
See, all good!
I left home, as we all know, at the age of 18 in a blaze
of glory and started my own family. I
always felt that my parents were judgemental and that caused many arguments
between us even when they were trying to help out. Hindsight (and what I see my own daughter
doing with her own family) tells me that they were only trying to advise and
support me. In many ways I wish I could
turn the clock back.
Whilst I was pregnant with my third child at the age of
27 the news that dad was leaving mum broke just before they had the chance to
celebrate 30 years of marriage. I was
floored, especially when I found out why.
But there was no-one that I could turn to and no-one I could
question. My relationship with my
parents was still fractured and in the process of being repaired and this just
put more barriers up. I have never fully
recovered from the news.
Mum isn’t with us any more. She died, aged 55, after deteriorating so
badly that she spent the majority of her last couple of years bedridden or in
hospital. I still fully believe that
living on her own created this situation.
Sometimes I think I would have had more respect for dad if he’d have
waited with mum and then remarried after she died. Possibly he didn’t want to live with the
burden of a sick wife any more. Maybe he
should have left sooner. The pivotal
point of me wondering if my childhood was as happy as it seemed all centres
around my father leaving my mother. I
was always a ‘Daddy’s Girl’ but now even that has been lost. Maybe dad thought he was doing the right
thing by waiting until my sister and myself were grown up and making our own
way in life but I’ve still never found the right time to ask the
questions. Even in September of last year
I mentioned something to him that had upset me and he managed to turn it around
and make me feel very guilty for even mentioning it to him in the first
place!
Of course this story doesn’t end here – it doesn’t even
begin here. There’s way too much of it
missing and so much that I can’t write about.
But I defined my own parenting path at a very young age in some way from
my parent’s example but also determined to do the complete opposite to what my
parents did - and from that I created a daughter almost exactly from the same mould as me - determined to forge her own way in life, doing exactly the opposite to what her parents advise! And I have no shame in telling you that EVERYONE doomed
my relationship from the start but we’re still here 22 years later. I would like to believe that our colourful
life has made our relationship strong enough to survive anything.
But who knows?