Coping

You are only as happy as your unhappiest child.
This is such a powerful statement, awash with pathos but also a sense of human opportunity which is clear, listening to a group of women who cope with their troubles by being together and sharing their experiences whilst walking through the countryside.
When we have children we assume that such and such will happen and we will be like guide dogs adjusting their direction every so often but trying to hold back so they learn by experience. But these women are faced with a range of difficulties that blind our tiny ups and downs and make one feel so blessed with our wonderful but very personal experience.
The range of disabilities seems unending and listening to these parents trying to cope with their child's needs seems unending. It's a total emotional commitment as well as a physically demanding one.
24/7, one has to adjust ones life around these little people who didn't ask to be born into such a world but who need, particularly the mothers love, in bucket loads to compensate for their inability to perform the simple tasks we have to perform as human beings every minute of every day.

 Walking and talking is cathartic it releases the thoughts of being singled out, and the chance of feeling a victim. The real victims are the children but in many cases the child doesn't yet know since they have no reference point other than their own specific experience. For the parent of a seriously disadvantaged child there is a constant reference, the healthy children all around and one must query the magnanimity of a creative process which produces such bitterly disadvantaged human beings ? I suppose, like life's journey, the obstacles are the testing points which give us perspective but it seem a cruel way to design a course which produces so much pain in an effort to teach us a lesson !

By the way this small reflection on the lives of others, so far removed from my own was brought on by the BBC.
Broadcast on the radio at 6 am it brought my attention to the people, out and about doing their human best to stay the course. It was programmed by a team of people who care to bring to us just one story in thousands about rambling in and through our marvellous countryside. The "only for profit outfits" wouldn't spend their money on such a storyline there's not enough blood and guts in it, too much humanity not enough innuendo !!
As I have mentioned in a previous blog, they have their dirty little "profit motivated" knives out for this institution we take for granted at our peril.