The friendship seat #1000speak

Kiri 15 Comments

It still haunts me to know that being bullied was a feature of the last few months of my daughter’s life, that in the beginning it wasn’t handled very well and that I failed her in this.

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Early in her second year at school, around the time she turned 6, Zoe told me that some older girls were seeking her out every day at lunchtime to tease her, particularly about the way she spoke. Zoe had some speech issues relating to nerve damage either from her cancer or the radiation treatment. She had undergone surgery to her palette before the school year started and along with speech therapy, this was greatly improving the situation, but it was enough to single her out as a victim in the eyes of these girls (I want to say bullies, but that label seems to make them less human than they really are).

I took her in to school early one morning to catch her teacher before others started arriving and explained to the teacher what had been happening. Her teacher’s first response was “Well, I hate to tell you Zoe, but some people just aren’t very nice.” She went on to say that the next time it happened, Zoe should find the teacher on duty and point out who the girls were. While I was a little shocked at the comment, I felt there was a plan of action. And as a busy working solo mum, I didn’t want to rock the boat and be “one of those” parents. I assumed the school had it’s way of dealing with these things.

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Dx (diagnosis)

Kiri 1 Comment

I’ve been feeling stressed, restless, not sleeping, my metabolism running on overdrive. I was thinking it’s my job, which is exciting but stressful at the moment. Or maybe it’s the glimmer of something new on the horizon that would require a leap of faith and trust from me. Maybe it’s partly those things, but for some reason it’s taken me a while (as it always does, as if it doesn’t come round annually) to figure out it’s the time of the year.

The sweet nostalgia of summer heat fading into the crisper mornings of autumn, the end of long golden evenings, the last of the summer flowers and monarch butterflies, the feijoas ripening on the tree. The weeks leading up to Zoe’s birthday. The weeks when in 2009, just before her third birthday, we were waiting for a diagnosis.

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My tribe #1000speak

Kiri 8 Comments

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

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Mosaic heart made at the Stepping Stones family camp,

Around a year ago, along with my laptop, camera and kindle, most of my jewellery was stolen. Thankfully all of my photos of Zoe were backed up on a hard drive I kept at work, but I was devastated, because much of the jewellery was a memorial to Zoe. Jewellery she had helped me choose the beads for and “supervised” the making of, lockets with pictures of her, pieces with hearts and butterflies I had collected, been given or made in her memory and the thing it hurt the most to lose – a little glass bottle pendant with a lock of her hair that I cut after she died.

After a week of dealing of dealing with the police, insurance companies and the initial shock of feeling vulnerable and violated, I thought about where I was at. “I should be feeling worse than this” I thought. “But I feel fine – even better than fine.” Here’s what happened in that week.

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Compassion is hereditary #1000speak

Kiri 21 Comments

I inherited compassion from my daughter

You know that saying – “Insanity is hereditary, you get if from your kids”?
Well, I think I inherited compassion from my daughter.

Until recently it was widely believed (in Western cultures anyway) that babies were born innately selfish, that it was our moral duty as parents to turn them from self obsessed little savages into beings fit for human society, through training them with reward and punishment. It seemed to make sense – after all, newborns are famously demanding in getting their own needs met no matter how exhausted their parents. Continue reading →

Why I’ll be eating ice-cream for breakfast on the 18th February

Kiri 1 Comment

There will be people around the world eating ice-cream for breakfast on 18th February. And despite being in two minds about cancer awareness campaigns, I’m going to be one of them. Here’s why.

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Generally I prefer charity activities that raise money for their causes over “awareness” campaigns that seem to do little other than make people feel good about participating.

I am planning on supporting Eat Ice-cream for Breakfast Day though. It doesn’t raise money. It doesn’t have an ice-cream company as a corporate sponsor. Yes, it is an awareness campaign for childhood cancer, motivated by remembering a little girl called Malia but it’s asking something a little bit different from you too. Continue reading →

Lessons From the Worst Day Of My Life

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A beautiful post about grief, inspiration and kindness.

Gretchen Kelly's avatarDrifting Through

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“And I know it aches and your heart it breaks and you can only take so much….  Walk on.” -U2, Walk On

It was my wedding day.

I found myself standing outside the doors to the chapel. My heart was racing. Pressure began building inside and I felt my eyes fill up with tears.

I can’t do this.

Before I could turn and run, the doors were flung open. I was caught off guard as 80 expectant faces turned to look at me. I scanned the crowd….  I saw my family and friends…. I saw my Dad and Stepfather waiting in front of the alter to give me away.

But I was going to have to walk down the aisle alone.

And that’s not how it was supposed to be.

I don’t know how long I paused there. I felt like I couldn’t move.

Then my eyes found Joe. And…

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The return of Charlie Cat (or on belonging)

Kiri 24 Comments

Can one shaggy fickle moggy show you where you belong?

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We didn’t adopt Charlie Cat, he adopted us, soon after we moved to our new house in 2008, the year before Zoe’s cancer diagnosis. We’d moved from a townhouse in the inner city to a single level house with a safe little garden Zoe could play in. No more lugging washing up two flights of stairs along with a strong willed toddler, or driving to where she could walk on the grass.  It was a house that matched my dream of how family life should be, in a neighbourhood of other families, close to the zoo, playgrounds and the beach. There was even a walking school bus to the local primary school and a feijoa tree in the garden.

The week we moved here, I walked with then 2 year old Zoe to the supermarket around the corner. She stopped at virtually every house along the way. “Look, a house, a fence. Look another house, another fence.” With the right house, I felt sure we would become that perfect family, give Zoe a quintessential Kiwi childhood and that our marriage problems would become a distant memory. The addition of a household pet seemed like the icing on the cake. It felt like a sign that he had chosen us. Continue reading →

730 days without you

Kiri 2 Comments

Another year without you

Zoe. Another year without you, the second. How can that be when I wanted time to cease the moment you left me behind?

This time of year is especially hard to be without you. Spring brings unwelcome reminders that life goes on. “I love Spring” you said on the first day of Spring, 28 days before you died. In the days after you died, I remember being angry that there were still calves and lambs in the paddocks. Now I can’t help thinking each day of what we were doing on this day two years ago, the last precious, heartbreaking days we had with you. My thoughts turn dark and the days become that little bit harder to get through. I want to hibernate until it’s over. Then we get to this day, the day you left us. And we find a way to get through it. Continue reading →

Happy Valentines day to me

Kiri 11 Comments

I’ve understood for a long time that one of the interpretations of “love your neighbour as yourself,” is that it’s really hard to project love outwards unless you love and accept yourself first. But understanding it is not the same as feeling it.

The Angel Zoe Kindness Project was inspired by the idea of keeping Zoe’s memory with us by spreading kindness in the world, just as she loved to do. But perhaps the secret in her ability to do this was how she loved herself – a lesson I’m still learning.

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Marked

Kiri 5 Comments

Bereaved parents are a kind of reluctant tribe, the one that no-one wanted to join, and some of us have chosen to mark ourselves as such.
The reasons we do it vary and each mark has a different meaning for those who choose it, but many of our motivations and the symbols we use are similar.

I felt after my daughter Zoe’s cancer diagnosis at age three as if I had become become both transparent and luminescent, as if my interior life was so visible that my story could be read on the surface of my skin. I felt that when we left the house strangers would know our story at a glance, that we were visibly marked by cancer. Of course Zoe was visibly marked, though she seemed not too worried by her battle scars (she called the scar from her mic-key button her “other belly button”).

I felt the same after Zoe’s death at age six, that people would know I was a bereaved mother from the grief, pain, love and despair written on my skin. That the wound of having my child ripped from my life must have left a scar. And that felt right, that I should in fact be physically marked from surviving this. Continue reading →