Today I stood and watched a big crane rip apart my primary school. It sounds dramatic, but it is both brilliant and sobering. As I got out of the car, I looked across the vista that used to include the bricks and mortar that contained my childhood.
My children now go to the school I went to, and I can’t really explain how much it sometimes catches me out with memories resurfacing. They will have a brand new school next year, but I have been left wondering where all the memories contained in those bricks and mortar will go?
Sometimes I see a face in the crowd as we line up at the school gate. I wonder if they were in my class because recognition floods my conscious. On other days I remember mean words that poured out of my mouth and triumphant times of victory when I overcame.
Childhood was both glorious and it was also brutal.
I think a whole heap of my last few years of unravelling have been unpacking the memories that have just sat below the surface.
Writing has been a powerful tool in this season of immense self discovery.
Reframing the narratives and stories from my past.
Crowds of people and faces weave conversations in my mind.
Lately, there has been a huge conversation about bullying in the media where I live and it’s so important. Last night as I remembered my crumbling primary school and the pile of rubble, I saw laying in front of me, I wondered what makes a bully.
I don’t think bullies are born, I think they are made.
Pain needs expression and whether we are aware of our pain or not, it has to escape somewhere. Rather than shaming bullies in our culture, I am realising that people who hurt other people are often hurting themselves.
Are there emotions surfacing from the rubble of your childhood that need reframing?
There is a power in the way that we speak to one another. If I was to make an assumption I would say that bully’s often use their words to wield power because they are holding deep pain or shallow pride in some area of their stories.
Children who don’t show kindness, I think are just regurgitating the unprocessed pain from their parents. Susy Parker wrote this on Instagram this week and it really impacted me;
“Your child’s behaviour is simply a vessel to wake you up to your own healing. “
It doesn’t take very long to unpack the pain in our world. Just scratch the surface of the nightly news and scroll through social media. Listen long enough in a cafe to the conversations of strangers and sit with the complexity of all of our own stories.
The pain of unprocessed narratives, lay really close to the surface of all of our lives. When someone is behaving badly, you can be assured that there is a battle lying below, fuelling their rage.
Writing is a powerful tool to heal.
Conversations with safe people are like water to a weary soul.
Laughter is a medicine, that can heal even the most weary of hearts.
This year as we walk the earth, what if kindness became our calling card?
Yes, we may have a story of rubble and pain to process but we all do. Instead of shaming each other back into the shadows, what if we allowed one another the space and capacity to heal?
Are you a safe person to those in your circle?
Do you hold their hand and pain with kindness?
This year my goal is to walk this earth with kindness.
Would you like to walk together?
Amanda
This blog is a part of a series 2019 Manifesto.
