The Bøøb more lethal than The Slap?

'The Slap' captured my imagination back in October 2011 and last week aired in the US. If you haven't seen it yet it has to be one of the best series I've ever seen! Here is how the first episode got to me back then. 

Like a lot of Australians last night I sat glued to the ABC for the debut of ABCTV’s ‘The Slap’, the TV series immortalising the controversial novel of the same name. So there I sat, patiently waiting for the aforementioned slap to occur.

But then a different scene slapped me far harder than a whack ever could. There was a mother still breastfeeding her four year old at a BBQ. In front of a few six year olds, no less.

At this point a collective “Eeeewwww” echoed through Twitter and presumably loungerooms nationally. Then the defence began. Women tweeted furiously: breastfeeding is a natural and beautiful thing! A woman has a right to breast feed for as long as she likes, where she likes!

As a public breastfeeder myself up until five months ago, I have no issue with other women whipping them out wherever they need to. The choice is either a starving baby in pain, screaming it’s head off or a flash of nipple. I know which I would prefer.

Why I screwed up my nose at the scene and then groaned at those defending her afterwards was because this was not a depiction of a child needing a feed. This was a sad dysfunctional scene of parents failing their child on a number of levels. If a little boy is old enough to hit other children, break their expensive games consoles and wield a cricket bat at their heads, he is old enough to be taught the difference between right and wrong, and ordered off to the naughty corner. Instead his insipid mother offers him the reward of a comforting breastfeed.

This is all types of wrong and has very little to do with the rights of mothers worldwide to breastfeed in a “whateverworksforyou” kind of way.

Have we become so politically correct, so populist that we can’t stand up and say that this woman is turning something beautiful into something revolting and wrong? I hope not, because I was completely grossed out and I will not apologise for recoiling as I watched two people selfishly undermine a healthy foundation for their son.

There is something inherently wrong with abusing the responsibility we as parents have. We possess a huge amount of power over our children’s lives and threatening them physically or emotionally, is jeopardising the very framework of which they will rely upon for the rest of their lives. The bøøb, in this case, is as lethal as the slap.

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What will you remember about 2011?

This year has been one of those ones that stands out. I'm not sure if it's just my baby brain having a half life of six months and so I've completely forgotten everything about 2010, but this year somehow has made it pale into insignificance.

IMMORTALITY MEET FINITE LIFE
2011 will always be the year that I realised I will not live forever, it was like Death was trying to tell me something and for the first time I listened.

I never knew Steve Jobs but his words back in 2005 "have the courage to follow your heart" will haunt me until I truly take that first step towards my destiny. His death still makes me sad. What an amazing visionary that was taken from all of us far too early. At the same time his amazing thoughts and words inspired me to the point that I wrote an article about him that got published in a major newspaper, which ironically felt a touch like where my heart was leading me.

I met Gavin Larkin once, in a pitch situation. He was larger than life, vivacious, intelligent and compelling. At the time I didn't know that he had started RUOK? day for the prevention of suicide, and he didn't know that he already had cancer. His death this year was incredibly shocking, he was younger than me and left behind his wife and three children. His amazing life was captured by Australian Story, if you missed it I highly recommend you watch it here.

Ten years on we mourned again the loss of thousands of innocent people as we remembered 9/11. I had managed to not think too much about it since the shocking event took place, as I didn't know anyone who died. But with the gravity of motherhood I saw the grief of parents, partners and young children in a much deeper and clearer light, and one that cut me deeply. My heart still breaks for their loss.

And most drastically my immortal status quo was irreversibly challenged, when a beautiful friend with two kids the same age as mine was diagnosed with cancer in October. Something about someone so close to you, living a parallel life and it being disrupted so frighteningly has rocked my world. I'm sure not as much as hers and her gorgeous family's, but my heart broke when she told me and I know I will be in limbo until I find out she is going to be ok.

BRAND NEW EYES
In 2011 my two babies became little boys. Their personalities developed and my eldest started speaking and giving me a whole new insight in to the way he sees the world. My youngest also showed us who he is going to become with his unwavering determination and gusto for life. And I woke up from probably a couple of years of sleep deprivation to realise how lucky I am to know these two amazing little beings. Yes they are hard work, yes it is insanely stressful trying to constantly protect them as they totter towards stairs or learn to jump off fences, but they are my universe, my joy, my pride and when I feel their arms wrapped around me, when I see them collapse in giggles, when they look at me with wonder and love, I realise it is me that has been given new life, in the creation of theirs.

MY WORDS FORMED A SMILE
Thanks to the existence of said perfect little creatures, in February this year I was inspired to start blogging, which has lead me to realise that writing is a bit of a passion of mine and one I'm hoping will continue to change my life. All those inane years of journal keeping seems to have had some benefits, other than one day explaining to my ancestors why they are slightly insane. I have been lucky enough to have work published all over the place but what has been more exciting is meeting other bloggers. In them I have found friends who somehow get the insanity that is the need to write and overshare, I mean, contribute to the world. The generosity, wit, intelligence and comradery I have found is so brilliantly unexpected. There are too many to mention but I can't let go of this year without thanking some of you for your support, encouragement and friendship:


Maria Tedeschi of Mum's Word

Purple_cath of Precocious Lotus Jewels

Nathalie Brown of EasyPeasyKids

Danielle Uskovic from Lenovo
Brenda Gaddi of Mummytime and Digital Parents

Emma Ashton of Reality Ravings

Andrea Zanetich of Fox in flats

Bernadette Morley of So now what?

Denyse Whelan 
Yvette Vignando of HappyChild

Dan Hanks

Sharon of Twitchy Corner
Mary-Ann Harris of Mah73
Kathy from SmallKucing
Alexandra Carlton and
the worst until last
Joe Hildebrand (aka the online sensation)

and Happy New Year to all of you, 

thanks so much for taking the time to visit and 

I hope I've given you as much joy this year as you have me! xxx

What will you remember about 2011?

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BEAM ME UP SCOTTY! Another teleporting accident waiting to happen

For the last few weeks I've felt a bit like I'm being beamed up by Scotty but still haven't rematerialised anywhere, let alone the Starship Enterprise. So my material self is currently a sparkly set of atoms bouncing off each other in limbo waiting for Scotty to somehow re-organise them back in to something half way resembling the original version of me. 

Once I explain my current exploded self, it will make complete sense, of course (I am being sarcastic but sort of not at the same time) Firstly the loveliest of friends found out she had Breast Cancer, and is now suffering through Chemotherapy, I can't even start to explain what this has done to my heart let alone hers and her beautiful family's. Secondly I ended up in the paper smiling broadly in stark contrast to my what my insides look like and then writing for The Punch last week, so feeling a little out there and suddenly awkward/embarrassed which is a bit unexpected. And lastly I am preparing to return to work in January after what will be fifteen months of maternity leave. 

All these things in differing degrees are disturbing the rhythm of my life, which pretty much resembles that of a toddler's, seeing I'm hanging out with two of them most of the time. And if you haven't heard, toddlers LOVE a consistent schedule, marked by simple, repetitive things like eating and playing and sleeping. Either new Mums and toddlers have a lot in common or I am severely stunted because with all this ambiguity and sadness and exposure, the schedule is well and truly out the window. And there's a lot of screaming going on in my head that is tending to resemble my 14 month old's reaction to an overstay at the supermarket.

Fact: It is difficult to write when you're screaming, even if only on the inside. 

So I suppose this is a lame attempt to explain what I perceive as a negative change in the content of my blog and tweet stream of late. (BTW Hubby has banned the iPhone from our bedroom which doesn't really matter as my atomised brain is finding it tough to come up with any twitty banter that would see followers lunging for the retweet button. Because, of course, before I got involuntarily stuck in a Star Trek transporter that was happening all the time. These thoughts remind me of why my husband married me, that is for my calm and logical mind.) 

To steer this away from a list of excuses, let's just leave it as this is me trying to paint a little picture of where I'm at. It is not a particularly nice place, my stomach always seems to be churning just a tad and my usual equilibrium that enables me to share all manner of nonsense seems a little damaged. We have the best engineers from Star Trek working on re-assembling me in the correct way, that is my usual incorrect self, and hopefully some time soon you may see some stream of consciousness stuff spewing forth here - defining at last, my ideal life. 

P.S. Some trivia only the amazing Jenny "The Bloggess" Lawson may appreciate: William Shatner is the only person to have actually said the exact phrase "Beam me up Scotty" in the audio adaptation of his novel Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden. Now there's a great dinner party opener!

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9/11: In their shoes

© DailyMail.co.uk

I saw this picture and thought it was 9/11, it is not, but as I looked at the shoes I immediately felt sad for the thousands that had lost their lives on that fateful day ten years ago. The 2977 people who died had picked out shoes too, maybe with the help of their partner or maybe to spite them. They may have had their children with them, and asked them to stop jumping off the couch in the store. They had thought about the colour, the stitching, the material and the price, what they didn’t know was they were buying the shoes they would die in. 

And that decision to buy those shoes that day, like so many other every day rationalisations, was nowhere in their mind as many came to grips with the inescapable situation they were in. Instead we read of text messages of love and gratitude to partners, parents and children. We hear of stories of life-threatening heroism. We see pictures of sadness, trauma, destruction. Those every day dramas that happily rocked their worlds the day before, the weeks before were dwarfed into insignificance when faced with the end. 

As we look back on days like today I can’t help but feel foolish and a little ashamed, as they probably would too if they were lucky enough to be onlookers rather than victims. I literally spent 20 minutes deciding where to park today. I spent at least 2 hours this week feeling sorry for myself, and I told my husband off for picking up our two-year-old during a night terror instead of comforting him in his cot. I’m not saying that my feelings and decisions are stupid and wrong, I just wish when the small stuff happens that annoys us, the stuff we heap importance on, or that doesn’t make sense to our way of thinking,that we would see it for what it is: insignificant in the long term. 

Instead I wish I knew that if I was about to die I wouldn’t remember that my husband consistently put the whites in with the darks or that he doesn't always put the seat up. What probably would cross my mind would be "I wish I’d said ‘I love you’ more, I wish I’d been kinder and more understanding, I wish I'd spent more time with my kids, and I wish I’d been truer to myself". 

Days like today are precious because they remind us of the reality of our mortality, they give us perspective and inspire us to make more of the life we still have as we remember those that weren’t given that chance. We should stare at this disaster, we should soak in the pictures of grief and loss, we should try to fathom the feelings that would compel people to leap to their sure death and we should cry for them and for ourselves, especially if we are not truly living the life we have. In the end, when all is said and done, no one will remember our shoes, including us. 

As you watch the horror again, don't look away, stare at their faces and pay them tribute by celebrating the life you've been given today and hopefully tomorrow too.

©MyIdeaLife, 2011. All rights reserved. Images remain the copyright of their original source.

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