Truffle

My dad was like that, he was my safe person and would always celebrate my success, had wise advice and truly cared for my wellbeing. When I became a parent, many things from the way he taught me were passed on to my own kid. Then he died. That was ten years ago and I miss him everyday.

My mom was abusive all through me and my sibling's upbringing, she stills is, mind you but I am very low contact/ on the brink of no contact now. As a mother myself, I have done the exact opposite of what she did to me so my kid is treated with respect, compassion, genuinecuriosity about their interests, acceptance and grace. They will not know what not being loved or unwanted feels like.

What a treat! Good for you. It is something I want to do too and reading this gives me hope.

It is. Sending you an internet Hug. You matter and should have had someone who listened to you back then. 💜

Absolutely and lets add that some children only disclose once to a trusted adult who might not always pay attention. It breaks my heart.

When people dismiss children's concerns. Maybe to adults is not a big deal, but to kids it does matter. I make an effort to pay attention and listen when a child tells me something.

Paraphrasing something I read somewhere "Do we open a book just to close it again?" That for me, it means that it is not merely for doing something that we exist, but to tell stories, to pass on knowledge, to keep rituals alive, to be a vessel for something beyond ourselves. The important part, same as books, is to tell stories. Everything sparks from there.

Yes. My dad was an avid swimmer and scuba diver so he wanted to instill that onto us children.

It was usually a frog, but this particular teacher wanted her students to work with a mammal. #80's magic #nostalgia

My sibling's class was having a biology lesson on the circulatory system that day and they were supposed to open up the little hamster to watch his tiny heart beat inside its cracked ribcage. The teacher asured them that because of chloroform, the hamster wouldn't feel a thing. Sibling, horrified, bought the critter from the kid who brought it to school for the experiment for a quarter so when mom pivked us up that day from school, we had an extra passenger. Next day we went and got all the hamster paraphernalia we could pay for with our savings and set her up in my sibling's room. Two days after this, the hamster gave birth to a whole litter. Mom was very angry and disgusted, but it wasn't for long because, out of stress I think, the hamster started eating her young. She ate them all and next morning we found her dead stuck between the cage wall and the exercise wheel.

I was a sensitive child and this whole event added to my already exisiting CPTSD.

You are one eloquent mummified raconteur. I loved how as traumatic as it was, you told it beautifully.

German

Me and my sibling were tired of my mom eavesdropping whenever so we learned another language to communicate between us. It would drive her crazy but she never bothered to learn to speak said language, so that's on her.